Ever since high school, I have always had a fascination with Japan; studying the language for 7 years really got me interested in the culture. As I have mentioned in other posts, Japan still stands as one of my favourite countries - if you haven't visited yet, certainly do yourself a favour and get on to it!
In more recent years, as I have become - let's face it - older (!), my interests in life in general have gradually changed, as one might expect. I've never been much of a cook, but have always had a vested interest in food, and as I have aged, my interest in eating the food has slowly been equally matched with preparing it. And as my work took me to Japan several times over the past few years, I found myself captivated with the dedicated concentration and pride with which Japanese chefs (particularly sushi chefs) prepared their dishes. And the one aspect that caught my attention the most was the ease with which they could slice through raw fish with almost no effort, which got me thinking that it was time to update my kitchen knives with something a little more fancy!
