Check out Damon’s slideshow and review.
Et-chan’s slides are here too.

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UPDATE: All good things must come to an end. Unfortunately, smart.fm management shifted direction and decided to take all that user-generated goodness and run. All of the links to individual lists are now broken. I can no longer recommend this site to anyone. If you want a vocabulary learning site that works, try Quizlet.

For any of our Japanese readers, you can probably just skip this unless you have a friend who wants to learn a bit of Japanese for work, travel, or personal fulfillment. Then, by all means please pass this along to them. Everyone else, I’d like to share a truly useful resource for acquiring Japanese. This comes dangerously close to crossing over from my role as food and sake otaku to my day job of language otaku, but here goes anyway.

Smart.fm is was a website for learning, especially for learning language. That sounds very simple, but the tools they provide are based on sound cognitive science research and work well. The site allows users to create playlists of items for study. These items can contain audio, text, and images, so the study content is quite rich. The developers have already populated the site with an extensive library of items for study, but users keep adding more, then mixing and matching to suit themselves. If you want to learn more about how Smart.fm works, please watch this short video, or just take my word for it that the system works and read on to the good stuff-food.

I’ve searched the site for food-related lists, but there are plenty of other options to be found too for Survival Japanese or easy conversation. For anyone worried about the Japanese writing system, Smart.fm is flexible. You can study Japanese: written in the roman alphabet to help you with basic conversation or ordering dishes in a restaurant; work with hiragana and katakana to begin reading menus; or go straight to kanji to enjoy the many creative and beautiful ways that the names of fish are written. Just use the quiz settings to choose your literacy level.

At the sushi bar

Anyone on their way to Tsukiji or any other sushi haunts might want to work on their sushi nouns where they pick up a few basics. And, when you are ready, there are some more over at Fish, Sushi, and Sashimi from user Andrew Shuttleworth.

Had enough seafood? Ready to head out the izakaya? This list of food and drink covers everything from awamori to chicken gizzards and will definitely help you navigate a menu better.

And for those looking for the more day to day, there is plenty of that too. Koichiben, AKA Tofugu, has set up a very simple list of 25 Fruits and Veggies. This list is super newbie-friendly and accessible for anyone just getting started learning Japanese. For those of you already living here, or someone preparing to come to Japan, this list of supermarket Japanese will help you get up to speed when you go in search of basic staples at the grocery store.

If after all of that food you need something simple, then Japanese Plain Fare is just that.

I hope this site helps visitors get more out of their dining experiences here in Japan. If you are looking for other reference materials for food and restaurants, check out Et-chan’s post, Tokyo Government Now Supporting Non Fluent Foodies?, for more.

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Tony McNicol at Tokyo Photojournalist takes you through the life of wagu which is better known around the world as Kobe beef. His photograph series tells a story that begins with an innocent looking calf on the peaceful pasture and finishes up with a tasty looking steak sizzling on the grill at a restaurant.

Tony’s photo series reminded me of two things. One, very obvious one is Michael Pollan’s The Ominivore’s Dilemma. The other is more personal–my father’s pet cows that he bought in Tajima when I was growing up. The eyes, the certificate, and the tags just reminded me of those beasts in the barn and the excruciating childhood embarrassment at being the only family in town who had cows. Yes, without saying anything more, that scarred me the rest of my life.

So, what thoughts does Tony’s photo essay provoke for you?

This Kobe beef photo series is posted here with the kind permission of the photographer, Tony McNicol’s. Please also visit his Kobe beef blog post at Tokyo Photojournalist.

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At the beginning of our blog history, we were really shy to talk about ourselves. Eventually, though, we added more information about us, E & T on our About Tokyofoodcast page.

Now, we can’t hide any longer since TokyoTopia decided to dig in and find out who we are! And, somehow in her interview, she managed to find out how E & T cannot agree on things at times.

So, please visit TokyoTopia’s interview with Tokyofoodcast! Enjoy!

Honor at TokyoTopia has great passion for Tokyo and she covers some great travel information. But, she’s got lots of other ideas cooking too. Check out her Tokyo Video Competition or ping her @tokyotopia on Twitter.

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If you want to, you can read the nitty-gritty business and financial angles behind Kikkoman, but I found the interview more interesting. This is a man who has seen-and seems to have actually been a leader in-much of the early international spread of Japanese food culture.

Apologies for the 15 second advertisement trailer.

I’ve long wanted to supplement our various sake brewery visits with a visit to a shoyu brewer, but now I really want to.

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If you don’t already know about Philip Harper, the toji at Kinoshita Shuzo, then you better find out as soon as possible. One way to do just that is to read John Glionna’s excellent profile of Philip in the 3 February LA Times. Of course Glionna recounts the odyssey that brought a foreigner to be a master brewer, but he also describes the kura in Kumihama and Philip’s dedication to his art wonderfully.

My favorite quote:

At one point, Harper reaches into a steaming barrel to roll a wad of rice between his fingers, checking for texture, before sampling his product. He smiles.

So exactly what taste is he looking for?

“The right one,” he says, hurrying off to complete another task.

That is what it takes. Brewing is an all-consuming craft that requires care, attention, and talent–the talent to know that “right one” as it brews. Below is a picture of Et-chan braving the March cold on the Japan Sea last year. The smile on her face should tell you just how happy she was to visit the kura with Philip and taste some of his excellent sake.

Et-chan with the Tamagawa banner at Kinoshita Shuzo: March, 2008

I’m really glad to see Philip and Tamagawa get this kind of press in the US. People will notice this. One old friend in Bellevue already sent us the link–and he isn’t a nihonshu nerd like us. I wish Kinoshita Shuzo the best of luck promoting their sake and changing the image of nihonshu. Read the article to get Philip’s thoughts on this, and help raise the buzz on Digg or JapanSoc too if you can

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While you’re there, check out his Kusaya photos too. All the reason you ever need for why the Web is multimedia enough and doesn’t require any olfactory component.

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I was shocked that he had anything at all nice to say about the long-dormant podcast series–if you can call five episodes a series. So, even though he didn’t think much of my delivery, he did make me think that I have to get the trusty old mp3 recorder out again.

Anyway, it is nice to know that someone on the other side of the world found Tokyofoodcast useful. And we were in very good company with all of the other blogs featured. Go have a look at what others say about happenings here in Tokyo.

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