Cooking Sun - Kyoto

Since we started in April 2014, we welcome international tourists every day from around the world. It is our joy that people leave our studio happily. Some people even send us email and ask for past recipe… Here are some information to introduce us.

Since when did you start?

We opened our Kyoto Michiya studio in April 2014. Since then we opened Tokyo studio in October 2016 and Kyoto Kawaramachi Studio in October 2017.

Who comes to your cooking class?

Our customers are mostly international travelers. We see many people from United States, Australia and UK, but we’ve welcomed pretty much all countries from North America, North and South East Asia, Middle East and Europe. The most further? Some people from South Africa, Argentina and Brazil have come before too!

How often do you operate?

We operate almost every day except New Years Day. We do 2 classes per day in both Kyoto Machiya Studio and Tokyo studio.

What kind of cuisine do you teach?

We are Japanese cooking class for international tourists, so we teach Japanese foods. There are wide range of variety in Japanese cuisine, but typically we teach dishes that people can cook at home again. In Kyoto we do bento class which has tempura, sushi roll and teriyaki chicken. In Tokyo we do sushi class in which people learn how to make five types of sushi.

Our story

One day in 2012, Shohei saw a foreign tourist walking towards Tokyo Metropolitan Government Building (it’s just one tall building for local people, well, at least for Shohei), he was shocked to realize that the building was one of the international tourist destinations. He felt that there must be better ways for international tourists to experience Japan. 

Shohei has lived in Australia and Singapore and has traveled to the U.S., U.K., and several countries in South America, the Middle East, and Asia. Through these experiences, he was assured that the best quality food could be found in his home country, Japan. 

From these experiences, he came up with the idea of Cooking Sun, a Japanese cooking school for international travelers. 

In 2013, when Shohei was in INSEAD, he met Vikram Aggarwal, the CEO of EAT2EAT, who persuaded him to take a class in his cooking school in Thailand. Afterwards, Shohei flew to Bangkok, and experienced another class by himself. The lesson was so enjoyable that Shohei felt positive that this business would be viable in Japan.

A few months later, he found a business competition in Japan, which was organized by Nagase Co., an education company in Japan that promotes an entrepreneurial mind in young Japanese.

Fortunately, Shohei’s idea was accepted. On December 25th, 2013, Cooking Sun was born in Kyoto, Japan.