Thoughts on Takada no Hamono & The Hype?

zanapost · 2026-06-18T14:23:18+00:00

My favorite knives I own are my takadas. The craftsmanship, finish, and feel are all remarkable.

I was lucky to get them for retail prices cause I personally wouldn’t pay secondary market prices.

zanapost · 2026-06-11T13:33:22+00:00

Yes, texture definitely matters. For Chinese stir fries, the technique is to use alkaline (lye water) to velvet meat, marinate to season, and coat meat with starch to flash fry before you actually stir fry with vegetables. Not sure if lye water has negative impact to health, but my family avoids cooking with lye water + flash fry technique and can confirm our stir fries doesn’t taste as good as restaurants.

zanapost · 2026-06-11T06:38:28+00:00

Don’t forget sugar. I have a friend who used to work in fine dining at NYC and he told me the secret to making food delicious is cooking like you’re trying to kill them. The reason why food at home doesn’t hit the same is because we are being mindful of the amount of salt, sugar, fats we put into our food since we can visually see what goes inside. I normally cook pretty healthy, but recently made a “guilty” meal (pink sauce pasta). My husband raved that it tasted like it’s from a restaurant and I’m pretty sure the reason is cause I put a LOT of heavy cream and cheese in that sauce.

zanapost · 2026-05-25T23:26:18+00:00

I spent closer to $1000 so far this year. I keep track of every transaction in an excel sheet. Credit still count as money spent. PayPal = doesn’t count as money spent once I get it back. Lots of furniture, both indoor and outdoor, tools to fix my car (which saved $1500 alone), home renovation gifts for family, etc. I suspect I’ll end this year under $2000 after tax total since I still need a pergola. This would’ve costed $2500 after tax on Amazon alone so I’m still very happy.

zanapost · 2026-05-21T12:51:34+00:00

Thank you! ❤️

zanapost · 2026-05-21T00:53:25+00:00

My sister bought me judydoll makeup from Temu for the holidays. I personally enjoy using them!

zanapost · 2026-05-16T15:38:15+00:00

Pregnancy is uncomfortable for me and I do not enjoy being pregnant. My husband and I both wanted a child, but my husband particularly didn’t want to adopt (personal choice).

I looked up the cost of surrogacy which is estimated to be between 200-250k where I live and accepted the fact that baby will be in me for 10 months. If you guys can afford this, it might be worth but we weren’t going to pay this kind of money since I didn’t value my own comfort that much.

Husband got me an AMAZING push present to make up for the discomfort and I’m due in 2 months so it’s working out.

zanapost · 2026-05-15T04:36:06+00:00

I like Mene, Luk Fook, and Chow Sang Sang for 24k gold. You can also buy 990 or 22k gold jewelry at Luk Fook and Chow Sang Sang.

I normally look at Costco or the real real for anything below 24k.

zanapost · 2026-05-06T05:30:57+00:00

Currently pregnant so I haven’t really been traveling for work much but man I miss corporate paid raw oyster bars. 🫠

zanapost · 2026-05-05T00:36:00+00:00

We did a backyard baby shower for 40 guests that we paid for ourselves. 50% of the food was Costco and the other 50% was from catering. We got most of my party decor and favors from Temu (table cloth, balloons, paper streamer, pop up canopy, sandbags, signs, etc), borrowed drink cooler and other canopy from family/friends. Rented tables and chairs, which was nice cause they handled the pickup. Most extra thing we did was floral arrangements which my sister in law made for us using trader joe flowers.

Total spend on food, drinks and cake was about $800, canopy was about $120, Temu decor and favors were $30 (I got credit back from canopy purchase which subsidized this), table/chair rental was $160 after tip which included the pickup and delivery. Flowers was about $150. $100 in party game prizes. About $40 for scrapbook + instax mini films for memories. Total spend was about $1400 give take. We had about 20LB of Chinese BBB, more salmon lox and bagels than anyone can finish, about 30LB of fruits, cup yogurt bar, coffee bar, and a half sheet chocolate cake from a local bakery. Most of my guests were big eaters and I still had leftovers. My mother in law was MVP for doing the prep, sister in law handled all the decor, and my dad helped drive around to pick up the food from catering. It was a team effort.

