More tourists are coming to Japan to learn how to make "washoku" Japanese dishes to expand their options beyond such typical and often pricey offerings as sushi and tempura back home.
One day in June, a group of tourists from Australia and Italy gathered in the home of Mari Nameshida in Tokyo's Chuo Ward to take a cooking lesson. The day's main entree was "gyoza" stuffed with minced pork and vegetables.
Oliver Hinss, a 27-year-old Australian, said gyoza shells are not available in his hometown. He decided to visit Japan to learn how to make the dumplings from scratch.
Following the 28-year-old Japanese teacher's instructions, he mixed Chinese chives, minced meat and other ingredients and was impressed by the recipe.
Nameshida first gave lessons on making Japanese food to Canadians at the request of one of her friends. The menu at the time was, not surprisingly, sushi. Since then, she has taught more than 3,000 people from overseas.
She selects the day's menu from among 50 recipes, and teaches five days a week.
As traditional washoku cuisine was added to UNESCO’s Intangible Cultural Heritage list, Nameshida’s cooking class was chosen as the most popular activity for tourists in the Kanto region by travel website TripAdvisor last year.
The foodie said she recently received requests from foreign tourists to learn how to cook such local Japanese meals as "hoto" noodles made with flat, wide udon and a large amount of vegetables, as well as "oyaki" baked dumplings.
"I hope the tourists will become interested in local Japanese culture," Nameshida said.
DO-IT-YOURSELF SUSHI
The Tsukiji Cooking school in Chuo Ward began providing lessons to group travelers from overseas in December 2013 at its classroom near the renowned Tsukiji fish market.
On a recent day, three couples from Italy tried their hands at making sushi rolls at the culinary school, which caters only to non-Japanese.
Kansai-style "okonomiyaki" pancake, which contains pork, vegetables and other ingredients, has become one of the more popular dishes with tourists, school officials said.
In April, the school received an e-mail message from a prospective participant asking if it would be able to teach how to make Hiroshima-style okonomiyaki.
"It is no longer difficult to find typical Japanese food abroad," said Misao Sugibayashi, 41, an instructor at the school. "However, Japanese home-style dishes continue to be relatively unknown (to non-Japanese)."
The school holds classes two days a week, but plans to raise the number of classes to five days a week by the end of the year.
According to TripAdvisor’s Japanese subsidiary, cooking lessons are the most popular among the 466 activity programs available for overseas tourists in the Kanto region.
There were more than 300 reviews of the program on the TripAdvisor website last year, compared with about 10 or so two years ago.
Meanwhile, Travel agency JTB Corp. said a growing number of visitors to Japan have applied for "experience" tours in recent years. There were 1.6 times more applications in August year on year, and orders in September for the tours are being placed at double the pace compared with the previous year.
Believing that hands-on experience "will become a new sightseeing attraction in Japan," the agency raised the number of travel packages featuring such programs to nearly 700 this year, more than double the 300 offered last year.
You can find more about home style cooking at: http://www.cirrusculinnaire.com
One day in June, a group of tourists from Australia and Italy gathered in the home of Mari Nameshida in Tokyo's Chuo Ward to take a cooking lesson. The day's main entree was "gyoza" stuffed with minced pork and vegetables.
Oliver Hinss, a 27-year-old Australian, said gyoza shells are not available in his hometown. He decided to visit Japan to learn how to make the dumplings from scratch.
Following the 28-year-old Japanese teacher's instructions, he mixed Chinese chives, minced meat and other ingredients and was impressed by the recipe.
Nameshida first gave lessons on making Japanese food to Canadians at the request of one of her friends. The menu at the time was, not surprisingly, sushi. Since then, she has taught more than 3,000 people from overseas.
She selects the day's menu from among 50 recipes, and teaches five days a week.
As traditional washoku cuisine was added to UNESCO’s Intangible Cultural Heritage list, Nameshida’s cooking class was chosen as the most popular activity for tourists in the Kanto region by travel website TripAdvisor last year.
The foodie said she recently received requests from foreign tourists to learn how to cook such local Japanese meals as "hoto" noodles made with flat, wide udon and a large amount of vegetables, as well as "oyaki" baked dumplings.
"I hope the tourists will become interested in local Japanese culture," Nameshida said.
DO-IT-YOURSELF SUSHI
The Tsukiji Cooking school in Chuo Ward began providing lessons to group travelers from overseas in December 2013 at its classroom near the renowned Tsukiji fish market.
On a recent day, three couples from Italy tried their hands at making sushi rolls at the culinary school, which caters only to non-Japanese.
Kansai-style "okonomiyaki" pancake, which contains pork, vegetables and other ingredients, has become one of the more popular dishes with tourists, school officials said.
In April, the school received an e-mail message from a prospective participant asking if it would be able to teach how to make Hiroshima-style okonomiyaki.
"It is no longer difficult to find typical Japanese food abroad," said Misao Sugibayashi, 41, an instructor at the school. "However, Japanese home-style dishes continue to be relatively unknown (to non-Japanese)."
The school holds classes two days a week, but plans to raise the number of classes to five days a week by the end of the year.
According to TripAdvisor’s Japanese subsidiary, cooking lessons are the most popular among the 466 activity programs available for overseas tourists in the Kanto region.
There were more than 300 reviews of the program on the TripAdvisor website last year, compared with about 10 or so two years ago.
Meanwhile, Travel agency JTB Corp. said a growing number of visitors to Japan have applied for "experience" tours in recent years. There were 1.6 times more applications in August year on year, and orders in September for the tours are being placed at double the pace compared with the previous year.
Believing that hands-on experience "will become a new sightseeing attraction in Japan," the agency raised the number of travel packages featuring such programs to nearly 700 this year, more than double the 300 offered last year.
You can find more about home style cooking at: http://www.cirrusculinnaire.com
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