Gifts
Gifts for Cooks: Japanese Knives and What Goes With Them
For the person who cooks for everyone else. Every knife here is hand-finished in Japan, fitted with a handle made in Poland, and arrives in a wooden box with nothing to wrap. The smaller pieces are chosen to sit beside them: a stone to keep the edge, a board to cut on, linen for the kitchen.
Small gifts
Small Gifts That Stand on Their Own
For a cook who already has a good knife, or as a first step towards one. If we were choosing one, it would be the whetstone: a knife is only as good as its edge, and a 1000/6000 stone keeps it.
One knife
One Knife: The Heart of a Kitchen
If you are giving one knife, give a chef’s knife. A Santoku is the easiest to give when you don’t know exactly how someone cooks: a flat edge, a rounded tip, comfortable from the first day. The KYU is forged in Sakai, where the traditional Japanese kitchen knife has been made for six hundred years.
Not sure which? The knife quiz asks a few questions and suggests one knife and one line, and all six lines compared sets the steels side by side.
A set
A Set of Three: Everything a Kitchen Needs
Each set is a chef’s knife, a Nakiri and a Petty from one line, in one wooden box. It costs less than buying the three separately.
More on choosing one: Japanese knife sets as gifts.
Giving a knife
What arrives
Every knife comes sharpened and ready to use, in its wooden box, with a certificate of authenticity and a five-yen coin. There is nothing to wrap.
The coin
There is an old belief that a knife given as a gift cuts the bond between giver and receiver. The answer is a coin: the receiver hands it back, so the knife counts as bought rather than given. Five yen in Japanese is go-en, which also means a good connection.
If it is a gift
Tell us in the order notes at checkout. Engraving of up to four words (£30) is possible on some pieces: email info@oishya.com before you order.
Long after Christmas
Looked after for life
Every Oishya knife is guaranteed for life against defects in materials and workmanship, and we sharpen it for as long as it is owned; the owner covers the postage both ways. If it is not right, it can come back within 100 days.
The guaranteeReturnsUnited States
Sending to the United States
Most of our December orders go to the US. You can see every price in US dollars by switching currency at the foot of any page.
Orders leave us within one to two business days and usually arrive in 6 to 21 business days. We ship duty-unpaid, so any import duty or carrier fee is paid on arrival rather than at our checkout, and we always declare the true value.
To have it in time for Christmas, order by Friday 20 November.
Shipping and deliveryDelivery
Delivery Before Christmas
Worked out from our usual times: one to two business days to leave us, then 1–3 business days in the UK, 2–7 across Europe and 6–21 to the US and elsewhere. Finishes made to order follow the lead time shown on their product page.