Featuring appearances by Toilet God, Cutieboy QT, and more!
Previously on Japan’s Best Home Senbero, our hero and yours, Mr. Sato, after a couple dozen attempts, had stumbled upon the metaphysical secret of the combination of food and alcoholic drinks for less that 1,000 yen (US$6.73), known as a “senbero” in Japanese.
▼ Spoiler Alert: The secret was pandas.
After his discovery, Mr. Sato had reached true senbero enlightenment and transcended the physical plane. However, while in Nirvana, he remembered a library book that needed returning and descended back into the physical realm. As a result that, he has now forgotten most of what happened but old habits die hard and sometimes he gets the itch to whip up a senbero from time to time.
This time, our senbero-loving reporter has decided to attempt a double-store home senbero. This is where a total of less than 1,000 yen in alcohol and food is purchased from not one but two stores. To pull this off he would have to go to some of the cheapest places around, so he chose Costco and Gyomu Super and got the following…
First, from Gyomu Super, Mr. Sato picked up a drinking box of Kaminari Sandai sake for 99 yen ($0.67). While not quite the epitome of class that Oni Koroshi drinking boxes are, it still fits into his budget nicely.
It’s a rather small box though, so Mr. Sato also bought some carbonated water to cut it with for just 38 yen ($0.26).
He also got some non-alcoholic beer “made with care” by Sakaya and yet only 65 yen ($0.44).
On the food end, he headed over to Costco and got a 500-gram (one-pound) bag of edamame soy beans for just 298 yen ($2).
Mr. Sato also snagged a pack of king trumpet mushrooms grown by Yukiguni for 378 yen ($2.54).
And no senbero would be complete without the epitome of cheap food: the Costco hotdog for the famously immutable price of 180 yen ($1.21).
The combined total of all this before taxes went right to the edge of the senbero line 995 yen ($6.69). According to the unwritten laws of senbero, it is OK if taxes push the cost to 1,075 yen because the senbero doesn’t live by the the rules of kings, tyrants, or governments.
It turned out to be a pretty good haul too, and Mr. Sato has most of his essential food groups covered, such as fungus and carbonation.
But right off the bat, our senbero expert was stumped.
Normally, he’d have something funny to do but he couldn’t think of anything. Could it have been this extremely hot summer, the effects of inflation, or the recently dissolved parliament? Whatever it was, this moment of writer’s block tormented Mr. Sato to no end.
▼ Mr. Sato: “ARRRRRRRRGH!!!”
▼ Mr. Sato: “Crap! I can’t even get this article started! What the hell am I supposed to do now?”
▼ Mr. Sato: “Dear God… God of gags… grant me the strength…”
▼ Mr. Sato: “Grant me the strength to make the people laugh again!”
▼ Mr. Sato: “I can already hear all the readers calling me boring… What will I do if I can’t come up with a way to make these soy beans and mushrooms funny? Are you there, God of Gags? It’s me, Mr. Sato!”
▼ Mr. Sato: “Where art thou, God?”
▼ Mr. Sato: “Oh…”
[“God of the Toilet”]
▼ Toilet God: “It’s occupied…”
▼ Mr. Sato: “God? Jeez, I’m sorry, I should have knocked…”
Realizing his problems are no excuse to be rude to others, Mr. Sato gently closed the door and left the Toilet God to his business.
▼ Mr. Sato: “The Toilet God’s here, folks…”
Having been blessed with the Toilet God’s presence, Mr. Sato realized that it wasn’t the situation but how he reacted to it that would make this senbero article great. So, with a renewed optimism, he got to work.
First, he put some water in a pot so he could boil his edamame.
The package said to add an appropriate amount of salt, but Mr. Sato is probably the last person to judge what “appropriate” is.
While he waited for the water to come to a boil, he started to prepare the king trumpet mushrooms.
▼ Mr. Sato: “Check it out! I’m a princess!”
▼ Mr. Sato: “No, wait! Now, I’m Mushroom Biker Sato!”
▼ Mr. Sato: “Vrooom, vrooom, vrrrrrrrrrrroom!!!”
▼ Mr. Sato: “Vrrooom! Honk, honk! Aooooooogah!”
▼ Ahiruneko: “Oh! I’m sorry, I didn’t know someone was using this room.”
