The Philippines' BusinessWorld has a profile on Japanese chef and inventor Machiko Chiba, who recently demonstrated her Cook-Zen microwavable cooking pot in Quezon City. Chiba lived in Pittsburgh in the late 1980s where she "discovered microwave cooking", according to her daughter.
During that time she also began teaching and proselytizing Japanese food. As she begins her 2015 book Japanese Dishes for Wine Lovers:
I guess that my long acquaintance with the United States and my work as a teacher of Japanese cooking actually began back in 198, when I studied nutrition at the University of Pittsburgh. Later, I also had the opportunity to study cooking in San Francisco, but I think my experience in Pittsburgh was really the beginning, since that is when I began to introduce Japanese cooking to others and to offer classes. Back then, the number of people who were interested in Japanese food was quite limited, as were the images that people had of the cuisine, basically only sushi and tempura. In Pittsburgh, I often taught classes on making sushi. When I look back at the notes I prepared for those classes, I am amazed, the world has changed so much since then.Chiba and one of her cooking classes at Carnegie Mellon University was the subject of a March 15, 1987 Pittsburgh Press article, which featured several of her recipes at the end.