A quick caveat: make sure you know what the importation rules are for your country before you buy them – you don’t want to find them confiscated at the other end!

I’ll break this down into a few sections:
Where to go
Handy Japanese Phrases
How to decide what to buy

Where to go

Kappabashi, specifically Kappabashi Dogugai Dori between Kototoi Dori and Asakusa Dori, and its side-streets, is the place Tokyo restaurant and cafe suppliers go to get all the hardware they could possibly need, whether it’s cooking supplies, ceramic ware, bento trays, enamelware, plastic utensils and storage, or four foot tall,ornamental (I assume) cheese graters – and it’s where you should go, too.  Even if you aren’t shopping for knives, if you have any interest in ceramics or home wares, plan at least a half a day there. It is a dedicated supply area, though, so bring water and expect to have to go elsewhere to eat as there’s not much around. Also expect the occasional store person to grunt “20 minimum” at you in some of the shops – but only some, most are happy for the tourist trade.

The district is easily walking distance from Tawaramachi, Ueno, Iriya and Asakusa Stations.

So, where to go for the knives?

THE BIG SECRET:
Don’t buy your knives on the main street!!

As I said, Kappabashi Dogugai Dori is the main street that you will turn down when you get there and you will soon come across plenty of knife shops with many of the brands you know (including some German ones) and the prices don’t look so bad – a bit cheaper than they would be in the States but not impressively so. These guys are very welcoming of tourists and so they should be because I’d say tourists would be the only people who don’t know that they are spending soo much more if they buy there than if they just went up the street a bit more and round the corner!

If you keep heading down the K. Dogugai Dori you will find Kappabashi Hondori – a very small street which doesn’t look like much but it’s the place to go.

Turn East up Kappabashi Hondori and just a couple of doors up you will find the tiny, but chock-full-o-knives, Union Commerce knife shop.

In Union Commerce we found the same knives that we saw in the main street for 50 to 120 US dollars LESS.  Yes the extreme examples were on sale but, and here’s the trick, some of it will always be on sale because there is another little knife shop directly across the street and their blackboards and posters were clearly competing with each other!

I can’t tell you what the customer service was like in the shop across the road because I didn’t do much else but peek at the sales board but it’s probably worth a look inside.  At Union the staff (owners?) are passionate about knives and have seemingly endless patience for broken Japanese and charades! I left very happy with my beautiful sleek black boxes having saved approximately 450 USD over the five that I bought.

Handy Japanese Phrases

Hocho= Knife (you will also hear the word ‘bocho’ if you are listening well – this is the same word but ‘h’ is turned to ‘b’ after some syllables for easier pronunciation)

[Brand name] no hocho = [Brand name"] knife. Use this if there is a particular brand of knife you are looking for (though I suggest you have some flexibility unless you’ve really done your research!)  e.g., Shun no hocho; Misono no hocho; Maku (Mac) no hocho

Misete kudasai (Meesehtay koodahsigh) = Please show me. You can use this any time, it’s very handy when shopping, just point to what you want to see and say “Misete kudasai” with a bit of a question in your voice and they will bring the item for you to see more closely.

You now have a sentence, btw,  Misono no hocho, misete kudasai? = Could you please show me a/the Misono knife/knives? (no plural in Japanese)

Kore o kudasai (koray oh koodahsigh) = Please give me this one (or I’ll take this one) Use this after you’ve done all your exploring and decided on a knife that you want to buy. Try not to use this one before you are ready to buy – use “misete kudasai” if you want them to just show you a knife so that they don’t get confused.

Note: “kore” means “this” or “this one just here that I am pointing to right at the moment, see?” and is used when the thing is close enough to touch – store people will often point and say “kore?” to confirm it’s the one you want – to which you can nod and say “hai” (yes) or, if you want to sound clever, “Hai, sore” (which means yes, that one just out of my reach and close to you over there )

to (toh) = and. As in “kore to kore to kore to kore o kudasai” because, seriously, who can buy one knife?

Kirenaga (keeraynahgah) = a term which means the length of time that a blade will hold an edge. Using this term got me a big smile and guided toward another shelf of knives entirely – the Damascus steel ones, see below for why

Honyaki Another type of forging which uses only one high carbon steel. These knives have longer kirenaga but are less flexible and so more easily damaged. They also need oiling and greater care because they are, obviously, not stainless. These knives are more expensive than kasumi knives because this process is less common because of the precision required. The knives made with this process tend to be the traditional and professional Japanese knives (like the Usuba) and often have an edge on one side only, and so are usable only by either right or left handed person, AND require a curved cutting motion which takes both instruction and time to perfect.

