Foodietopo

It's mostly Nescafe Excella which is quite popular in Japan and they use a non-dairy creamer called Creap produced by Morinaga. There is also a jar of Maxim instant coffee in the staff kitchen. I don't understand this fascination with instant coffee. One of my co-worker uses UCC individual drip coffee system which is pretty much a single cup pour over system. Coffee in a can is also very big in Japan. You can buy hot cans of coffee pretty much anywhere, including isolated road in the middle of nowhere.

Coffee in the Japanese work place is pretty limited. There is everything needed to serve green tea, but most of my co-workers drink instant coffee. I work in 5 schools and I also spend a lot of time at the Board of Education of my tiny little village in the Japanese mountains, all this without any decent coffee. The one school that brews coffee on a daily basis prepares the weakest coffee I have ever seen anywhere. They probably use 2 coffee spoons for 8 cups. It's pretty bad stuff and I drink it to be polite. I mostly drink green tea all day which is amazing. I brew my own coffee at home with a simple pour over set up. My wife bought me a Chemex for my birthday, I can't wait to try it out. Good coffee is available in Japan. I found a couple of great roasters in my area, but the work place is still green tea oriented.

We each made enough matcha powder for about 3 bowls, I made the first one and I let my wife prepare the two other one. It was delicious. My only problem with tea ceremony is the fact that I cannot sit in seiza for a very long time, my legs would probably not let me survive a whole tea ceremony serving. One of the great thing about tea ceremony is the amazing Japanese sweets served with the tea. In my mind the sweet and the tea are very closely associated. Tea ceremonies are simply amazing and I am lucky to have a chance to see the behind the scene. The women and men serving tea are so serious, but in the kitchen they just have so much fun.

Can you find King whetstone in your area? This is what is available in most stores in Japan. The stones are pretty cheap and will do a great job. I was told at the Global store in Osaka that my King whetstone would pretty much do the same job as the super expensive Global stones.

I spent many years cooking in a dorm kitchen when I was studying abroad. My best suggestion would be to try to find some people to cook with and split the cost. Buying in bulk can save you a lot of money. I remember buying a huge bag of rice at a ridiculous low price, but it all made sense since we were splitting it in four.

Any brand of whetstone will do, just go easy and your knife should be fine. I watched a lot of video on Youtube before using a whetstone for the first time and my knives are all fine. I am not the best, but it's a slow learning process. I've also watched many pro in knife shop and I figured I could always bring my knife to them if I mess up an edge or something. Have fun with your new knife.

Very interesting topic. I had the chance to visit Uji near Kyoto and my wife took me to a matcha making work shop. We grinded our own matcha with a stone. I drink matcha almost every week, but I haven't mastered the art of the whisk yet. My wife served tea for almost 10 years and my mother-in-law goes to ceremony almost every week. I really enjoy tea ceremony, might actually start learning to prepare tea after reading this topic. Cheers from Japan

The Japanese mustard/ketchup package is indeed quite an innovation. I don't eat corn dogs often, but it was a lot of fun to squeeze out the ketchup.

They have some very nice knives on the Wilkins website. The Mytuko looks like a very interesting model. I am looking forward to see a couple pics of your knife.

I've been working in Japan for the last two years and I share the school lunch with my students on a daily basis. I work in 5 schools, the central lunch center delivers lunch for 3 of them and the other 2 have their own kitchen on site. Most of the food is made with local products. I was shocked by the high quality of the food. The two schools with their own kitchen are preparing amazing food. There is only 50 students in each school, but the food is simply delicious. My favorite is curry and rice, it's also the kids favorite. My worse nightmare is natto and shishamon which is small whole fishes. It's so different from anything I ever ate in Canada when I was an high school student.

I really enjoyed the Momofuku cookbook and I used his spicy/kimchi cucumber recipe and used daikon instead with great success. I will try to cook a few more recipe soon. Momofuku is a bit far from Japan, but I can't wait to go back to NYC and try it for myself.

Thanks Nakji, wrote this down in my notebook.

McDonald french fries, alcohol, potato starch?

I was wondering if anybody has any feedback or experiences with Saigon Cooking Class at Hoa Tuc? Saigon cooking class I am going on a trip to Vietnam next March for my honeymoon. My wife was interested into taking a cooking class. My other option would be a class at the Metropole in Hanoi since we will be staying there. Any suggestions are more than welcome.

