The Japanese Kitchen

Hiroyuki · June 22, 2005

This fall, we are moving from the resort condo that I call heaven to a new custom-built house, and I'd like to talk a little bit about our kitchen.

Our kitchen measures 3,640 mm x 2,275 mm (approx. 11.9 ft x 7.5 ft), and we also have a separate storage space, shown at the lower left corner of the photo below.

Here are perspective views of our kitchen:

My wife and I fell in love with the enameled system kitchen of Takara standard.

http://www.takara-standard.co.jp/ENG/index.html

Our kitchen costs about 560,000 yen, including the installation fee.

As is the case with most Japanese houses, our kitchen does not have a built-in large-sized oven.

melonpan · June 22, 2005

where i am in my life i am quite a number of years away from owning a home but it certainly doesnt stop me from dreaming.

i thought about the kind of kitchen i wanted and i know that i wanted <a href="http://www.cleansweepsupply.com/pictures/standard/sdvw5100.jpg">black epoxy resin</a> benches for workbenches / countertops. the kind straight out of high school chem lab. virtually indestructable, right?

but wow, this takara fine enamel is something else. and what colors! the mint green and fine blue are a wonderful change of pace from high school black... wonder if they can do a nice peachy colour...

Hiroyuki · June 22, 2005

The reason why we fell in love with Takara's is that the enameled kitchen is virtually indestructible, very, very, very easy to clean (you can use wire wool to clean it!), and will keep its beauty for a very long time (for ten to twenty years or longer!).

This is the color that my wife chose: floral ivory (leftmost one, with a red circle on it, on the top row in the right-hand side of the sheet).

It almost looks like pink.

She chose stainless steel for the countertop because it is more stain-resistant and less expensive than artificial marble.

The greatest thing about the kitchen is that we are going to have a dishwasher at last!

Kiem Hwa · June 22, 2005

ohh... sounds dreamy...

Can I get this in the US?? I see there are agents in Hong Kong, China, and.....Kuwait??? :blink:

Culinista · June 22, 2005

Congratulations on your beautiful new home. I love how smart Japanese kitchen appliances are--my mom's stove monitors the temperature of food inside the pots, maintaining a constant temperature or shutting off when it's done.

I love getting to design my own kitchen, although my experience in France was really rough. Rental apartments often come with nothing--no cabinets, not even a sink. People move from place to place with their whole kitchen, even if the old cabinets won't fit the new place. I spent over 10,000 euros and almost 3 months to outfit our place with cheap IKEA stainless and butcher block cabinets and what I consider the bare minimum necessities (ok, a 5-burner stove and an "American" 70 cm refrigerator :rolleyes: ). We then found out we were moving to Finland, and I had to sell it all at a huge loss after 6 months. Now, just over a year later, I'm looking for a new kitchen in London. :wacko:

But it was still great fun designing the kitchen. What appliances will you have?

Hiroyuki · June 22, 2005

What appliances will you have?
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Sorry to say but we won't have any of those hi-tech gadgets in our kitchen.

Our kitchen has a built-in fish grill and a built-in dishwasher (but no built-in oven :wink: ).

We have no plans to buy any new appliances. We've never been extravagant, and we have be more frugal from now on.

We will bring our 15+ year-old refrigerator, microwave, toaster oven, IH rice cooker, and thermos (not electric) to our new home.

Hiroyuki · June 23, 2005

ohh... sounds dreamy...
Can I get this in the US?? I see there are agents in Hong Kong, China, and.....Kuwait???
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I sent an inquiry to Takara last night, and I got a phone call this morning.

They don't export their products directly overseas. If someone overseas wants their products, they will need to ship them through a trading company.

helenjp · June 23, 2005

So what are you going to use your under-floor storage unit for?? :smile:

I don't anticipate that we could ever buy a new kitchen, but one day I'd love to replace our tiny ancient fan with a rangehood and big extraction fan!

Hiroyuki · June 23, 2005

So what are you going to use your under-floor storage unit for??
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That is not an under-floor storage unit. It's just an under-floor inspection door.

