JAPANESE RESTAURANTS

It’s not all sushi, as these recently reviewed restaurants prove. ISSENJOKI (Little Tokyo Square, 333 S. Alameda St., No. 301, Los Angeles, (213) 680-1703). This cozy, little restaurant is run by Takao Ishii and his wife, Kumiko, who make you feel very welcome. It’s a cozy place, with a stark wood floor and Japanese antiques from Kumiko’s collection. The menu comes with snapshots of many of the dishes to help guide you. The salads are works of art on huge platters, piled with angel hair of carrot and horseradish. The fresh noodles are served in beautiful ceramic bowls. There is also sashimi with your choice of tuna, squid, shrimp or octopus. The grilled kebabs called kushiyaki are also good and include both chicken and beef. Just when you’ve decided what to eat, the menu goes on with house specials. These include a daring and delicious baked tofu with melted cheese. The noodles at lunchtime, which include a large selection, from zaru-soba (buckwheat) to udon , the fat ones, are also excellent and worth a trip. Open for lunch and dinner Wed.-Mon. MasterCard and Visa. Full bar. Parking validated in Little Tokyo Square. Dinner for two, food only, $20-$30.

KAPPO KYARA (333 S. Alameda St., No. 313, Los Angeles, (213) 626-5760). This bread-basket-sized restaurant is almost always crowded with people coming to enjoy kappo cuisine: little dishes created to accompany sake and beer. You might begin by trying a specialty, yuba chakin , made from yuba , tissue-thin translucent sheets skimmed from the surface of heated soy milk. Kappo Kyara wraps finely minced crab and whitefish in the sheets and then steams the tiny bundles. Various fish, filleted, deep fried or blanketed in light Japanese sauces, are given imperial treatment. Buri , or yellowtail, is especially delicious when broiled. Karei , or sole, is another good choice when fried to a golden curl. For the even more curious, there’s soboro manjyu , a yam cake with minced chicken inside, a golden ball in a clear, thick sauce. Open for lunch and dinner Mon.-Sat. MasterCard, Visa and American Express. Beer and wine. Parking validated in Little Tokyo Square. Dinner for two, food only, $25-$50.

MATSUHISA (129 N. La Cienega Blvd., Los Angeles, (213) 659-9639). Chef/owner Nobu Matsuhisa spent some time in South America, and he makes his own variation on sushi, sashimi and tempura that is unlike anything you’ve ever eaten before. A “must try” is the squid pasta--an amazing dish in which squid is cut to look like large shells of pasta, delicately cooked and then mixed with sliced asparagus and a light garlic sauce. The asparagus and salmon eggs in hollandaise is also very impressive, as is marinated, broiled black cod and sea urchin tempura, which is wrapped in a shiso leaf, battered and quickly fried. Matsuhisa even has taken care to have interesting desserts. If you’re lucky, there might be the prince melon from New Zealand with a sauce of fresh raspberries. There is even Haagen-Dazs ice cream on the menu. Only in Los Angeles. Open for lunch Mon.-Fri. and dinner daily. MasterCard, Visa and American Express. Beer and wine. Valet parking. Dinner for two, food only, $40-$65.

SUSHI NOZAWA (11288 Ventura Blvd., Unit C, Studio City, (818) 508-7017). If you want California roll or spicy tuna roll, go down the street, please; this is a traditional place. A hot towel to refresh yourself is brought by a waiter and, before you can break your chopsticks apart, you are flat out told that rubbing them together to get rid of splinters is extremely impolite. You are instructed not to smoke, not to order tempura and not to mix too much fiery Japanese horseradish into your soy sauce. Welcome to Sushi Nozawa, the graduate school of fish. The best thing to do here is put yourself in the hands of Nozawa-san and say, “Go ahead, feed me.” You won’t want to miss the lean, hot-pink tuna on machine-perfect piers of vinegared rice or the maguro, sweet, silken-smooth, smelling faintly of the sea. The blue-skinned filets of mackerel are also delicious. Nozawa has spent 25 years learning about fish. This is a meal you won’t want to miss. Open for lunch and dinner Mon.-Fri. and dinner only on Sat. MasterCard and Visa. Beer and wine. Parking lot. Dinner for two, food only, $30-$40.

YORO-NO-TAKI (432 East 2nd St., Los Angeles, (213) 626-6055; 192 S. Vermont, Los Angeles (213) 388-3179; 15462 S. Western Ave., Gardena (213) 323-3742). The image of the strait-laced Japanese businessman vanishes the minute you cross Yoro-no-Taki’s threshold. This Japan-based chain doubles as both pub and restaurant. The walls are dark and paneled in wood, Japanese-inn style. The waiters and waitresses are professionals and it shows: They juggle dishes, beer glasses and orders with consummate skill, and they shout playfully in Japanese across to the kitchen. It’s an immensely popular place, and rarely fails to draw a crowd. Good choices off the huge menu would be oden , a fish-cake stew; nikujaga , hearty potatoes, carrots, and sliced beef in a natural gravy; or one of the grilled fish such as mackerel, served whole. Open for dinner daily. MasterCard and Visa. Full bar (Vermont Avenue location has beer and wine only). Dinner for two, food only, $13-$16.