Interested in Japanese home cooking? Then why not learn together with Japanese actor and media personality Hiro Mizushima!

Mizushima, well-known enough as an actor to make it into the top 10 in a 2017 public survey on Japanese male celebrities who look good with bleached blond hair, started his own cooking YouTube channel last year.

Interestingly, it’s not as if Mizushima is an experienced cook. Rather, in his videos, he started from the very basics like cooking rice and making traditional Japanese dashi stock. However, as he’s gone on to post more cooking videos, viewers have been impressed by his improving culinary skills, not to mention his easy-going and amiable personality.

Below are some of the entries on his YouTube channel, and don’t worry, they’re subtitled in English.

▼ This video shows how to cook nikujaga, a popular Japanese dish of beef, potatoes, onions, carrots and glass noodles stewed in a sweet soy-sauce based sauce.

▼ Tonkatsu, Japanese-style fried pork cutlet, is also a national favorite.

▼ The tutorial for Japanese-style ketchup flavored pasta (called spaghetti Neapolitan in Japan) is the most watched video on Mizushima’s channel.

▼ Tempura, while perhaps requiring a little more skill and preparation, is also a classic Japanese dish.

What makes his videos particularly charming is that he’s not an expert cook, and he’s actually learning along with the viewer.  If there’s even a small detail that he’s not sure of, he doesn’t hesitate to ask questions, showing a sincere eagerness to learn.

Sometimes, his hands are even shaking as he cuts ingredients with a knife, and his efforts aren’t always 100 percent successful, which goes to show he’s only human. In a good way, of course.

Plus, viewers can see that he’s improving all the time, an excellent example of which was when he chopped the lettuce to go with the tonkatsu fried pork cutlet.

▼ It can’t be easy to chop lettuce so thinly, but the cooking teacher complimented Mizushima in the video that he was getting much better at handling the knife.

▼ And see how beautiful the finished pork looks!

What’s also nice is that you can often see Mizushima packing the finished item into tupperware, suggesting that he doesn’t want the food to go to waste.

▼ This is the nikujaga that Mizushima is placing in the tupperware in the picture above.

When he started the cooking channel, Mizushima stated that he wanted to become able to cook for his family, so who knows — maybe he’s even taking the food back home to his family

With everyone trying to stay at home these days, watching videos to learn Japanese cooking seems as good a way as any to pass the time… and we’re certainly not against watching a good-looking guy prepare tasty-looking food.

If you’re interested in Japanese cooking but can’t participate in home cooking classes in Japan, Mizushima’s videos may be the next best option. Enjoy!

Source: YouTube/Hiro Mizushima
Top image: YouTube/Hiro Mizushima
Insert images: YouTube/Hiro Mizushima (1, 2)
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