2011/04/30

Dinner at the biggest Korean town in Tokyo

Shinokubo is the biggest Korean town in Tokyo. There are many Korean restaurants and markets crowded with women who are crazy about South Korean pop culture, especially actors and singers. The boom of Hanryu, Korean Wave isn't temporary, but has taken a firm hold on the Japanese society.The Korean food is no exception. It's so popular that every Korean resutaurant is always full.

You can have dinner here for lower price than in another area in Tokyo. Most of Korean resutaurants here serve some dishes for nothing. The style is traditionally typical in South Korea where people think it a virtue to serve too many dishes for guests to eat. This small dishes on the pic above are naturally free to get.

Whenever I have dinner here, I drink Makkori, the traditional Korean rice wine. It is about 6.5–7% alcohol by volume and tastes faintly sweet originated from rice.



This hot pot is Bulgogi consisting of vegetables, legs of octopus, sliced beef marinated with soy sauce, sugar, honey, Korean Sake and sesame seed oil. It literally means "fire meat" in Korean and certainly cooked over an open flame.


This is Jijim. It is pancake-like dish consisting of meats, seafood and vegetables mixed with flour or rice flour batter and fried on pan with oil.
Korean food is no longer strange for the Japanese today, but so familiar that permeated among our daily table. I hope people in the two countries get on well with them each other through the cultural exchange.

6 commentaires:

  1. Oh, this Korean wave surprised me! I thought KOrean and Japanese are not the best friends. But most probably the younger generation is different, and it helps too bring the two nations together.
    The food looks really tasty. Unfortunately we have only one good Korean restaurant in my town (Budapest, Hungary), and it is quite expensive.

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  2. Surely there are many problems between Japanese and Korean at national level, but I think we can understand us each other individually and actually I have some Korean friends who are very kind.
    I love so much Korean food that visit Seoul once a year to enjoy shopping and eating Korean speciality. It seems that you cannot easily eat Korean food in Hungary, but I envy you living in Budapest because I also love Hungarian one! I have visited there only once, but it's difficult to find the oppotunity to visit there again unfortunately.

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  3. Yes of course, you can never generalize, there is always at least one exception :)
    True, not easy to find Korean food. We have lot of cheap Chinese buffet - once I heared there is no such cuisine like Chinese, they always adapt to the country where they live. I don't know whether this is true, but here it is quite fatty :( We have increasing number of Japanese restaurant or sushi orders :D
    Really? And what are your favourite Hungarian dishes?
    I have never been in Japan, but it is on my wishlist for almost 20 years. One day I know I will visit it :)

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  4. As you wrote, it is very easy to find a Chinese restaurants everywhere. Surely there are 3 bigger China town in Japan and one of them is located in Yokohama, the capital city of the prefectural I live. Overseas Chinese open Chinese food restaurant in Japan, but in another countries they do Japanese one. Actually I ate Japanese food at a Japanese restaurant in Paris which is owned by Chinese.

    I love Gulyás, palacsinta and Kürtőskalács especially and sometimes cook them by myself. I have a wooden tool for Kürtőskalács made by my Hungarian friend. His wife who is an expert in it taught me how to bake it.

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  5. Wow, congratulation! I have never made kürtőskalács, but I like it a lot. You can buy the wooden tool only on some special countryside related events (markets for handmade stuffs), maybe I need one too :)

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  6. Surely I have the tool, but it is very difficult to wreathe the soft batter around the wooden tool. So I sometimes bake Baumkuchen with it;-)

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