It started 45 years ago with instant noodles.

 

William Mizuno would make deliveries to customers around Toronto, a business that would grow and blossom into Sanko Trading Co., the Japanese food and gift store, "stocked with hundreds of different types of spices, sauces and staples essential for the Japanese culinary experience," informs its website. Toronto Life dubbed it "the city’s best destination for all things Japanese." Originally opened on Spadina Avenue in what was formerly a Jewish district that eventually became Chinatown, it moved 23 years ago to its current location on Queen Street West.  

 

In 1990, Trinity Bellwoods was far from the gentrified neighbourhood full of foot traffic it is today. Mizuno's son Stephen remembers the risk involved in the location: "When I was little, I used to help out at my parents' shop. We used to have some unwanted customers come in and try to steal things before." Now, he says, "you see nice, trendy youth coming in to change the entire neighbourhood." 

 

What's interesting is that unlike some of the other legacy establishments in the area, Sanko feels of the moment: with new facets of Japanese food culture taking hold in North America, in a way, Toronto is just catching up to the store.

 

Over the last few years, the city has seen a slew of ramen shops and izakayas (Japanese pubs) sprout up, a movement cemented by the successful arrival of New York-based, Japanese-influenced Momofuku. The restaurants are located around the downtown core with no allegiance to any one neighbourhood: Guu--now essentially a veteran in the scene--for example, has izakayas in the Annex and the Church-Wellesley Village, along with a ramen shop in Chinatown. Altogether, nearly 700 Japanese restaurants exist across the Greater Toronto Area.

 

Even with the vast number of restaurants, however, an enclave of Japanese immigrants never formed in the city. Toronto has no Japantown like San Francisco, no St. Mark's Place as in New York, nor a Little Ginza as in Vancouver. Stephen Mizuno offers a theory that it had to do with the confiscation of property during the Second World War, coupled with the distance of Toronto to Japan, compared to west coast cities like San Francisco and Vancouver. 

 

"It's kind of sad," he reflects, noting the long-term effects of the government actions, "all the Japanese people have kind of lived apart separately from each other and never formed a Japanese town." 

 

Organizations like the Japanese Canadian Cultural Centre in Toronto, which hosts services and events celebrating Japanese and Japanese Canadian culture and is approaching its fiftieth anniversary in 2014, have worked to bridge that gap. Still, the lack of an ethnic enclave has disadvantages: some research suggests that immigration is more frictionless when there are spaces in a new country with familiar language and customs--this quicker integration can help those newly arriving to find employment and a place within the community. 

 

At the same time, the blanketing of the city with Japanese restaurants could be evidence to some benefit of not being locked into one neighbourhood. Businesses can go for the best location without being anchored to the potential expectation or the easy comfort of staying in an enclave. And, in an unexpected twist, part of Toronto's appeal to new younger Japanese immigrants is in being not too familiar: a National Post story framed the city as "the Baby Bear's porridge of big Canadian cities -- not too familiarly Asian, like Vancouver, and not too exotically French, like Montreal." 

 

Being the Baby Bear also has its advantages: there is room to adapt to new cultures and the openness to accept them. So what's on tap for the new wave of Japanese culture? It looks yet again to be food-related: the maturing of sake. For many people, sake brings up unpleasant thoughts of overly sweet, warm, harsh liquor. Now, a concerted effort is being made to change that impression. 

 

In fact, Toronto is helping to lead the charge as the home of eastern North America's first sake brewery. Located in the Distillery District, Ontario Spring Water Sake Company started just two and a half years ago and president Ken Valvur says that it is serving a fast growing need. He estimates that the establishments with sake lists has risen over the last 10 years from around 20 to 140, driven by both the new restaurants and new immigrants.  

 

The brewery has taken special care to replicate authentic production methods. "We brought a master brewer over from Japan using all sorts of traditional equipment that we've imported." A handmade method is preferred over mechanized processes to create a tastier sake. Given that many customers are drinking sake for the first time, quality is important. Valvur says, "many go from never having tasted sake to buying a bottle within three minutes." 

 

The promise of local high quality sake has also lured seasoned drinkers to the brewery. "We have a number of Japanese people who will travel quite a distance to try our products," says Valvur, including the rice lees (called sake kasu), which can be turned into dressings, custards, and soap.

 

The brewery was also featured recently at Kampai Toronto, a festival held late May celebrating sake. In Japanese culture, sake has a vaunted role as the drink of choice during holidays and celebrations, explains Kazuo Nakamura, Deputy Executive Director for the Japan External Trade Organization (JETRO), which helped sponsor Kampai. In its second year, more than 600 people attended Kampai to sample 100 different sakes, welcomed by Japanese drummers, and sampled food from restaurants such as Ki, Guu, Hapa, and Ryoji. 

 

The mix of attendees was varied between Japanese, Japanese Canadians, and non-Japanese Canadians, and there was a palpable excitement to learn about sake. Representatives from the various brands would hold up maps and photos to show where the breweries were located. Kampai was a reminder of how not just food, but booze can reflect, illuminate, and act as a gateway to culture. Canada with its beers and beloved Caesar. Scotland and scotch.

 

Sake is Japan's national beverage and Toronto appears ready to embrace it. The LCBO, after all, carries more brands of sake than any other province, including British Columbia, which led Vivian Hatherall, an organizer of Kampai, to conclude that "Ontarians are enamored with Japanese food and Japanese culture." 

 

There's no way to know whether the shift towards ramen, izakayas, and sake is merely trendy or is to stay, but it’s fair to say that Toronto has a chance at a thriving presence of Japanese culinary culture. In addition, the Japanese influence could lead to intriguing new interpretations. Stephen Mizuno suggests he's seen something like it before with the boom of sushi restaurants in the city. "It officially did start up a lot of Japanese businesses," he says, "but then it became non-Japanese owned, and that kind of changed the cuisine entirely. 

 

“So, [the ramen shops and izakayas] are going to integrate in a very unique way, catered towards the Canadian customers. This is more of a good thing for the Canadian customers, who will actually see a different, unique version of the Japanese."

 

Sanko has seen a climb in customers as it sells many ingredients found in the new, hip restaurants. Stephen hopes that there are both traditional and modern takes on the cuisine. 

 

"A pure side of me want to preserve the way it is," he says, "and then there’s a whole progressive side that would like to see Japanese culture thrive in this multiculturalism, see how that changes and warps into something completely new that a lot of people could identify with."

Jaime Woo is a Toronto-based writer whose work has appeared in the Financial Post,Toronto Standard, and AV Club. He is the author of Meet Grindr, released in February 2013, about how the design of geolocation cruising apps shifts user behaviour.