Kasumi This is a type of forging in which a high carbon steel and iron are used so that the knife has strength and flexibility – this is the process by which samurai swords were made. Knives made with this method of forging don’t hold their edge as long as Honyaki but they need less care to be kept sharp, too so, especially for a non professional, it evens out.

NOTE: There is a Japanese knife brand named after this process so if you ask for “kasumi” you are likely to be shown these – not that it’s a problem they are very good knives at a very reasonable price (in Japan lol).

San Mai = Damascus/Damascened Steel This is another kasumi forging method which uses layers of laminated steel, and achieves a very pretty but also stronger and longer kirenaga result (still not as long as Honyaki but better than plain kasumi). The knife companies seem to be bringing Damascus into the home knife ranges whereas previously it was much more of a specialized blade (particularly popular with assassins blades, from my web research lol).  There is a great post on the forging style on a bladesmith’s blog, here.  I can only imagine that either they have found a way to make it more commercially viable or the home enthusiast market has just expanded to make it so, and considering the number of people who recently watched the final of “Masterchef” in Australia, that is a definite possibility.  I mentioned that it makes for a very pretty metal, this is because you can see the different layers of metal in the end result – as you can see in this shot that Superman took when I brought my knives home and he went into enthusiastic-husband mode

How to decide what to buy

When talking about knives, a lot of talk focuses on the blade but the most important thing about choosing a knife is actually the handling of the knife, and that’s a very personal thing. Hence the rather tortured heading of this section – I’m not going to recommend any particular knives just give some suggestions (from an enthusiastic amateur cook) on what to take into account.

The right knife for the right job
This might seem obvious, but it’s actually a safety issue to have the right knife for the job. A good paring knife will have a slightly different centre of balance to a chef’s knife, not just because the blade is smaller but because of the way it is used. A great list of all the Japanese knife types with links to individual descriptions can be found here.

If you can only afford one good knife then either a Chef’s knife or a Santoku is the best way to go – the Santoku being the more Japanese of the two, obviously. “Santoku” means “three graces” meaning that it can be used for meat, fish and vegetables. The Santoku was developed after the Japanese were exposed to the European chef’s knife and saw the utility of a single knife which could do everything.

A pairing knife for topping & tailing beans and peeling etc… is a good second knife if you have to choose, so that you have a safer option for smaller jobs.

The right knife for the right kitchen!
A confession. When I went to Kappabashi, I fully intended on buying a professional knife: a Misono UX10 to be precise. At the shops on the main street, the store men nodded with a smile and said “besto hocho” and praised my good taste. In Union Commerce, the store man gave me that fond, grandfatherly smile (which is only a hair away from patronizing but an important hair), picked one off the shelf and handed it to me. I nearly dropped it. The thing was soooo heavy and the blade was almost 2 feet long – just the BLADE, the whole thing was almost 3 feet long – that’s longer than the width of the bench on which I would use it! I asked if there was a smaller one – and he giggled and said “Profeshonal hocho”.
There is no shame in buying a knife made for the home kitchen – that’s what you are going to use it for. There are lots of companies that put as much quality into their home kitchen knives as they do their pro stuff. A home kitchen doesn’t need the same durability as a knife that is being used eight hours a day, every day (or second day if the chef alternates sets) and so can also get away with being a little more design friendly (in the same way that at home you can use much nicer pans than would be financially viable in a working kitchen.)

Be open to brands you haven’t heard of
Which brings me to the issue of which brand knife to buy. As I said, I’m not actually going to recommend any specific series of knives but if you’re reading this article, and continuing through this section then I’m going to assume you are going to be doing all the research on good quality blades from the various brands available. Try to remember there are going to be brands here in Japan that you might not have heard of but are equally good or better than those you may have so what you want to do is know your stuff about blades rather than having brand blindness.

It’s the knife series you want to research, not the brand.
Why? It’s the same with any products that have professional and amateur markets, a company might corner the market in quality on, say, full-frame cameras but not put anywhere near the same quality into their mini-digital ones – amateurs buy them because of the reputation within the pro community and are usually disappointed with what they have purchased, but assume it must be the best they can get because of the brand – and this is often not the case. So, while you’re researching, take your notes on the reviews of the specific series of knives, don’t just assume all knives from a brand are going to be great.

In the end, forget the blade…
Sacrilege? Not really. Once you are looking at the quality series across the brands, the practical differences are so minor that it really won’t matter; after all, you’re not using them solidly eight hours a day. What matters is how it feels in your hand.
One of the things you will notice about most Japanese knives is that most have plain, wooden, very straight handles rather than the ergonomic handles of Western knives. These handles are also very light and make for a knife with a lot more weight in the blade than Westerners would be used to judging as ‘good balance’.  Shun and some other Japanese knives strike a balance by using similar materials to Western companies, addressing the balance issue but keeping the traditional shape. Other Japanese companies address the comfort issue by copying the Western shapes but using extremely light materials (like pressed linen) so that the Japanese-style balance is achieved.
In my exploration I found that Mac, Misono and Kasumi seemed to err on the side of Western handle shapes and balance (which makes sense since they do sell a lot of knives in the West); this, as well as the extra weight of the knife overall, was the reason for my final choice – the Mac Damascus series. My friend chose some Kasumi blades because she enjoyed the balance and she prefers lighter knives.

