ABOUT ME
Hi! 
My name is Sakura Yubi (優美桜) and I’m a Japanese woman who lives in Tokyo.
I have an office job and used to commute by subway, but I’ve been working from home since COVID-19 started.
My passion is cooking and eating food. And I love sharing this passion with my partner. He really enjoys my food.
I also enjoy listening to music (my favorites are classical piano music and calm BGM), watching YouTube videos and movies, and going out for a walk and exploring the city 🚶♀️
My first encounter with shio koji was when I came across a simple recipe for spare ribs marinated in shio koji. I was blown away by the way that shio koji not only seasoned the meat well but also made it super soft and juicy! I quickly fell in love with this magical seasoning and now I use it almost every time I cook.
The beauty of this seasoning is that it allows the cooking process to remain super simple while achieving amazing results. So it’s perfect for those who are new to cooking or too busy to cook but don’t want to compromise the flavor.
I will be sharing a lot about shio koji through my recipe posts and videos so you can start benefiting from it too!
Aside from shio koji, my interests in food tend to go for simple, whole foods, particularly organic, non-GMO, additive-free, free-range, low carb, and a lot of meat/fish/seafood. With age, my partner and I have grown to become quite health-conscious and have been educating ourselves on these things while not compromising on flavor. So my recipes will be geared towards these aspects.
I am a firm believer that, although food should be enjoyable, at the end of the day, we eat it to nourish our bodies. We are, after all, what we eat.
Honestly, as much as I love Japanese food, I’ve found it rather hard to follow this lifestyle with it, as it stresses a lot on rice, noodles, and a bunch of carb-rich seasonings (including shio koji!). But that’s a challenge I will be taking on in the coming years to figure out creative ways to merge the two.
Oh, one more thing to mention: I have so much more than just recipes to share with you. I’ve been exploring the city and seeing and experiencing a lot of interesting things lately and I want to share them with you because, think about it: food and culture are inseparable. The food here was created by the very people who have been embracing and living this culture. So I think it would be interesting for the world to see what life is like here when they reach for Japanese recipes.
With my newly-acquired photography/videography skills (lol), I will attempt to share just that: recipes combined with interesting life in the city of Tokyo 🌆📸 (Check out my first video with this concept.)
