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

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 iPhone since I can now take pictures anywhere (and pretty decent
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By Sasha Wizansky

On October 27, a crew from OPENharvest woke up at 5am and headed up into the mountains, into Nagano prefecture, for a series of farm and producer visits. As usual we made a few pitstops along the way. Tal, head roaster of Four Barrel Coffee, experienced
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Now, I’ve always considered myself quite the noodle connoisseur, but I had never heard of the houtou noodle before. Originating in Yamanashi prefecture, Japan, the noodles are like thicker versions of udon, but flat, ribbon-like and looooong. It is served in a miso broth with many vegetables and meats, in a heavy steel pot. Nabeyaki
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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 mimikaki (ear cleaning) cafes, cat cafes provide solace
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Teishoku is a pre-set meal — a main dish, always with miso soup and a bowl of rice, and it builds from there according the chef’s seasonal fancies (pickles, tofu, salad, etc). These meals are very popular during lunch, when salarymen and women can quickly run into a restaurant and get a warm, complete meal for as
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Photo by Kelly Ishikawa, a San Francisco-based photographer and the co-owner of The Perish Trust.

*This is a part of an ongoing exclusive series on Umamimart, Radiation + Japan. Please check out these other posts and videos for more:

Testing of Food in Japan, By Yoko Kumano

Interview with Washio, Bar Owner (Tokyo), By Yoko Kumano

Testing Report and Thoughts, By
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Before leaving for my big trip to Japan, I knew that the one and only thing I really wanted to eat was unagi. Eel! It is quite a delicacy in Japan, and is pricey as hell. Often they are run by families that have been serving eel for generations.

Since childhood, my grandfather has been taking us to
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Ramen is all the rage here on both coasts in the US, and it’s still going strong in Japan. Strangely though, I didn’t eat too much of it during this trip to Japan. Unlike Sam White, the host of our OPENharvest adventure, who had upwards of 50 bowls of ramen during his month-long stay, I
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