Oishinbo(美味しんぼ, lit. "The Gourmet") is a long-running cooking manga written by Tetsu Kariya and drawn by Akira Hanasaki. The manga's title combines the Japanese word for delicious, oishii, and the word for someone who loves to eat, kuishinbo. The series depicts the adventures of culinary journalist Shirō Yamaoka and his partner (and later wife), Yūko Kurita. It has been published by Shogakukan between 1983 and 2008 in Big Comic Spirits, before resuming again on February 23, 2009, and collected in 104 tankōbon volumes. The series was a perennial best-seller, selling 1.2 million copies per volume, for a total of more than 100 million volumes as of January 2009. It received the 1987 Shogakukan Manga Award for seinen/general manga. It is licensed in English in North America by Viz Media, which