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LIFE / Food & Drink / TOKYO FOOD FILE
Nov 10, 2002

Restaurant Kinoshita: New digs, but same culinary magic

When the news came through this summer that one of our favorite chefs, Kazuhiko Kinoshita, was closing his eponymous restaurant in Hatsudai and moving to fresh pastures, it came as no surprise to us. In fact the move was well overdue.
Japan Times
LIFE / Lifestyle / MATTER OF COURSE
Nov 8, 2002

Fishing for parental help on field trips

For me, a major benefit of moving to Japan was not having to chaperone school field trips anymore.
LIFE / Food & Drink / THE WAY OF WASHOKU
Nov 3, 2002

A special sauce that can travel anywhere

Not too long ago I had a chance to shrink a gap in cultural understanding. A regular customer had brought his young grandchild in to eat one afternoon, and he was eager to have the talkative boy engage me in conversation.
Japan Times
LIFE / Travel / ON THE ARCHIPELA-GO
Oct 29, 2002

More than just another Little Kyoto

Travel around Japan enough and you soon notice how so many places like to imagine themselves as somewhere else. Aomori Prefecture is proud of its "Mount Fuji," Mount Iwake; Kawagoe likes being called "Little Edo"; and there are so many "Ginzas" in the land that if you put them all together you'd have...
LIFE / Food & Drink / THE WAY OF WASHOKU
Oct 27, 2002

The fish, my friend, can be dried in the wind

In empty lots close to the piers of small fishing towns, up and down the coast of Japan, stand huge drying racks, hung heavy with the gutted, cleaned and butterflied morning catch. Empty, these racks look like a fantastical gymnastic apparatus. Fully laden, they resemble rows of clotheslines strung with...
Japan Times
LIFE / Food & Drink / TOKYO FOOD FILE
Oct 27, 2002

Grazing between East and West

The dining-bar is a strange concept, one that is quite peculiar to Japan. Unlike at regular bars, food is a central part of the experience -- not just beer nuts, but real sustenance. Unlike a proper restaurant, though, you are not expected to order a whole meal from starter through to main course and...
COMMUNITY / NOTES FROM THE SMOKE
Oct 25, 2002

Intestines, orange squash spur Celtic reverie

Culturally speaking, yakitori is as about Japanese as sumo wrestling, origami and the cultivation of square watermelons.
COMMENTARY / World
Oct 24, 2002

'Tax evaders' steal the talk of Shanghai

SEOUL -- A little over a month ago I was on the way to Shanghai to spend a month teaching at Fudan University. I read an article in a Hong Kong newspaper that said the topic on everyone's lips in China was the upcoming 16th National Congress of the Communist Party of China. This is the congress at which...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music / HIGH NOTES
Oct 23, 2002

Asagaya Jazz Festival

Asagaya is a quietly hip part of town with a dense nexus of sake bars, music venues, performance spaces and specialty shops. But once a year, Asagaya throws open its streets, clubs and cinemas to two days of jazz, transforming the neighborhood into Asagaya Jazz Streets.
COMMENTARY / World / GUEST FORUM
Oct 20, 2002

Scarcity not to blame for pain of hunger

In 1945, the year the vicious war ended, there was famine in Italy, Russia, Bengal, Burma and much of China; and yet there were unsellable surpluses of food in the United States, Canada and some Latin American countries. Products could have been shipped, stored and sold in quantities large enough to...
Japan Times
COMMUNITY
Oct 20, 2002

A bistro of his own

Tatsushi Shiokawa, 39, enrolled in 1991 at Le Cordon Bleu, Tokyo, where he was the only male student in his class. The following year he completed the three-part Classic Cycle -- then opened Bistro Campagne in Tokyo's Asakusabashi district.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY
Oct 20, 2002

Lessons from the kitchen

Keiko Sato, 34, studied at Le Cordon Bleu 2000-01, completing the three-part Classic Cycle. She now runs her own cooking studio in Shirokanedai, Tokyo.
Japan Times
LIFE / Food & Drink / TOKYO FOOD FILE
Oct 20, 2002

The garden of heavenly tofu delights

Traditional cuisine intersects with a distinctive modern sensibility at Sorano-niwa. Newly opened on one of Ebisu's quieter back streets, this is an almost textbook example of how some of Japan's most representative foods are being updated and repackaged for the new millennium.
Japan Times
LIFE / Food & Drink / TOKYO FOOD FILE
Oct 13, 2002

Fresh, raw Ebisu, on the half-shell

Oysters are definitely in season these days -- and not just because the summer is over and there's an "R" in the letters of the month. Overlooked and undervalued for too long here (or perhaps just overshadowed by all the other superb seafood that's available), these humble bivalves are only now being...
CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF
Oct 6, 2002

