MIYABI 5000 MCD Sujihiki - Asian Knife, Birchwood (34378-241-0)

This is my fifth Miyabi mcd5000 birchwood knife and I bought it because I wanted to have a slicer from the same series. The knife is a beauty, which everybody can judge from videos and youtube reviews. What nobody mentions in these reviews is that the handles should be treated with a transparent wood oil several times before it is used. The wood seems to be raw and untreated and will absorb liquid. If you have the choice, I recommend to treat it with a food save wood oil to prevent that liquid from food soaks into the handle and / or it becomes a matrix for microorganism. I recommend to treat the handle with oil once a month, this also prevents that the copper ornament in the handle starts oxidizing, which creates small greenish stains. This happened to one of my knifes, but could be removed with a bit of polishing. The oiling will darken the handle quite a bit (example, hex decimal colors: initial ~ #fffdd7, after 6x oiling ~ #fbd13d).As all high quality knifes, the birchwood knifes come with a basic sharpness out of the box, which is usually enough for most users. However, the high quality steels is capable of much more than that, which requires proper sharpening on good (!) whetstones. When I took this knife out of the box, I directly stropped it a couple of times over a chromium oxide leather strop and had to realize that on one side the end towards the tip was scrapping of quite some material. The edge had a considerable burr in this region or was slightly bend. In order to get an even edge I resharpened the complete knife on chosera whetstones (1000, 3000) and polished the edge on three strops (chromium oxide, iron oxide, and without abrasive). The result is excellent! You can cut sub-millimeter slices of a free standing tomato in one stroke and the edge is stable for a long time (depending on how regularly the knife is used - this is a defined property of the steel and not unique to this particular knife).If you are looking for a traditional shashimi knife, please note that this is a double bevel knife, while traditional Japanese yanagibas are single bevel knifes.The birchwood knifes are clearly beauties and you should be aware of that! Certainly, one of the reasons why you consider this knife is its beauty. However, regular use in the kitchen might cause some minor scratches to the damask pattern face and the black imprinting on the blade will come off (after a year of regular use). Just be aware of that, this is just normal! If you are a chef, who needs workhorse, you can consider this knife, but you might find a similar model that does the same job without all the makeup. Nevertheless, it is an option if you want to let everybody in the kitchen know that this is your knife.If cooking is your hobby and you want an eye-catcher for your kitchen - this is your knife.Price-wise ... Birchwood knifes are expensive, but still affordable and very competitive in price. Classical Japanese knifes start abound $250 and can cost up to a few thousand dollars.However, a good knife lasts more than a life and you can pass it on to your grand children (assuming you know how to maintain them).