My new refrigerator is a Sharp and I really like it. For my first two years living in Japan, I had a small freezer on the bottom fridge. But I graduated to a full size fridge recently and I really like the design. The fridge is 178 cm tall and 60 cm large. The top part is a fridge. The bottom part is split into 3 sections. The bottom drawer is a vegetable drawer, the middle drawer is a freezer and there is two smaller drawer on top of that. The drawer on the left is a freezer drawer and the drawer on the right is for the ice cubes. Sharp fridge They don't seem to offer this model in America or Canada.

Thanks for posting good addresses, I am going to Shanghai in about 2 weeks, I wanted to visit Suzhou. The Yang Yang Dumpling restaurant looks delicious.

The Maruyoshi is 3.2 cm wide. I am sorry, I don't know how much it is in inches, I am Canadian

The show is on Monday night at 10 PM, I've never watched it, but I will try to watch it Monday night. This is the official website from the show http://www.fujitv.co.jp/smapsmap/index.html And a wiki page on the show http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SMAP%C3%97SMAP Here, I found some info on Bistro Smap and there celebrity guest. http://www.almostjapanese.com/bistro-smap-to-welcome-pitt-and-tarantino The Gwyneth Paltrow trip to Spain is the format of almost every TV show in Japan. My favourite Saturday morning TV show has a different star every week taking a TV crew to his favourite restaurants.

American actors and actress might not be on food TV show everyday, but it's not the case in Japan. I see actors on TV talking about food almost everyday. The members of the group SMAP all wrote a bunch of cooking books. Has anybody seen Miyuki Hatoyama cooking book? The wife of the former Primer Minister of Japan published a super swanky book just before her husband resigned. I saw the English version of her book about a week after her husband left politic. I guess stars are not the only one trying to cash out on food. http://blogs.wsj.com/japanrealtime/2010/06/03/hatoyama-move-leaves-first-lady-cookbook-out-of-date-before-release/

David, I was surprised about how wide the blade was, I won't be home until Monday, but I will take exact measures and post them. I think the pinch grip is perfect with this knife. I diced an onion with it last night, no problems. The blade is scary sharp, I believe sharp enough to shave with. I shave with a Japanese straight razor and this knife is a close second.

I found a very light weight knife roll in Osaka. It's made out of canvas, it's very simple and cheap. I am not sure if it was a Japanese product, I haven't seen them on American websites.

I often carry my knife with me with a plastic cover. It's probably the cheapest option and the most ergonomic. That said, I love gadgets, probably why I ended up buying this knife.

Like I said, it's a nice blade, but I won't replace my regular santoku or chef knife with it anytime soon. The finger position is not perfect, but it's a much solid performer than my old Opinel. If you're happy with your purchase, I'm happy for you. I can't resist saying that that's a lot of dough for a knife that, freehand aside, will restrict you to the 4" strip round the edge of your cutting board. Where you gonna put your fingers, for one thing ? And whenever you cut a slice off something, it'll fall on the floor, for another. Sure is pretty. Japan's doing a nice job of mimicking the old Middle Eastern technology.

250$ is not a bad price when you consider the really bad exchange and the shipping. Thanks for starting this thread, I found a great knife thanks to it.

Just came back from work and I took a few pics of the Maruyoshi folding Santoku. This is next to a Global Santoku and a regular size Swiss knife to show the size difference. The Maruyoshi is 14 cm when folded. The blade is is 10 cm and the whole knife is 25 cm when unfolded. The blade is V10 Japanese damascus stainless steel. It's simply beautiful. It's my best looking blade so far. The handle looks like micarta, but I am not 100% certain. The knife is shipped in a box and comes with a black nylon belt holster. Performance wise, I cut some eggplants and it's a solid performer for it's size. I would not spend hours cutting with it, but if you need a decent knife on the road, it's the knife for you. I going to prepare a whole meal with it soon to see how it performs. Dealing with Maruyoshi was very easy and shipping in Japan was fast. I got my knife on the second day I ordered. The owner of Maruyoshi is a real gentleman. Maruyoshi Knife I think this knife would be a small luxury for most foodie. The only problem with it is the fact that carrying such a knife is illegal in Japan. At this size, it looks more like a hunting knife than a pocket knife. p.s. I am sorry about the poor quality of the pictures, I recently moved and I haven't set up my light box yet...