Name: Behind the Counter at a Japanese Woman's Chinese Restaurant
Uploaded: 2026-03-04T01:31:46.000Z
Duration: 14 min 19 s
Description: Thousands of YouTube videos with English-Chinese subtitles! Now you can learn to understand native speakers, expand your vocabulary, and improve your pronunciation...

This is behind the counter at a local Japanese Chinese restaurant.

Today, I'm taking you deep inside of the kitchen of a Raiken, a small machi chuka Japanese style Chinese restaurant in a quiet, out of the way neighborhood of Yokohama that's been loved by locals since 1969.

Adverbs of manner

It was originally run by an old man with no apparent successor.

But in his final years, one of his regular customers added the pure love of his food and the desire to keep his legacy alive.

Although she runs a restaurant with the help of two other workers, there's so much to do in each day.

She starts at 7am hey, it's really cold here, Mai.

The shop uses a rice purchased directly from a farm in Yamagata.

In 2024, Japan suffered a nationwide rice shortage due to extreme heat.

Prices doubled and rice quickly disappeared from store shelves.

With availab scarce and prices high, Etika was out of options.

But it was at this time one of her regular customers stepped in and introduced her to a rice farmer.

Forever grateful for both of their support during that difficult time, she remained a loyal customer ever since.

Although Erika grew up in the neighborhood, the previous owner already had, it set in his mind that he would eventually close down the shop.

Plus, he still couldn't believe that a woman wanted to take things over.

She didn't give up though, and kept coming back.

Until one day, he finally let her become his apprentice.

So it's just a little bit cold this morning when we start, but

hopefully things will warm up when she starts cooking.

So what did you want to be when you were a kid?

After graduating high school, she got a culinary job at a hotel and while working there, earned her culinary license.

Soon afterwards, she ended up getting married and starting a family.

It was not until her kids had gotten older she decided to return to the food industry, working at restaurants.

That's the main box he uses for the shop's ramen, as well as their other dishes.

So Erika, what do you do when you're not working?

Do you think one of them will take over the business?

She adds that they Know she works long hours and has no days off.

So what's been your biggest challenge so far?

She says that she wished she would have had more time learning from the owner.

Unfortunately, his passing happened so quickly that she wasn't mentally prepared to take on so much responsibility all at once.

But she had no choice but to do her best.

Despite feeling lost, she often relied on her Chinese chef friends and the warm support from her regulars to push through these tough days.

Since she's here by at seven every morning, she relies quite a bit on her mother in law to help the kids during the day.

But when her kids were younger, she devoted all of her time raising them as best she could, shutting out any of the dreams she had for herself.

Now older, she's decided to refocus all of her long held passions for cooking into the restaurant.

Each dish that she creates a small reflection of the path she had to walk to get here.

She heads to a nearby Shotingai, a shopping street, to pick up ingredients for the shop.

In Japan, food prices have been rising rapidly and many restaurants have had no choice but to adjust with the times.

But Erika is determined to protect how the original owner built the shop, an affordable yet delicious restaurant rooted in the community.

So on her days off, she travels from market to market, searching for the best ingredients at the best price.

Leaning on her cooking techniques, she learned from the previous owner on how to bring out the fullest flavor in her dishes, even from the most basic ingredients, passing on the value to our customers.

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Now back at the shop, she continues with the morning prep.

She started working on the gilza filling, preparing about 5-600g pieces once a week.

Apparently the shopskyuza is made with so much flavor that customers don't even need to dip it in soy sauce.

And although it takes quite a bit of time to make, it's actually one of the shop's most popular items, often selling out.

An hour before the door opens, work at the shop starts to pick up.

Chinese restaurants like Edaken are known in Japan as Machichuka, which literally means neighborhood Chinese.

Rather than being an authentic Chinese restaurant, these shops offer Japanese style Chinese dishes that Japanese people are more used to, like fried rice, gyoza and ramen.

Nothing particularly fancy, but just simple nostalgic flavors that have been adapted to suit the typical Japanese palette.

At 11am, the restaurant is finally open for business.

As soon as as soon as the doors open, their first customer arrives.

And shortly after the other tables start to fill up, It looks like the first customer ordered San ma men ramen topped with a thick vegetable sauce.

This Japanese style Chinese dish was born during Japan's post war era.

In Yokohama's Chinatown, shredded pork noodles at a time were popular but expensive.

So chefs created a more affordable version to serve as a workers meal and now has become a local comfort food.