Comments: Donburi is a Japanese bowl, or a combination of boiled rice topped with meat, fish, eggs, and/or vegetables and a little broth in that Japanese bowl. It is a Japanese fast food that beats out a lot of our fast foods.

Author Kobayashi, a food writer and television chef, says the goal of donburi is "to create a dish that enhances the innate sweetness of rice." So he wants you to use top-quality rice and give some thought to buying a rice cooker, "because it makes perfectly cooked rice every time."

Ingredients may be challenging, unless you have an Asian market nearby. The book dedicates a little space to describing common Japanese ingredients and recipes and substitutes for some of them, but it doesn't cover them all. Be sure to read through the recipe before starting, to make sure you have all the needed ingredients. And can someone tell us where you would find a single half-pound, boned chicken thigh?

There are also some issues related to translating measurements for an American audience. How many people know how to cut 1/5th- or 2/5th-inch cubes, for example? A half-tablespoon is also not a common measure. We doubt many of these recipes would suffer if ingredient quantities were shifted up or down to common measurements.

So you may be tripped up by hard-to-find ingredients, unusual measures, and somewhat unexpected instructions, but the book still offers simple, fast food, with good flavor, and some personality that is lacking in more than a few of today's cookbooks.