Yamako Japanese Noodles Kitchen Knife for Soba Udon (9.5 inch) 85433

The one that came here started it's trip in Yokohama, came via DHL and once picked up there it was whizzed to USA in a day. DHL had it here in a few days even with holiday rush being on. Impressive.Soba noodles were made with Anson Mill special soba noodle buckwheat/00 wheat flour mix. A homemade cutting board worked fine. The soba noodle knife cutting nicely through the dough--plenty sharp for the moment. Lean it over onto the cutting board edge the tiniest bit to budge the board over a small distance for the next cut (these knives are for right-handed users). We store the knife under a window using magnets (10 of them). The knife holds very well, even with the plastic cutting edge guard in place.The short end of the knife, nicely honed to be nearly sharp, works perfectly to scoop up piles of cut noodles. Just as a noodle knife is supposed to do. Plenty of lesser noodle knives are offered without this edge and it seems to be a cost cutting idea, not improvement.While this is a single surface/face knife with all sharpening on one side (like a wood chisel), the one that came to us had a slight bit of sharpening on the flat side. Might have been a nick in the blade and they did back edge sharpening to remove the impefection. Should have demoted the 5 stars to 4 but the other features were so beneficial. Don't know, but I'll attempt to remove this wrong sided sharpening with future sharpenings on the correct side of the blade.All in all: Good to go. Nice soba noodles. Yes! And, udon noodles will be next.

An excellent knife. It's very sharp. I used it for noodles, for pork meat and even for pills. Good quality.

I’m using this to cut ice and could not be happier. Super sturdy, stays sharp, and always starts a conversation.

For the price its sold at the knife is ok. Mine came dull and had an uneven cutting edge but I was able to grind it down with an anglengrinder to make it even fairly fast. The handle material are also uneven but some sanding takes care of that too. Hardness test shows that its somewhere between 45-50 hrc which is ok because its only cutting noodles. Giving it two stars mainly for the cheap powder coating to make the knife look like it has a hamon, which was wearing off from the rough side of a sponge. Had to take some sand paper to get it all off so it doesn't contaminate and flake off while cutting.