Lots of Japanese options popping up in Toronto

I've had a lot of Japanese food over the past month.  There are a couple of new options that I've only got around to trying this year and we made a visit back to an uptown joint that we haven't been to in a while.

Touhenboku Ramen specializes in white pai tan (chicken broth) based ramen.  I enjoyed their ramen noodles made in-house.  We opted for the miso soup base (daily special), but I found the soup to be a little too oily and not entirely flavourful.  Maybe I still prefer tonkotsu soup base better.  If you follow them on twitter, you can get a free topping to your ramen.  We also tried their dessert mille crepes, but I found it to be flatter than pictured.  I think I would only return if I happened to be in the area.

The next place we tried was Ja Bistro which is a fusion Japanese bistro.  They have a lot of blow torch sushi.  We were celebrating my birthday so we went for the 3 course tasting menu ($55), not that we wouldn't have ordered the tasting menu even if it wasn't my birthday or anything.  First came an appetizer platter of sashimi, fried chicken, miso cod, prawns and lobster broth - all pretty tasty.  Followed by classic and blow torched sushi.  I enjoyed the pressed sushi a lot and I could've had more!  Finally, dessert was cheese cake and vanilla ice-cream.  We would definitely return to this place.

Last restaurant I want to talk about is an older one that we've been to many times.  Aoyama Sushi added a couple of choices to their tasting menu and we tried out the lower end one last weekend.  The difference between the $45 and $65 option is the sashimi and sushi pieces that you get.  For the $45, we got a seaweed salad with crab meat, sashimi with ponzu sauce, fried lobster tail, tempura, seafood soup and sushi combo.  I realized I forgot to take a picture of the sushi combo because it was very standard.  I thought the fried lobster tail was a little bit over cooked.  It was a lot of food, but enjoyable.