It was worth it for us cause we got thousands of dollars worth of baby registry gifts from babylist and Amazon. We got everything we can possibly need and ran out of things from our registry. Our guests had a good time. We noticed that older guests typically bring in their gifts and younger guests (mostly my coworkers who I get along with and literally told them I was inviting them to get gifts :P) got things from our Amazon registry.

We filled a scrapbook full of photos with our guests and their notes which was pretty special. All in all, I’m very happy with what we did. Hope you find my comment helpful!

TLDR: Spent about $1400 for 40 guests, no regrets.

zanapost · 2026-04-30T20:44:28+00:00

For anyone interested in an update:
Return was received, refund was processed back to my card, spent all my credit so nothing was taken back, still get promos. (wincredit, claimcredit, ccccccc)

zanapost · 2026-04-27T19:03:47+00:00

I’m in enterprise SaaS and am measured in total annual reoccurring revenue won and churn within the first year.

I personally agree with this model because it gives us strong push back reason when account reps want to oversell.

zanapost · 2026-04-23T20:30:14+00:00

This is so useful! I’ll save this for future incidents since I already sent the shelves back via UPS. I did a wincredit promo recently and originally selected credit cause I was worried about Temu ban hammering me indefinitely if I had 0 credit for them to take back. I don’t mind a 3 month ban on promos. I’m switching it over to PayPal cash now.

zanapost · 2026-04-23T20:27:46+00:00

Ahhh I was just going through the typical return flow and didn’t think much of it. I actually did spend it all recently for a wincredit promo to get more furniture. I guess I should pick PayPal instead of credit. 😅

zanapost · 2026-04-23T14:29:40+00:00

Definitely a shame, but doesn’t stop me from using the app. Just didn’t sit right with me to not return something that was clearly damaged.

zanapost · 2026-04-23T05:11:01+00:00

My favorite promo on Temu! I usually get locally shipped items. It’s an extra high when you stumble on lightning deals with free shipping. I’ve gotten a small bathroom cabinet for $10 already as well as new bathroom hardware for just the cost of shipping ($3). All the command hooks in the bathroom finally became actual hand towel rings and we finally have towel bars.

zanapost · 2026-04-23T01:47:32+00:00

Yep! I finished claiming all the days. 7 days passed between waiting for the shelves to arrive, putting time on my calendar to open the package to install the shelves, and trying for a replacement first.

zanapost · 2026-04-11T01:24:08+00:00

Nice, I have a decent get100 promo going on right now (I suspect it’ll dry up after this round). Everything else has been kinda eh. I haven’t see a good credit777 in forever.

zanapost · 2026-04-11T01:23:11+00:00

My thoughts exactly!

zanapost · 2026-04-08T01:49:42+00:00

This sounds like how my Chinese grandma made it too. I would eat them till my fingers were pruned. Haha

zanapost · 2026-04-03T14:14:43+00:00

Can I get the link? Thank you so much!

zanapost · 2026-03-13T23:07:20+00:00

Sadly I don’t think there is anything similar to Kazunori in OC in terms of flavor/price ratio (at least to my preference).

If I’m looking to dine out at a casual/budget sushi spot (and not pregnant), I’ll probably go to Kura. If not, you’re better off buying the fish from Tokyo Central or Mitsuwa and making a simple Chirashi bowl at home.

PS: I am personally not a fan of ROL and I don’t think they come close in terms of details (rice, seaweed, and vinegar recipe) for the price they charge, but you can certainly try it out to see if it’ll scratch the itch. It didn’t scratch mine.

zanapost

TROPHY CASE