This post is also available in(こちらの言語版もある): Japanese
Welcome to the Kitchen!
Welcome to Entropy in the Kitchen at xiomaraentropy.com, where I share my love for cooking and baking with a side of DIY and underground fashion. Here you will find:
- Recipes for meals from Japan and beyond
- Japan-friendly recipes for baked goods
- Recipes from my Cocktail Cupcake Project
- DIY projects
- The occasional post about life in Japan and it’s vibrant underground fashion and music scene
- …all in both English and Japanese
Some may find it contradictory to my mohawk’d, spiked appearance, but cooking and especially baking have been a passion of mine for a number of years. Since moving to Japan I both learned how to cook many delicious local dishes as well as adapt favorite recipes for foreign bakes goods and meals to work within the constraints of cooking in a Japanese kitchen with the ingredients that are locally available. In addition to fashion and DIY posts, I started posting the results of my cooking and baking adventures on Instagram and Facebook a few years ago and noticed that there was both an interest among my overseas followers and friends for English language instructions for interesting Japanese recipes, as well as interest among local followers for recipes for novel Western recipes like cupcakes that are still rather uncommon here written in the Japanese language and adapted to work with ingredients and tools that can be easily obtained locally. Realizing that neither Facebook nor Instagram is a very good platform for posting recipes and that I would need a platform that would allow me to easily reach a bilingual audience, I started this blog. I am in no way a cooking expert and plenty burns, cuts, cursing, poor substitution choices and general failures lie behind most of my successful cooking endeavors. However, whether you want to make some of the delicious-looking Japanese recipes you’ve seen on sites like Cookpad but can’t read Japanese or just want to try to get in on the international cupcake craze in your tiny Tokyo kitchen, my hope is that Entropy in the Kitchen will help you on your way.
Of course, I am not always in the kitchen and my interest in underground fashion, various genres of music (post-punk, deathrock, new wave, minimal and dark techno, electro, acid house, etc), and of course a really good mohawk are a very big part of my life here in Tokyo, so expect a few posts about that on the side.
Who is Xiomara Entropy?
Technically, Xiomara Entropy is merely a name that I came up with for myself back when I was in a series of (largely terrible) bands, but the name stuck on social media. My actual name is Caro and I am an American living and working in Tokyo. I was born in Minneapolis, MN, but have lived in Morelia, Mexico, Fukuoka, Japan Los Angeles, CA, Yokohama, Japan as well before settling down in Tokyo for the time being. I studied Japanese off and on since junior high school and did parts of my education in Fukuoka, Tokyo, and Yokohama, which is what led me to take a job here in the IT sector (at about $5 for a cup of butter here, a day job is a necessity!). When I am not working, I can be found at various local events enjoying the vibrant underground music and fashion scene that Tokyo has to offer, spending time with and foisting alcoholic cupcakes on my friends, customizing t-shirts and putting studs in everything, doing the occasional modeling job, collecting anything and everything with cats on it, and of course cooking. I may look like a scary or unapproachable person, but under the makeup and mohawk I am friendly and love to hear from others, so please don’t hesitate to contact me anytime with questions or concerns!