We discussed under-floor storage units in the Pantry thread. I know what they are. My parents' house had one. We don't want to have one installed in our kitchen.

smallworld · June 24, 2005

Great kitchen plans! I really envy the built-in dishwasher. The dishwasher in my kitchen (i.e. me) doesn't work very well.

So when it's all done you're having us all over for dinner, right?

torakris · June 24, 2005

a new kitchen..... ii na... :biggrin:

I just got a new stove top and I finally have a fish grill! it also has the sensor that automatically turns off the heat if the deep frying pan gets too hot. The fire is very strong, almost twice the strength of my previous one, the pan of pasta water came to a boil before I barely had time to assemble a sauce.

torakris · June 24, 2005

Our kitchen measures 3,640 mm x 2,275 mm (approx. 11.9 ft x 7.5 ft)
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how many jou is that?

Hiroyuki · June 24, 2005

Our kitchen measures 3,640 mm x 2,275 mm (approx. 11.9 ft x 7.5 ft)
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how many jou is that?
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About 4.5 jou. One broken-line square is equivalent to half a jou.

The total floor area of our house is 45 tsubo (90 jou), or 1,601 sft, plus a 4.5-tsubo (160.1-sft) garage.

torakris · June 24, 2005

The total floor area of our house is 45 tsubo (90 jou), or 1,601 sft, plus a 4.5-tsubo (160.1-sft) garage.
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now I am very jealous! :biggrin:

I have definitely been in Japan too long, I can only figure out how big things are in terms of jou and tsubo.... :hmmm:

Hiroyuki · June 24, 2005

The total floor area of our house is 45 tsubo (90 jou), or 1,601 sft, plus a 4.5-tsubo (160.1-sft) garage.
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now I am very jealous!
I have definitely been in Japan too long, I can only figure out how big things are in terms of jou and tsubo....
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Yes, you have!

For those who are not familar with the housing conditions in Japan, houses with total floor areas of 30 to 50 tsubo (1067 to 1779 sft) are average, and house with 60 tsubo (3558 sft) or greater are rare. In urban areas such as Tokyo, houses with total floor areas of about 15 to 20 tsubo (533.7 to 711.7 sft) are not uncommon. These small houses are now called kyosho jutaku (狭小住宅), literally narrow and small houses. I think that the Japanese are adept at turning a cramped space into a cozy little space.

Kris, will you still be jealous when I say that the 45-tsubo post-and-beam house plus 4.5-tsubo garage costs about 20 million yen to build?

Hiroyuki · July 11, 2005

This is where the kitchen will be. Note that our house is being built with the zairai koho, or conventional construction method, which is the traditional post-and-beam construction method quite popular in Japan. The platform frame construction method is commonly known as 'two by four' in Japan.

Today is a special day for us because we are having a tatemae (lit. pre-building) ceremony this evening, which is also called a joutou shiki (roof-raising ceremony). At the ceremony, we are going to do what is called mochi maki (lit. rice cake scattering). I'd like to start a new thread on tatemae, mochi maki, and jichin sai (groundbreaking ceremony) later.

Hiroyuki · September 23, 2005

Our house will be completed soon.

Our kitchen as of Sept. 22

Photo taken from the dining room:

Our kitchen is what is commonly known as a taimen (face-to-face) kitchen.

Lower part of our kitchen:

Upper part:

Opposite side:

Built-in dishwasher:

Gas stove and a fish grill:

Range hood:

The manufacturer says that the hood is easy to clean. Just remove the cover and wash it.

Food storage space:

Hiroyuki · November 17, 2005

Time flies, and it's already one month since we moved to our new house. I still can't say I'm comfortable in our new kitchen. There is some more room for improvement, and I sometimes miss the super mini kitchen in our resort condo, where everything was just zero to two steps away. It really was an efficient kitchen.

Today, I'd like to talk a little bit more about our new kitchen.

