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LIFE / Food & Drink / THE WAY OF WASHOKU
Jan 27, 2002

Harnessing the preservative power of the sun

Culinary standards are often determined by prosperity. In Japan's past, food was not always as abundant as it is now. In lean harvest years, there was no rice to import from foreign nations and no cheap vegetable stocks to rely on when the local crop failed. Polished white rice was scarce among peasants...
CULTURE / TV & Streaming / CHANNEL SURF
Jan 20, 2002

Fifty lashings for serving up wet noodles

This week, former teenage beauty queen Ryoko Sakaguchi returns to "Tuesday Suspense Theater" (Nippon TV; 9:03 p.m.) for the fifth time. She stars in "Rinsho Shinrishi (Clinical Psychologist)" as college lecturer Yuri Matsunami, who uses her psychoanalytical skills to solve murder mysteries that leave...
LIFE / Food & Drink / TOKYO FOOD FILE
Jan 20, 2002

Aramasa: The nostlagic taste of the great north

To duck under the rope noren at Aramasa and slide back its sturdy front door is to take a step into the past. Not a giant, disorienting leap all the way back to feudal Edo or the gilded age of Taisho, but an unthreatening half-pace back to the postwar days of Showa, when salarymen ruled the roost and...
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / JAPAN LITE
Jan 19, 2002

Who am I?

Traveler A: For my winter vacation, I tried to join the "Around the World in 60 Minutes" campaign tour but lost the lottery. So I booked a different package tour: five days and three nights in Thailand and Cambodia. The package included airfare, hotel and some meals.
LIFE / Food & Drink / TOKYO FOOD FILE
Jan 13, 2002

Matsugen: Noodles at the cutting edge of Azabu

To call Matsugen a new-wave soba shop would be misleading, since the noodles it rolls, cuts, cooks and serves are entirely traditional. But judge it on looks and attitude alone, and it belongs without question to the present century, not the last.
LIFE / Food & Drink / VINELAND
Dec 30, 2001

Reasons to celebrate good-tasting bargains

Recent Vineland columns have focused on distinctive, luxury wines for holiday gift-giving and festive dinners. For our last column in 2001, we pursued an elusive category -- delicious bargain party bottles. It's a tantalizing quest. Few achievements are more gratifying to a wine lover than discovering...
LIFE / Food & Drink / TOKYO FOOD FILE
Dec 30, 2001

Delicious plum choices from 2001

In a city the size of Tokyo, it is simply impossible to visit every single new restaurant or to keep track of changes at all the established places. For that reason, the Food File does not presume to assign year-end rankings or pronounce its best-of lists for the year, especially since, in the end, it...
LIFE / Food & Drink / THE WAY OF WASHOKU
Dec 16, 2001

Tazukuri: an acquired taste worth acquiring

The o-sechi foods of the New Year exemplify traditional Japanese cuisine, utilizing the fruits of the mountains and the bounty of the ocean to celebrate all of the gifts that nature provides. Nowhere is this land-and-sea pairing more evident than in the classic sanshu-zakana triumvirate of black beans...
JAPAN / LAST CALL FOR SAKE
Dec 13, 2001

Sake brewers seeking to please palates overseas

NIIGATA -- When movie star Robert De Niro visited Hokusetsu Shuzo's cellar in the village of Akadomari on Sado Island in fall 1998, he reportedly held up a 10-year-old bottle of sake and said he wanted it shipped to his restaurant in the United States.
Japan Times
Events
Dec 11, 2001

Ghanaian's culinary odyssey leads to running Kyoto eatery

KYOTO -- Tucked away in the quiet neighborhood of Nishikyogoku in Kyoto is Ashanti, one of the Kansai region's finest, if least-known, international restaurants.
LIFE / Food & Drink / VINELAND
Dec 2, 2001

The life of the party

The yearend holiday season brings a flurry of parties, rich dinners and the popping of corks. For those of us who love wine, this time of year presents a few dilemmas as well. There's the torture of finding the right bottle to give the boss or a gourmand in-law who has tried everything. Then we mull...
Japan Times
LIFE / Food & Drink / TOKYO FOOD FILE
Dec 2, 2001

Restaurant J: Food that gladdens the heart of man

Restaurant J has been open for more than a year, so there's absolutely no reason for the Food File to wait any longer to bestow its seal of approval. But we're still reluctant to give it the unconditional thumbs-up it so richly deserves. Why so? It's the same old story: We're always loath to spread the...
ENVIRONMENT / OUR PLANET EARTH
Nov 22, 2001

Singing the praises of glorious mud flats

How's this for a writer with a bee in his shorts?: "Upon ratifying the Ramsar Convention, Japan agreed to 'promote the conservation of wetlands and waterfowl by establishing nature reserves in wetlands . . . and providing adequately for their wardening' [Article 4]. So far, Japan has made no effort to...
Japan Times
LIFE / Food & Drink / VINELAND
Nov 4, 2001

