Blog Posts

Life in Lock-down – A New Beginning with 3 Major Launches!

Like many, with the announcement of a lock-down my business closed overnight. An extremely tough position to be in but it gave me an opportunity to focus on three significant projects which I thought I would share with you all.

1. Book Launch

Working with Bloomsbury Publishing, I launched my third book “Japan – The World Vegetarian” in April. It’s part of a brand-new “The World Vegetarian” series. People don’t always associate Japanese food with vegetarianism, so this was a great opportunity for me to introduce people to the incredibly varied world of vegetarian Japanese food.

Japan has the longest life expectancy in the world, which is a result of our healthy lifestyle. This book celebrates healthy Japanese eating with vegetarian ingredients, using traditional methods to create very current dishes. A lot of everyday authentic dishes have been converted by substituting it with vegetarian ingredients that can be sourced easily and locally. As always, my aim is to make the cooking simple and fun, yet delicious.

2. The Cookaway Japanese Box Launch

Another exciting project has been my collaboration with The Cookaway, which offers world cuisine recipe boxes by expert chefs. It’s a wonderful opportunity for me to work alongside an amazing line up of women chefs and showcase how easy and accessible Japanese dishes are. Current chef line-up and boxes available are Japanese, Spanish, Italian, Indian and Healthy.

We Cookaway chefs have one thing in common: we are extremely proud and passionate about our heritage and want to share our authentic home cooking recipes with people to easily recreate at home. We’ve developed a unique set of Cookaway menus to take you on a culinary adventure.

Since the launch of my Japanese box, I’ve been hearing fantastic feedback about the quality of the ingredients and how easy it is to create delicious dishes at home. Check out my boxes here. There are 6 options – one for every night of the week with a rest day 😊

3. Hashi Online Class Launch

With the cooking school closing overnight, it forced me to re-evaluate my business. I had to get out of my comfort zone of virtual communication, sharing some of my recipes with you on IGTV. As I got more comfortable with technology , I started to immensely enjoy the experience and decided to start offering online classes.

It was great timing as a lot of people were looking for “lock-down gift” ideas and things to do being stuck at home. I am also lucky in that I have a very loyal student base who immediately signed up to a class or full course as soon as I shared the news of online classes.

Face to face classes have just re-started but I am very excited at the prospect of being able to share my knowledge and experience of authentic Japanese cookery with people from all over the UK and abroad that can’t physically visit Hashi Kitchen. Take a look at the online classes and courses

Lock-down has no doubt been tough on my business but I am grateful that it has also been a time of significant career events….a new book, a new business collaboration, new online classes…It is indeed a new beginning!