A final recommendation:
Nothing to do with the knives, really, but if you do have a passion for cookware and home wares, consider making it the focus of a couple of days in Tokyo. I jumped on the Shinkansen in from Nagoya one morning, met a girlfriend who lived just outside of Tokyo (another expat I now miss) and we got ourselves a lovely room for the night and spent two whole days just exploring Kappabashi. My knives now are not only a wonderful treat every time I use them but also a memory of a lovely time spent sharing a passion with a friend.

Highlights were:

A birthday/bon voyage night at Red Rock for my friend NZ. K who is going home for a few weeks for the first time in quite a while. Good luck,  K,  sending good thoughts for a smooth trip and looking forward to coffee for debrief when you get back!

Going shopping for our costumes for an upcoming Halloween party (which was enough fun in itself) and finding actual autumn decorations – just like for Christmas but for autumn celebrations! Autumn is a really tough one to decorate my festival tree for in Australia, the main celebration going on is Easter so there are flowers and eggs and bunnies and baby chicks galore but of course that’s all Spring stuff so inappropriate. My origami skills, which I used one Summer to fold 250 butterflies to flutter around my tree, are not quite up to autumn leaves (something I must fix while I’m here!) and pumpkins are plentiful and appropriate to Harvest but have commercial Halloween references and you can’t do the same thing every year.  Finding the beautiful, can’t-believe-they’re-plastic Japanese maple and Cherry tree autumn leaves was wonderful!

But the biggest highlight came the Sunday before all that and was having four friends over to fill the house with chatter and laughter and use all six dining chairs! I had finally got round to getting a bamix-like appliance (nothing beats the real thing but of course my 14yr old workhorse is Australian power) and so I invited everyone over for no reason other than to celebrate opening my precious jar of tahini which I had brought from Australia.  (My friend, UK A., tells me that you can get tahini here but it’s just called sesame (goma) paste instead but I didn’t know that so it was worth celebrating lol!) I started by getting the meat marinating at around 10:30 am and spent the whole day blissfully pottering around the kitchen making everything from scratch.

The bread was the most fun of the day – obviously with the hommus and babaganoush and Lebanese grilled chicken and lamb we had to have flatbread but I have yet to find such bread here. Our supermarket sells something that is called “pita” but they are big soft, rather delicious but highly leavened bread rolls. Making things more difficult is the oven situation – ovens are not usual in Japan and all I have is a tiny convection microwave which, if I were more of a baker, I probably could have used but didn’t feel confident to do so. I was sure that I had once had dips in a Greek restaurant in Melbourne with some wonderful bread which, upon bringing our second helping, the waiter had said they cooked fresh on the grill. An hour or so of hunting for the right key phrases and I finally found a recipe here for Lahuhua, a flatbread from Yemen which is made from a batter much like pancakes (the thick kind) but using yeast and water instead of eggs and milk. It was a strange experience for me – I recognized what was going on as I started combining the same ingredients one would combine for bread but the amount of water seemed like way too much! Usually I don’t follow recipes, I just use them as a muse to get an idea of techniques or flavour combinations and then do my thing but I was all at sea with this one. I trusted the recipe and poured in the water and watched it turn into what looked like a very thin, bread-coloured milkshake – certain I’d be sending Superman up the street for bread later. Sure enough, though, after the first “rising” the milky liquid had become more of a batter and after the second it was perfect! One hint, if you leave the bread in a stack for a while before serving, the cooked side of the pancake will soften and then it is the most delicious, soft bread you will ever have tried! I highly recommend it!

Dessert worked out really well, too and I have had requests for the recipe so I will put it below (since I made it up when I couldn’t find any turkish delight so I guess I have copyright lol.)

Sorry I have no pics of the food, I was having too good a time! This is what it looked like when everyone was gone, though! Thanks again for coming US A. & R. and it was lovely to catch up with you, UK A. and to meet the lovely French Canadian I. I had SUCH a ball and invitations will be out to you all again soon!

