How This Site Works

Most buying guides do not tell you where their information came from. This page does, so that the rest of the site can get on with the job.

Who writes this

I live in Japan and I read Japanese.

That is the entire advantage behind this site, and it is a narrower advantage than it sounds. It does not make me a craftsman or a chef. What it does mean is that maker pages, domestic retailer listings, and Japanese-language product documentation are directly available to me, and those routinely contain details that never make it into English: domestic model numbers, line renamings, sizing guidance written for Japanese buyers, and prices in the market the product actually comes from.

I am a home cook. Not a professional, not a collector, not a hobbyist.

What I have not done

I have not tested the products on this site. I do not own most of them, I have not measured them, and I have not run them against each other in a kitchen.

I am stating that plainly because a lot of buying guides imply otherwise, and because it should change how you read everything here. What you are getting is a careful reading of what makers publish, what domestic distribution shows, and what owners consistently report, from someone who can read both sides of the language barrier.

If you want measured weights and edge-retention logs, there are people who do that work and you should read them. This site is for a different question: what is actually being sold, under what names, at what price, and which of it makes sense to buy from where you are.

The three registers

Throughout the site I try to keep these separate, and to say which one I am in:

1. Maker-published fact. The manufacturer states it. Most reliable, and often narrower than you would like: makers frequently decline to publish steel designations or hardness figures.
2. Retailer or reviewer figure. Widely circulated, frequently inconsistent between sources. When listings disagree, I say they disagree rather than picking the flattering number.
3. My opinion. Marked as opinion.

The failure mode I am guarding against is letting the third one wear the clothes of the first.

On stainless

For kitchen knives specifically: I use stainless only. Carbon steel makes me uneasy and I do not use it, so I do not recommend it. That is a preference rather than a technical verdict, and you should discount it accordingly. It is also, I suspect, the same instinct a lot of readers have and feel slightly embarrassed about.

How the money works

Some pages on this site carry affiliate links. If you buy through one, I earn a commission at no extra cost to you.

Two rules I hold myself to:

Advice pages do not carry links. The pages that help you decide what to buy have nothing to sell you. Commerce lives on the specific product pages, which are clearly what they are. This is partly ethics and partly self-interest: advice that is trying to sell you something is worse advice.

One product per commercial page. Stacking a dozen links on a page is how affiliate sites hedge, and it makes every recommendation weaker.

Corrections

I get things wrong. When I do, I would rather fix it visibly than quietly.

Where a claim on this site has been corrected, I say so in the text rather than deleting the history. If you find an error, it is worth telling me about.

What I will not do

I will not invent experience I have not had, quote prices I have not checked, or present a manufacturer's marketing copy as metallurgy. Where a figure needs checking against a live listing, it gets checked before the page goes up.