Orlando Ichiban Hosts Unofficial Twestival

The Crowd at Orlando Twestival 2/12/09

Last Thursday, we were very excited to play a part in an unofficial Twestival, essentially a "Tweetup" with a purpose. The event was intended to raise awareness and funds for Charity Water. Local Twitter user @ELROSS and the @smoacow team conducted a last minute effort to bring the worldwide event to Downtown Orlando.

The result.
Over 20 local Twitter users gathered at a few of our tables and enjoyed sushi, sake and beers while discussing everything from tech to saving the world. We were able to catch up with @ELROSS before he headed out to chat about the event, and what he ordered of course!

We were very excited to be a part of the event and look forward to future community building (and sushi eating) gatherings with the Downtown Orlando community. If you have an idea, theme or group that would like to meet at Orlando Ichiban, please send us a message and we will be happy to see how we can assist you in making your event as successful as we can (and promote it via Twitter!)

Thanks again to all who came and we'll see you next time.
(attendee list can be found here on the Somacow site)

Tokyo Taste 2009: A Culinary Extravaganza

Yesterday kicked off one of the most exciting and spectacular events happening in Japan right now: Tokyo Taste. The 3 day gastronomic extravaganza has brought in the best and brightest chefs from all around the world, in an attempt to revitalize the culinary industry and at the same time promote Japanese Cuisine and Culture.

"The cuisine culture of Japan is one of the superior intellectual properties that we have which is a basis of the economy in Japan and of which we can point with pride to the rest of the world. It has been the center of attention recently as one of the important areas that can be used to improve the image of Japan throughout the world."

This will be the first culinary event of its kind in Japan, organizers said, featuring programs such as On-Stage cooking performances, workshops, and exhibition booths for food products.
Many of the programs will be run by an arsenal of celebrity chefs from Australia, Britain, China, France, Italy, Japan, Spain and the United States who will demonstrate their culinary magic in front of hundreds of spectators at Tokyo International Forum.

These include Joel Robuchon from France, the world's most Michelin-starred chef, Ferran Adria from Spain, head chef of famed Catalan restaurant El Bulli, and Kunio Tokuoka, executive chef of Japanese restaurant Kyoto Kitcho.

Many of the organizers believe Tokyo's gastronomic prowess is an invaluable asset and should be promoted more aggressively in an attempt to attract more foreign tourists to Japan. Their goal right now is to expand the number of visitors to Japan from 8.35 million in 2008 to 20 million in 2020. However, due to the global economic downturn and rise in the yen's value, Japan will continue to face an uphill battle trying to achieve this.

By contrast, 80 million people a year pay a visit to France, the world's top tourist destination.

Learning Japanese Quickly Through Association

As many of you know, Japanese is one of the toughest languages to learn, however, that doesn't mean learning it needs to be boring. While most people use very dull and repetitive methods when trying to learn the language, there are ways to make it fun and at the same time, learn it quickly. One of the best ways I've found to do this is by using associations.

The trick here is to create an association (or link) between a Japanese word and something you already know in English. Here is an example:

The Japanese word for meet is “au”. It is pronounced “ow” as in “owch! that hurts!”

So now lets think of an association for that word.

Since “au” sounds similar to “owl” let’s link it with owls. Imagine a group of owls meeting for the first time. I'm serious, Close your eyes and imagine “a group of owls meeting for the first time” for 10 seconds. Really concentrate on the image for the full 10 seconds. Now, remembering the word for meet should be simple. Now imagine if you could do this for all the other words...well guess what? You CAN!

Let us know how this method works for you. Hopefully it helps! :-)

Do you know of any other ways to make learning Japanese fun? Let us know about it in the comments section!

We now accept to-go orders via Twitter!

In case you haven't heard it throughout the Twitter-sphere, we are now accepting advanced orders via Twitter. At first, this sudden change came as a surprise and scare to myself and our entire restaurant staff. These initial feelings had a lot to do with the fact that we were new to this "Twitter" thing, but mostly because we didn't see the necessity in doing so. Much to our surprise, Twitter is a resource that demands results now, and subsequently our local following has intensified since beginning to interact with our community through it last year.

Late last week, our staff and the creative minds over at Endagon Innovations, decided to step up our game and answer some of the requests we were beginning to receive from customers. The viral capabilities of Twitter induced immediate commotion around the outlandish idea of ordering meals over Twitter. After much debate and fumbling for solutions, we announced that we were able to accept advanced orders through Twitter's Direct Messaging capabilities. One customer, Ted Murphy (@tedmurphy on Twitter), issued encouraging thoughts on allowing @ replies for orders, but anyone that understands Twitter should quickly realize the hurdles that we would encounter with doing that as well.

Photo By: Ted Murphy

Because we pride ourselves around customer service, we never want to inconvenience a customer by missing an order or having our technological systems go down temporarily. Therefore, after Ted Murphy ordered a lunch 24 hours in advance via an @ reply, we accepted the notion and realized that, with such an advanced notice, we could work this way too. (Thanks for pushing us Ted!)

So here we are on February 3rd of 2009 serving the Downtown Orlando area via Twitter. Who would have thought? I do not know if any other restaurants or service industy entities are doing something similar, but we certainly understand its power and hope to be recognized as a leading adopter of new technologies. We know that since we are presently working with one of the most creative and "innovative" companies around, we will have no problem slowly becoming the "full-service" restaurant that I know we can be.

So how do you order your To-Go via Twitter? Simple.

1) Start following us on Twitter and wait for us to start following you back.
2) Send us a "direct message" on Twitter with your order.
3) Make sure you get a confirmation tweet back before picking up your order
4) Pick up your yummy food!

Once again, for anyone that would like to order via a regular tweet, we will need 24hrs in advance (at least for right now).

Thanks again for all of your support, and hopefully this will make it easier for all of you Tweeple to place your to-go orders! Also, stay tuned for an announcement on our next Sushi TweetUp!

Check out some really cool posts on our Twitter to go orders from:
Etan Horowitz from the Orlando Sentinel
Ted Murphy of IZEA

Birds of a different feather, Trying to flock together

In today's economy, many businesses are re-evaluating their marketing dollars and trying to figure out what the best platform is for increasing their brand awareness as well as their bottom line. In the restaurant business, it's no different. However, some businesses are taking it a little too far. I understand the idea of saving money, but to what extent?

The other day, we came across this commercial that stumped us. In short, it is a commercial that was written to promote both a dentist office and a sushi restaurant, which seems like they go together rather well right? (Can you sense the sarcasm there? :-P )

Check it out for yourself.






So what are your thoughts on this commercial? Good idea or waste of money? Does it do either of the businesses any justice? Let us know in the comments section!