Honeyed Figs with Rosewater Yoghurt

Ingredients:

The Figs:

Figs – 2 medium sized per person (however many you would like!) quartered

Caster sugar – enough to lightly sprinkle over figs (about a tblspn and a half for 12)

Ground Cinnamon – enough to sprinkle a little heavy-handedly over all your figs (say, a third of a tspn per quarter fig)

Honey – enough to drizzle generously over the figs (probably three quarters of a cup for the twelve figs) – Note: this is sooo much easier if you drizzle it straight from a squeezy bottle but do try to get a nice honey to do it if you can. In Japan honey is a bit “beggars can’t be choosers” but avoid anything which would be overpowering like a Blue Gum honey – the key to this dessert is the delicate flavours.

The Yoghurt:

Natural, Set Yoghurt -  1 1/2 cups (none of that sweet, runny, custard stuff – REAL yoghurt lol!)

Caster sugar  – 1/2 cup

Rosewater – around a teaspoon or to taste depending on the one you have. Obviously best quality you can find/afford but be a little careful as too much can be overpowering and with some rosewaters your yoghurt will smell like your grandmother’s soap!  If you are unsure about using it, buy it in plenty of time and make yourself hot milk with sugar and a drop or two of rosewater before you go to bed at night for a few nights – it’s incredibly soothing and a good way to get used to how much, or rather how little, you need!

Method:

The Figs:

Start your oven heating to a low heat – about 150 Celsius – either before you start preparing the figs or five minutes before you are going to put them in the oven. You don’t want it to be pre-heated as such, just not cold when you put the figs in.

Loosely line and ovenproof dish with baking paper so that the juices don’t bake into it and they are easy to get out to pour over the figs when serving.

Quarter your figs and lay them out in a single layer over your dish.

Sprinkle the cinnamon and sugar and drizzle the honey over them.

You can leave these aside ready for the oven till 40 minutes before you need them.

Place in the warming oven for 40mins. The figs are ready when you have beautiful juices running round the bottom of your dish and the figs are soft but still holding their shape.

The Yoghurt:

This should be done at least half an hour beforehand and can be done up to a day before hand but the yoghurt might lose it’s texture if done too early.

Mix all ingredients.

Place in fridge to keep it chilled but also to allow the moisture of the yoghurt to melt the sugar crystals through it (this is why you need at least 30mins)

Serve the figs and the yoghurt, not forgetting to drizzle some of the pan juices over the yoghurt – you won’t BELIEVE the colour!

Happy cooking! Do let me know if you try it!

Enjoy!

DANI’S SPICY MOROCCAN LAMB SOUP

(makes 10 servings so 5 meals for 2 and could be more if you like your soup more watery – you can adjust it from a stew-like consistency to a more watery soup as preferred)

Ingredients;
2 lamb shanks
2 Red/Spanish Onions finely diced
3 cups green beans (chopped as small or roughly as you like)
3 cups carrots (chopped the same)
3 cups good quality fresh or dried Borlotti beans – soaked, boiled and ready to go (or tinned if you like too).
3 tbs of honey
2 tbs macadamia oil (a light tasting olive or rice bran will do)
75g butter (unsalted is best)
3 cups of vegetable or chicken stock (which ever you like best)
Fill your kettle and boil it

Herbs (start with the following amounts but feel free to play with more or less of one or another to your own taste – I make it up each time lol and to add more later in the recipe but pre cooking them at first is important)
1 tbs cumin
2 tbs dried ground coriander (not fresh)
1tbs ground cinnamon
2 tsp turmeric
1 tsp paprika (more if you like heat)
1 chilli of your favourite heat seeded (unless you’re a masochist) and chopped
2 whole cloves

METHOD

In a large soup pan (as heavy bottomed as you have) melt butter with the oil on a medium heat then add diced onions.

When onions are nearly translucent add allt the herbs inc the chilli till the flavours are bursting and feel free to add any more of anything that smells particularly good

Put the two lamb shanks in whole let them seal on one side then turn them over and let the other seal (the sides won’t be sealed but that’s cool)

Add the chicken or vegetable stock – give it a stir to make sure the herbs and onions aren’t sticking – then add boiling water until the lamb shanks are covered.

Bring to a boil then turn down the heat and let it simmer until the lamb is falling off the bone – this will take at least an hour and a half – you will prob need to add more boiling water occasionally and stir to make sure it doesn’t stick to the bottom of the pan.

Remove the lamb shank bones and skin from the soup – this should be able to be done by just pulling gently with some tongs, if not then it is not yet ready.

Once the bones and skin are removed add the diced vegetables and beans (feel free to add whichever vegies you like) and then enough boiling water to cover the vegetables by over an inch. Simmer till the vegies are cooked and the soup has reduced to the consistency you prefer – it can be a watery, minestrone type soup or you can let it thicken to a stew. At this point add more herbs to taste and the 3 tbs of honey – it’s not much but it pulls all the moroccan spices together.