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Oden shack on the backstreets of Monzennakacho, Tokyo.

Sakura-ebi kakiage at Nunotsunesarashina in Tsukiji, my favorite soba spot when I lived in Tokyo.

My second day in Japan was inauspicious. The sky was dreary, overcast, drizzling all day and on into the night, and I woke up with a full-blown cold to boot. So in other words, the perfect day for a bowl of ramen....

This one was a long time coming. Since I first started reading about ramen over at Ramenate I've been fascinated by Jiro-kei (Jiro-style) ramen. What is Jiro you ask? Jiro is an institution. It has spawned several official offshoots and many more imitators....

I used to live in Azabujuban for four years during my 20s. Sadly I don’t get to go there that often anymore as I live farther away. I love Azabujuban so much because there are so many great restaurants and cool shops there...

We visit Yokohama Ramen Nakamura-ya, a restaurant in Tokyo that serves ie-kei style ramen.

Push yourself. Every challenge makes you better. Or as I learned, making a fool of yourself at a run-of-the mill ramen shop prepares you for the big boys. I recently traveled to Japan, where I had 21 bowls of ramen in...

On the very special occasion that a visitor from Japan would bring Toraya to our home in Cupertino, I would actually be excited about eating. I was a very picky, skinny child, but whenever my mom busted out the Toraya I...

Matsunami Ramen was my first stop in Tokyo after a 9-day long trip of a lifetime to Darjeeling, India (more on that later). I was in Darjeeling and Tokyo on business but I was able to squeeze in a lot of culinary...

I want Washio's Awamori Wasabi-wari to be world famous, so I've gone ahead and named it "The World Famous Awamori Wasabi-wari." It's been out there on...

Masako Ikegami bartends at BARShake in Tokyo. Like Mr. Tomokazu Kai, she also won the Suntory Cocktail Award, which brought her to the Bay Area as the...

After reading Moto's post about making anko (sweet bean paste), I began to reminisce about my visit to a wagashi (traditional Japanese confectionary) shop in Koishikawa, Tokyo called Ikko-an. All of the wagashi are made by hand by the owner Chikara Mizukami, while his wife works...

By Shizuka Wakashita What do you drink when you go to a soba place? Beer? Sake? Shochu? I thought sake but I was wrong. I was converted into a sake lover about three years ago. Ever since then I almost always order sake when I go...

*Nahoko Morimoto is a Tokyo-based photographer. Her work has been featured in Brutus and Vogue Japan.

Spaghetti with asari (clams), shirauo (little white fish) and arugula at Pizzeria Matsuhisa in Denenchofu, Tokyo. Someday, I will open a wafu (Japanese-style) pasta shop in Oakland.

The other day at my local Asian market -- which is usually not very well equipped since importing food from Asia to an unsignificant little island kingdom like Denmark is incredibly pricey -- I found these bags of grains. And I remembered the many crazy versions...

Photo by Kelly Ishikawa, a San Francisco-based photographer and the co-owner of The Perish Trust. 

Happy New Year!  I can't believe the holiday season passed so quickly, and now we are in 2012.  Soon we will be bitching about the hot summer. I was in Japan for the holidays, and had quite a few good food moments. I am really thankful to...

Danran, a little sushi spot in the Sakurajosui station in Tokyo, is no stranger to Umamimart. Yoko introduced us to the place in 2008, and Tmonkey reported on it again later that year. Yoko took me to Danran for the first time several years...

A cat cafe is not a place that serves cat sandwiches. It is a cafe... with cats. Cat Cafes in Japan were very popular in the early-mid 2000s and still remain peppered throughout Tokyo. Building on the otaku culture of manga, maid and