No looker, but a great personality

BANGKOK, by William Warren. Reaktion Books, 2002. 160 pp., with monochrome photos, £14.95 (paper) Thailand's ebullient capital is many things, but it is not beautiful. True, there are many lovely things in it, but it can no more be considered comely than can Tokyo, a city it in some ways resembles....
Japan Times
LIFE / Food & Drink / THE WAY OF WASHOKU
Oct 6, 2002

Simmered veggies just like mama used to make

In a traditional Japanese restaurant's kitchen, the head chef — the oya-kata, literally the boss — wields the knife and rules the cutting board. He watches and directs each phase of food preparation, beginning with the early-morning procurement of fish. Standing close to the chef and performing an...
Japan Times
JAPAN / WEEKEND WISDOM
Sep 29, 2002

'Kabukicho guide' offers punters a walk on the wild side

Sporting a pinstripe suit, a wiry figure hovers on the main street of Shinjuku Ward's Kabukicho -- Tokyo's busiest and arguably seediest entertainment district.
Japan Times
LIFE / Food & Drink / TOKYO FOOD FILE
Sep 29, 2002

As bistros go, this one is parfait

It's the post-holiday syndrome, the back-at-work midweek slump. You feel like eating out, but you don't want to get dressed up. You need to avoid straining the credit card. And you're certainly not in the mood for elaborate delicacies or rare vintages by candlelight.
Japan Times
LIFE / Food & Drink / VINELAND
Sep 22, 2002

Recession? What recession?

For many, the mere thought of Champagne is enough to make the pulse race and the tongue tingle. Josephine de Beauharnais, the wife of Napoleon and Empress of France 1796-99, once remarked that "making love without a bottle of Champagne alongside my bed is merely silly." For those looking to indulge in...
Japan Times
LIFE / Food & Drink / TOKYO FOOD FILE
Sep 22, 2002

Shinsekai Saikan: Old school from the New World

Shinsekai Saikan (or Xinshijie Caiguan, to give it the proper Pinyin reading) has plied its trade at the Jinbocho Crossing since 1946 -- so long, indeed, that it's become one of the neighborhood landmarks. The name may be "New World Restaurant," but this is definitely an establishment of the old school....
Japan Times
LIFE / Travel / THEN AND NOW
Sep 19, 2002

Watching the river's flow

In the best-selling 19th-century guidebook, "Edo Meisho Zue (Famous Places of Edo)," there are many prints showing the picturesque scenery and ancient shrines in the vicinity of Oji in present-day Kita Ward. Robert Fortune, the Scottish botanist who was in Japan in 1860 and 1861, enjoyed his visit there,...
Japan Times
LIFE / Food & Drink / TOKYO FOOD FILE
Sep 15, 2002

Simplicity, the mother of perfection

First impressions are everything. You can tell a good restaurant from the moment you walk through the door. It could be a visual cue or the general layout, a subtle feeling that the feng shui is right. It could be the way you are greeted at the door, the movements of the chef or the reassurance of seeing...
Japan Times
LIFE / Food & Drink / THE WAY OF WASHOKU
Sep 8, 2002

Tataki : a tasty starter created in a flash

After the hors d'oeuvre course is served, the first dish presented in a traditional Japanese meal is most often a course of raw fish or other meat. The general term for this course is o-tsukuri. The root of the word, tsukuru, means to make, create or — if you read into the meaning — to arrange. ...
Japan Times
LIFE / Food & Drink / TOKYO FOOD FILE
Sep 8, 2002

Toutouan: Three hours of pure bliss

Toutouan lies inside Tokyo -- but only just. You will find it far from the throbbing heart of the city, on the western fringes of the greater metropolis, not so far from where the Tama River flows.
COMMUNITY
Sep 5, 2002

A day of taking tea and tonkatsu with a spirited local guide

Accustomed as I am to a stoic mug of Brooke Bond in the morning, I admit having been less than overjoyed at the prospect of visiting the Yue He Cha herbal tea house in Kyodo, a bustling little town on the Odakyu Line.
Japan Times
JAPAN
Sep 4, 2002

Osaka officials declare USJ drinking fountains safe

OSAKA -- Osaka city officials on Tuesday declared the drinking fountains at the Universal Studios Japan theme park safe.
Japan Times
BUSINESS
Sep 4, 2002

Mitsubishi Estate rebuilds historic commercial building

Mitsubishi Estate Co. completed reconstruction work Tuesday on a historic commercial building in Tokyo's Marunouchi district.
JAPAN
Aug 30, 2002

Green tea advocates see cafes dedicated to the brew boom

A growing number of people are entering the Japanese green tea cafe business as the brew claims ground against its coffee cousin, according to the World Green Tea Association.
Japan Times
LIFE / Travel / NATURE TRAVEL
Aug 27, 2002

A rainy spell, and a desert blooms

For much of the year, most of Namaqualand is hot, dry, dusty and all but dead.
LIFE / Travel / NATURE TRAVEL
Aug 27, 2002

A rainy spell, and a desert blooms

For much of the year, most of Namaqualand is hot, dry, dusty and all but dead.

Longform

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