About Us

We try to introduce high quality authentic Japanese Chef knives & Whetstones.​

Aframes Tokyo is a Japanese knife store located in Honolulu, HI that specializes in aesthetically pleasing and fully functional culinary tools for your kitchen. We have 13 years of experience in this business and carry all the most renowned brands and designs to bring you the best of the best. We know knives inside and out and we are more than happy to help you find the perfect knife for all of your culinary needs.

 

About store owner

I was born and raised in a small town in Tokyo, Japan, and my father owned a small factory that makes leather cases and bags over 50 years.

My father’s factory had been my favorite play ground where there are many craftsmen, variety of cutleries, tools, and machinery.

I naturally love fish, so I majored in fisheries in College.

I started work in a restaurant, when I was 19 years old.

After graduating from college, I started coming in Hawaii. I have worked in more than 10 restaurants, and some construction works, and cabinet maker, etc.

My working history has been very complicated to explain due to being a immigrant  to the USA, and I sometimes feel that I should work in much less places, deeper experiences, and I feel like I wasted my times to work, but the other hand, those jobs that had made me see lots of different things, and those things make me help solve difficult problems.

I have worked mostly in Japanese restaurants in Japan and Hawaii, and I had been a sushi chef and Japanese soba (buckwheat) noodle chef.
I cut my right index finger at 4 or 5 years old for my first time instead of cutting a delicious apple (that apple was so tasty, so I could not wait for someone to peel the skin), and I was stitched 2 or 3 times on that finger.

The scar is still on my finger, and I remembered it was so sore to stitch at the doctor’s office.
I bought my first high quality knife that was a US made hunting knife about 10,000yen at the time, when I was 14 years old.

My first high quality cooking knife was Tsubaya 240mm Gyuto that was about 17,000yen at the time, when I was 19 years old.

It was over 30 years ago, so it was quite an expensive cooking knife for armature cook, but it had a very sharp edge on it, so it made me want to join the cooking knife world.

I had a vintage Colman lantern & fishing tackle business at first, and I started the cooking knife business on 2006 little by little.

Now, I am just running a  cooking knife, whetstone, razor, and other cutleries business.

If you are looking for high quality authentic Japanese Chef knives, please visit our store or online shop!