The quiet return of Riesling

Wine and hemlines are both susceptible to the whims of fashion. In recent years, the Riesling grape suffered from a dowdy reputation. During the big red wine boom of the '90s, it was shunned as a pale wallflower.
Japan Times
LIFE / Food & Drink / TOKYO FOOD FILE
Nov 4, 2001

Sushi that fits the bill in attitude and price

Shinbotchi's take on the ancient art of sushi is much the same approach that the rag trade of back-street Harajuku adopts toward the world of fashion.
BASEBALL / MLB
Oct 21, 2001

Yakult captures Japan Series opener 7-0

OSAKA -- Yakult pitcher Kazuhisa Ishii, playing in what may be his final season in Japan, completely silenced the big guns of the Buffaloes on Saturday night and Alex Ramirez delivered on offense as the Swallows jumped all over Kintetsu for a 7-0 victory in Game 1 of the Japan Series.
JAPAN
Oct 21, 2001

For Okinawan actress, concept of family key to lasting peace

From its dialect to its cuisine, many may think that Okinawa Prefecture is one of the most distinctive places in Japan. But for elfin Okinawan actress Tomi Taira, the core of human satisfaction is universal -- the desire to be part of a happy family. This desire exists everywhere, be it in her home islands...
Japan Times
LIFE / Food & Drink / TOKYO FOOD FILE
Oct 21, 2001

Autumn's harvest among the bamboo

Autumn is here, the season of antipasti misti and fruitful mellowness. It's also the time of year, of course, for bountiful supplies of mushrooms and other miscellaneous fungi known collectively as kinoko -- like the excellent assortment we enjoyed the other day at Aburiya, an atmospheric dining bar...
Japan Times
LIFE / Food & Drink / TOKYO FOOD FILE
Oct 7, 2001

Rinkaen: Those were the days . . .

There are several excellent reasons why we can recommend a visit to Rinkaen. Unfortunately -- and this is exceptional for the Food File -- few of them concern the act of eating. Nevertheless, this wonderful old place still qualifies (conditionally) as a classic of its kind.
LIFE / Food & Drink / THE WAY OF WASHOKU
Sep 30, 2001

Holy mackerel! That's quite a fish!

Above the counter of the small kappo-style restaurant where I apprenticed hung a small scroll inscribed with a seasonal poem that was changed at the beginning of every month. In October, the simple verse read, "Aki no saba, Wakasa umare, Kyo sodachi. (The autumn mackerel, born in Wakasa, raised in Kyoto)."...
Japan Times
COMMUNITY
Sep 23, 2001

Striking out at playtime on a plate

OSAKA -- It's a hot and humid night in the Kujo district, but nobody seems to mind. That's because just a few blocks away, at the Osaka Dome, the Kintetsu Buffaloes are locked in a battle with the Seibu Lions for the Pacific League pennant.
LIFE / Food & Drink / THE WAY OF WASHOKU
Sep 16, 2001

Help heal the spirit with comfort food

After watching live the two towers of the World Trade Center come down — the blessing and the curse of modern technology and communications — and spending a very sleepless night filling my head with the horrific images of the aftermath, I slipped away to the otherworldliness of a quiet Zen temple...
Japan Times
LIFE / Food & Drink / TOKYO FOOD FILE
Sep 16, 2001

Give my compliments to the chef

There are many -- the Food File included -- who believe that Kazuhiko Kinoshita produces the finest, value-for-money French food in all of Tokyo, and probably the whole of Japan. So how can it be that he and his bistro-style restaurant remain so little spoken about by the general populace, or at least...
Japan Times
LIFE / Food & Drink / TOKYO FOOD FILE
Sep 9, 2001

Adan: A hidden tropical paradise

The chances of discovering Adan by accident are about as great as seeing snow in Okinawa -- in summer. It lies in anonymous residential territory in an unprepossessing quadrant of darkest Mita, well away from the regular foraging trails of mainstream Minato Ward. But even if you were to stumble unaided...
Japan Times
COMMUNITY
Sep 2, 2001

Reflections on Buddhist soul food

I have always believed cooking is more religion than art. We expect our artists to entertain us and elicit emotion. What we ask most of all of our chefs and our spiritual leaders, however, is that they soothe us.
JAPAN
Aug 28, 2001

Water quality efforts urged for Isahaya Bay reclamation

The Environment Ministry on Monday called for an improvement in waste water processing and water quality in Nagasaki Prefecture's Isahaya Bay ahead of the completion of a controversial land reclamation project.
LIFE / Food & Drink / THE WAY OF WASHOKU
Aug 26, 2001

Cuts above appliance-aided cuisine

During my first days of apprenticeship in a traditional Japanese restaurant, I was surprised by the noticeable lack of electrical outlets on the walls of the small Osaka kappo eatery. This scarcity soon proved not to be a problem given the dearth of small electric appliances that dominate professional...

Longform

Professional cleaner Hirofumi Sakurai takes a moment to appreciate some photographs in a Gotanda apartment whose occupant died alone. 
The last cleanup: Life and death in a lonely Japan