Sushi Roll & Gyoza Cooking Class with Tokyo English Teacher

Consider the gyoza, one of Japan’s most ubiquitous foods. Often enjoyed with a tall glass of draft beer at an izakaya, the humble dumpling is one of the most important parts of Japan’s culinary culture. On the other hand, the sushi roll, or temaki-zushi: one of the most beloved shapes in sushi, alongside the seaweed-wrapped gunkan and the fish-topped nigiri. Two very different foods, yet both just as crucial to Japanese culinary tradition as the other.

This class offers you the chance to make them both yourself at this cooking class in Tokyo’s Kanda Jimbocho neighborhood, under the watchful guidance of your host Michiko.

It’s also worth noting that Michiko isn’t any ordinary host. Before becoming a culinary instructor, she taught English at a junior high and senior high school level for 20 years. Now armed with the linguistic skill to facilitate home cooking classes to English-speaking visitors from overseas, she’s made it her mission to teach the world about the wonders of Japanese home cooking.

You’ll start by meeting her in the morning at the kitchen studio, where after a short briefing, she’ll take you through the step-by-step process of making a sushi roll, from preparing the rice, to filling it, to rolling it up nice and tight in a bamboo mat and cutting it into even pieces.

After that’s done, it’s time for gyoza. You’ll make the mincemeat filling, and then perfect the (surprisingly tricky!) art of filling and folding eight of them yourself. When everything’s done, you’ll set the table with the rest of your classmates, and sit down to enjoy the fruits (dumplings?) of your labor. Don’t worry about taking too many notes, either; Michiko will provide the English recipes of everything you do that day.

After the experience, why not take the time to explore Jimbocho? With a high concentration of used bookstores, Jimbocho is a book collector’s dream come true!