Japanese Knife

We won't name names on who done it but not too long ago my main Miyabi cooking knife received a fairly large crack in its blade. Someone had been trying to cut a very large hunk of parmesan cheese, the long way, and I believe that the knife must have torqued on it, causing it to fracture. The knife is a decent quality but its not meant to cut anything overly hard, like bone, or in this case parmesan cheese. Its still usable overall and the break probably doesn't look like much, but its just enough to be annoying.

Basically, I can't sharpen the length of the blade anymore because it catches on the sharpener. It catches on long cuts as well, and its harder to clean because it can snag on a dish cloth. I also worry about it snagging my finger when I clean it after use.

But with every cloud there is a silver lining. Now I get to buy a new knife!

Research and Buying

_{Note: This is just the process that lead me to the knife I eventually chose. Feel free to skip this part. It just additional preamble really.}

I'm used to the Miyabi so I started by looking at their knives online but somewhere along the way I started thinking that maybe Miyabi is just an over priced brand name, which lead me to searching for the company's direct competitors. Shun and Yaxell appear to be comparable to Miyabi and I found a Yaxell knife that I liked and decided to purchase it. I didn't like anything by Shun personally. I ended up abandoning that idea of the Yaxell as well, when I realized that the only suppliers were from the US. I just didn't want the hassle of possibly having to pay a customs fee when the knife was delivered to my door or to deal with returns to another country if it wasn't what I was expecting. From there I started looking for knives on Canadian websites. Searching for the Miyabi and the Yaxell had lead me to doing research on Japanese knives and I ended up finding a Japanese knife supplier in the city that I live in, that was hosting some pretty decent Canada Day sales. When I say that I found this store of course what I mean is that the algorithms started sending me sites. Now all I get is sponsored adds and YouTube commercials for Japanese knives. Anyway, the knife that struck at this store was a little bit more expensive than I wanted to spend but it was 11% off which had me pondering over it. Later I found a promo code that gave me an additional 15% on top of that (26% total) and there was a deal on ceramic honers for 50% which I had already planned to buy. I ended up getting the honer for $31 which was way below the $70-90 that I had been expecting to pay.

At the time that I pondering over this new blade my wife was actually in Japan for business and a few of her coworkers who had been there said that a Japanese knife would cost between $800-1500 CAD, which was way more than I was wanting to pay. This one that I was eyeing was a decent amount below the $800 mark so that reassured me that it was the right choice.

So here's what I got.

Its a Nigara Anmon Gyotu, 195mm blade length, R2 (SG2) powdered steel folded, with a raindrop demascus finish.

I think its beautiful.

The Rockwell hardness is 63-65 and the handle is birch. This thing is sharp enough that you could cut your finger off without even noticing.

I believe that its "handcrafted" (hand forged and sharpened) based on online research, though it doesn't say anything about its manufacturing in or on the box so I can't be 100% about that. Online what I saw is that Nigara is a small forge that handcrafts their blades.

To be honest, if it was made by a machine that wouldn't matter to me all that much anyway. Whether it performs well is all that matters to me.

Below is my progression of cooking knives over the years. I went from a cheap piece of crap from Walmart that was dull as fuck and couldn't keep an edge more than a few days. From there I upgraded to a German Wusthof knife that actually is a pretty good everyday kitchen tool. From there I moved on to the Japanese Miyiabi and now to the Japanese Nigara.

What do you think? Let me know your thoughts on Japanese knives in the comments or any type of knife that you use or prefer. I'd love to learn more.