Nick Currie - The Japan Times

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Nick Currie

Japan Times

LIFE / Food & Drink / THE UNRELIABLE FOOD CRITIC

Apr 15, 2016

Osaka, give us this day our decent European bread

Encountering strangers on trips back to Europe, I find myself falling into a familiar conversational call-and-response:

Japan Times

LIFE / Food & Drink / THE UNRELIABLE FOOD CRITIC

Mar 18, 2016

Osaka's crazed, cheap and cheerful supermarket chain

This is a column about cheap food, and it doesn't come much cheaper than Osaka's Super Tamade supermarket chain. When I first arrived in the city I lived almost exclusively on precooked nikku jagga, a shrink-wrapped beef, carrot and potato bowl retailing at around ¥100. Haute cuisine it isn't, but it...

Japan Times

LIFE / Food & Drink / THE UNRELIABLE FOOD CRITIC

Feb 19, 2016

A new ceremony for tea in the rundown heart of Osaka

In Japan — especially in Japan — food and drink have always been about more than merely nutrition or a mere succession of tastes. They have also been a pretext for bringing people together in social rituals that don't have to be ancient, formal or solemn: rituals focused on food and drink can also...

Japan Times

LIFE / Food & Drink / THE UNRELIABLE FOOD CRITIC

Jan 22, 2016

Downtown Osaka's faded replica of Korea's kaleidoscopic markets

There's something suspicious about the way Japan and Korea differ so much in the taste and presentation of their foods, as if a kind of sibling rivalry were going on, some struggle for distinction and specialization.

CULTURE / Music / David Bowie in Japan

Jan 15, 2016

Bowie’s portable Japan

I first learned that David Bowie had died while riding the Beetle jetfoil ferry from South Korea to Japan. Of the myriad thoughts that flooded through my mind during the crossing — for Bowie has been my lodestar, an absolutely determinant influence in my life as the musician Momus — was the bittersweet...

Japan Times

LIFE / Food & Drink / THE UNRELIABLE FOOD CRITIC

Dec 22, 2015

In the gutter of Osaka, but not looking at the Michelin stars

Cycling through one of the poorer quarters of Osaka, I start feeling peckish. So I park my bike in one of the rundown shopping arcades that crisscross this working-class city and duck, almost at random, into a cheap eatery. The ancient proprietress waves me to the counter and, without even asking, serves...

You can often see generations of families enjoying performances together at Fuji Rock Festival.

Japan’s summer music festivals are feeling the heat in more ways than one

Akiko Trush says her experience with the neurological disorder dystonia left her feeling like she wanted to chop her own hand off.

The neurological disorder that 'kills culture'

By Tomoko Otake

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