Whisky Week The past week or so has been filled with whisky (whiskey) events, starting with the annual Chichibu Whisky Matsuri in Chichibu, Saitama. Chichibu is home to Ichiro Akuto, the owner of Venture Distilling and the maker of Ichiro’s Malts whiskies, perhaps the most famous whisky in the world over the past ten or fifteen years. The fest brings whisky makers from all over the world to pour samples of their wares, plus other whisky collectors […]
Read moreSomething about Japan’s food culture that I realized long ago is that most people have a very high tolerance for hot food and drink. Hot as in temperature hot, not spicy hot. When it comes to myself, however, I have what is known in Japan a neko jita (猫舌), a term literally meaning “cat’s tongue” that is used to describe people who can’t eat or drink hot things (cats will drink warm milk, but if served milk […]
Read moreBack in April of this year, I think it was, I read a review of a book in the New York Times that made me put it on my list of books to buy when I visit Portland; Romaine Wasn’t Built in a Day: The Delightful History of Food Language, by Judith Tschann. I finally got around to reading it the other day, and it was just as good as the review claimed. The book is fun […]
Read moreOne day this past spring while getting my hair cut I picked up a copy of a magazine that was featuring soba that month. I soon forgot the name of the magazine, but I didn’t forget about a soba shop in Asakusa that looked worth visiting; Asakusa Hirayama. I get a lot of my soba ideas, and awareness of good restaurants, looking through the many food magazines published in Tokyo and Japan, including Hirayama. Unfortunately, while I […]
Read moreHashigoro はしご楼 A new building full of restaurants opened last week in Ningyōchō, Hashigoro. It’s on the corner of Kinza dori and Ningyōchō dori on the site of a former shoe repair shop and something else that I don’t ever recall seeing open for business. It’s a Mitsubishi project, which surprised me as Nihonbashi is mostly Mitsui territory. It consists of five floors of restaurants offering all sorts of Japanese and foreign cuisines, each restaurant more or […]
Read moreMitsui Fudosan and Why Foreigners Come to Nihonbashi I was recently asked to give a talk to some employees of Mitsui Fudosan (Mitsui Real Estate) on why foreigners visit the greater Nihonbashi area. Over the past month or so whenever I have spotted foreigners in the area I have introduced myself and explained what I am doing and then asked people a series of questions, starting with where the are from. If they live here I go […]
Read moreAfter a three-year absence, FoodEx Japan, a giant trade show for the food industry, returned to Tokyo Big Site last week for four days, although unlike in the past, this time it was not open to the public (I had a press pass). I went on two days, which was almost enough time to see perhaps half of the exhibits. Over sixty countries had exhibits, with the non-Japanese exhibitors aiming to break into the Japanese market, or […]
Read moreWe returned to Kohaku the other day for another fantastic lunch. My wife and I both agreed that the food gets better and better every time we go, something Koizumi san, the master and chef, might disagree with (he said he needs another ten years before he truly knows what he is doing). We started off by ordering two bottles of Kohaku beer. A moment later the first dish was served, large oysters covered in a […]
Read moreThe other day I went to a recently relocated sushi shop behind Suitengu Shrine in Ningyōchō, Sushi Masa. My wife and I had been to the former place, located one block away, several years ago and found it to be okay but a bit on the expensive side. But after going past the new location nearly every day for the past couple of months and seeing their lunch menu outside, I finally decided to go. I don’t […]
Read moreRecently my wife and I headed out to Katsunuma City in Yamanashi prefecture for a winery hopping event. My wife had learned of it via a friend who had recently done it. It wasn’t cheap–¥7,000 per person, plus another ¥5,000 or so for train fare—but it was a fun event, with warm and sunny weather and the chance to a bit of winery touring. I started doing winery visits in Oregon back in 1977, I believe, at […]
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