Tokyo

For the past three weeks I've been working as a shugyo, a trainee, at Takegami, a traditional ryotei in Tokyo's Akasaka district.

When I mentioned to Chef Abe of Takegami that I just finished writing a hot pot cookbook with my friend Tadashi Ono, he said he'd show me Takegami's signature version the following day. What a hot pot.

"Japanese cooking is simple," Chef Ooe told me as we stood in his kitchen at Kozue, the stunning Japanese restaurant of Tokyo's Park Hyatt. "Only cutting, dashi, grilling... simple." The hard work of achieving this simplicity? Well, that's why I was in his kitchen...

Chef Tadashi Ono and I just returned from a hot pot-infused dash across Japan to research our cookbook, racing from snowy Sapporo to the deep south of Kyushu.

Seiji Yamamoto is a classically trained Japanese chef who prepares astonishing Japanese cooking that is nothing like the Japanese cuisine I've encountered. I...