First, the temperature sensor attached to one of the three burners:

Below the burner is a panel on which you can select from among the temperature settings (one for water boiling and three for tempura making):

All middle and upper cupboard doors are equipped with a quake-proof latch

The built-in dishwasher has a mist generator for easy removal of food stuck on the plate:

You can see the word ミスト (mist) in Japanese.

It takes a little getting used to before you can put dishes, plates, and other tableware in place.

Hiroyuki · July 17, 2006

Soon after we decided to give a housewarming party for twelve people (four of us and eight guests), our 15 plus-year-old fridge became faulty :shock: . Naturally, we decided to buy a new one; we went to an electric appliance shop on July 14, and the fridge came to our house the next day - one day before the day we gave the party.

We liked the fridge mainly because the vegetable compartment at the bottom was bigger than conventional ones because of the placement of the compressor in the upper part of the fridge instead of the lower part, but the fridge has another interesting feature - hikari (optical?) partial. This compartment is provided with a UV-LED and keeps the food at -2C, not the conventional temperature of -3C, thereby keeping the food fresh for one week and increasing the amount of amino acids (because a protein-degrading enzyme is active at -2C). I have yet to find whether the manufacturer's claim is true.

Manufacturer's page on this fridge:

http://national.jp/product/cooking/refrige...r_f500t/p2.html

(Japanese only)

Anyway, we like our new fridge. :biggrin:

Hiroyuki · July 22, 2006

I forgot to mention that this partial freezing compartment can be switched to "chilling", "age freezing", and "freezing" at the touch of a button.

Yesterday (July 22), I used chicken breasts with a processing date of July 15 and an expiration date of July 18 that I had kept in the partial compartment. They were fresh, but because this is our first fridge that has a partial freezing feature, I can't comment on how effective this UV-LED partial freezing is compared to normal partial freezing. The same goes for amino acids.

Helen,

I'm usually just like you; I did a little search before we went to the shop, and I thought fridges in the price range around 70,000 yen should be enough for us, but at the shop, I realized that those in that price range looked so cheap.

helenjp · September 1, 2006

It's wonderful when you can start from scratch and build a whole new kitchen...but this is the Real World. I keep telling myself that I can't afford to spend money on our 25-year-old kitchen, so I decided to canvass you all for skinflint ideas for all those well-known Japanese kitchen problems...and most of all ROOM TO MOVE!!!

Top of my list is replacing our small, inefficent extractor fan that doesn't work with another ditto that does work.

What other wonderful improvements to efficiency and mood am I missing out on?

Hiroyuki · September 1, 2006

When I was struggling with my super-mini kitchen up until one year ago, I made it a point to watch the TV program section in which Kondo Noriko appeared as a "shuunou no tatsujin" ("expert on storage"?). I learned a lot about kitchen improvements from her, many of which used items available from the 100-yen shop.

She now has published a number of books, including this one.

If I were you, I would start disposing of all the unnecessary kitchen items first.

debbster · September 1, 2006

when i was living in tokyo some years ago, top on my kitchen wish list was to have more bench space... i'd put a chopping board on top of the sink to create some makeshift bench space. i'd position the board on the front half of the sink so i still had the back half to wash stuff.

helenjp · September 1, 2006

unnecessary kitchen items

Oh, you mean the stuff my husband bought?!!

Seriously, while recipe files and gadgets are big space eaters, the real puzzle is how to keep storage neat but accessible. My dry goods are in deep vacuum-seal (=roach-free) boxes, and how I hate to drag out a heavy box, rummage through it for one type of flour, and then put everything back again...

Debbster, you're right about using a narrow over-sink board - I have a full-depth one which is fine for things like rolling pastry, but smaller is better.

Kuma · September 1, 2006

Helen, how much overhead room do you have?

I found that the open space above your head as you stand in the middle of the workspace (ie, the ceiling) is perfect for a suspended rack.

This can hang utensils, pans, woks etc, store bulk items such as Rice, bulk drygoods etc and hold that excess crockery that frequent trips to Kappabashi tend to accumulate ! :laugh: