The following is my essay that I wrote as an assignment for an English school in Japan:
Topic: Japanese cuisine and kitchen knives
Style: Free writing
Washoku, traditional dietary cultures of the Japanese are now quite famous worldwide, and UNESCO added them to their list of the Intangible Cultural Heritage in 2013.
One of the most important factors that supports this sophisticated culture is wide variety and long tradition of Japanese kitchen knives. If you think of Japanese dishes, you might be reminded of sushi or sashimi. Both dishes use raw fish. Some people may think the latter one is quite easy to prepare since it is just a dish with cut raw fish pieces. Yes, it is just cutting fish, but what is important is how you cut it. If you cut raw fish with a normal kitchen knife, the cells of fish meat will surely be crushed, and you cannot get cut pieces of fish with sharp edges. It is alleged that bad way of cutting diminishes the taste of sashimi quite a lot. All Japanese skilled chefs use very thin and long special knives specially dedicated to sashimi. They cut fish meat utilizing the whole length of a knife and cut it by drawing the knife quickly because the edge degree will be minimized and it will enable better cutting.
In order to keep sharp edges, it is vital to sharpen them before you use them. In western countries, chefs use a grinding bar to sharpen knives. Japan has a long tradition of Japanese swords and sharpening skill has reached at the highest level in the whole world. Japanese blacksmiths and chefs use several different grinding stones to sharpen Japanese swords and kitchen knives. The stones are usually flat stones with sizes usually around 7 X 30 X 3 cm. They start to grind swords or knives by rather harsh stones, and gradually change to stones with finer surfaces. Most grinding stones now in Japan are made artificially, but some good chefs stick to natural stones. A good natural grinding stone costs sometimes more than $1,000. Some say that each good knife has an ideal grinding stone as a pair, and they do not spare money to find it.
Another interesting thing about Japanese knives is that many of them are single-edged while most western knives are double-edged. It is said that single-edged is better in cutting but is difficult to cut something straight. There are also big differences in the way we sharpen single-edged knives compared to sharpen double-edged ones by grinding stones. Good chefs in Japan usually sharpen their knives by themselves, but there are also many of those who leave it to some professionals.
Amazonで「砥石」を検索すると、1番に出てくるのはシャプトンの刃の黒幕シリーズのオレンジの1000番。このシリーズは私も320番と2000番を持っていますが、研磨力がありかつ均質ないい砥石だと思います。
ちなみに、エビ印で有名なナニワ研磨工業の「ナニワ エビ 超セラミック砥石 台付 #1000」は、これもマグネシア系でセラミックの研磨剤ということで、シャプトンの刃の黒幕シリーズと製法的には一緒です。でもシャプトンの方は何の注意書きもありませんが、こちらは砥石の側面にちゃんと書いてあります。また、シャプトンのHPでは「30分以上はダメ」だったけど、こちらは「1時間以上」。またケースではなく、台なのでしまう時に湿気がこもる心配もありません。あまり知名度ありませんが、ナニワ研磨工業（エビ印）は実はこの手の角砥石では世界シェアナンバー1だそうです。私が徳島時代に買った仕上げ砥もここの製品でした。
両刃の包丁を研ぐ時の角度固定治具3種をテスト。
小出刃も買いました。それで懸案の「裏押し」（和包丁の裏は中スキといって中央部を削いであって、平面に置いて横から見ると、2点接触状態になっています。裏押しはこの点で接触している部分を削って置いた面と平行な平面を作って、表の刃に対する基準面を作る作業です。）に再チャレンジしました。今度はうまくいったんじゃないかと思います。コツは、