▼ Ahiruneko: “Why are you holding a pair of king trumpets like that?”
▼ Mr. Sato: “Ah, Ahiruneko! I’m glad you’re here. I’m looking for adventure and whatever comes my way.”
▼ Mr. Sato: “Hop on and let’s ride!”
▼ Ahiruneko: “Um, ride? What are you talking about?”
▼ Ahiruneko: “So… like this?”
Mr. Sato: “You’re going to need some mushrooms too or you might get thrown off on a sharp turn.”
▼ Ahiruneko: “OK, I got some.”
Mr. Sato: “Perfect, let’s tear up this bad bitch…”
And so, with neither writer having a firm grasp of how motorcycles work, they proceeded to fire all their guns at once and explode into space.
▼ Mr. Sato: “All right… We sure showed those Lords of Hellfire a thing or two! They’ll think twice before interfering with our gun-running business again. That’s enough riding for today.”
▼ Mr. Sato: “Ahiruneko, you have proven yourself to be a bad dude. You can ride with me anytime.”
Ahiruneko: “You should probably stop playing and write your article. You know you’re the oldest writer here, right?”
Normally, Mr. Sato would be offended by Ahiruneko’s words, but he had earned his stripes in Mr. Sato’s gang by beating the Lords of Hellfire so his advice was heeded. Mr. Sato started to add the edamame to the salty boiling water.
He imagined each pod of beans was a person who wronged him in his life and took great pleasure in sending them to their boiling doom.
▼ Mr. Sato: “Take that, Ahiruneko! I’ll play whenever I feel like it!”
He then attempted to flow the positive energy in the room towards the boiling beans using the feng shui principles he learned on Wikipedia.
Just then, his art of movement was interrupted by someone entering the room…
▼ Masanuki: “I thought I could do some work in this room, but now I realize I came at the worst possible moment…”
▼ Mr. Sato: “On the contrary, this is the best time! Actually, I was about to come get you myself.”
Masanuki: “Ugh…”
▼ Mr. Sato: “Masanuki, let’s do the thing together…”
Masanuki: “You can’t just say ‘the thing’ and expect me to…”
▼ Mr. Sato: “Hoooooooo… Do you know what I’m doing?”
Masanuki: “The thing?”
▼ Mr. Sato: “A-ha! I knew you knew the thing! Let’s go then! Look over there…”
Masanuki: “…”
▼ Mr. Sato: “I said, turn and face the ch-ien of the northwest! It’s the direction of helpful people!”
▼ Mr. Sato: “Wha?! No! That’s the southwest k’un for matters of love!”
▼ Mr. Sato: “I’m trying to boil beans here and you’re screwing with my feng shui!”
▼ Mr. Sato: “Maybe I oughta feng shui your face!”
▼ Mr. Sato: “What?! That was my strongest punch! How could you?”
▼ Masanuki: “I could see your punch coming a mile away.”
▼ Masanuki: “Now prepare to get your head knocked all the way around to the k’an direction of career trajectory!”
Masanuki, possibly channeling a rage that stems from a past life, landed a right hook square into Mr. Sato’s jaw.
This was quickly turning into one of our writer’s most difficult senberos ever.
▼ Mr. Sato: “Damn, Masanuki must have been working out. I swore I used to be able to mop the floor with him…”
▼ Mr. Sato: “Anyway, back to my soy beans…”
As expected from Costco edamame, the amount was far too much for a single pot so Mr. Sato just put in as many as he could.
While the beans boiled, he got to work cutting up the king trumped mushrooms… hopefully after having washed them off post-motorcycle ride.
There was also a really large amount of those too, so Mr. Sato just cut up half of them.
By that time, the edamame had boiled enough and our senbero expert drained out the water.
Next, he prepared a frying pan with some oil…
…and fried up the cut mushrooms.
▼ Mr. Sato: “I thought about just using salt for seasoning, but that’s not very good so I’ll use some sake as well. White wine would work too, if you have it.”
▼ Mr. Sato: “And last but not least, the Costco hotdog… It’d be fine to eat it as is, but who doesn’t like their dog nice and toasty? Yessir, this senbero is coming along without a hitch, biker battles and fistfights notwithstanding.”
▼ Yuichiro: “Ope, sorry, are you using the room?”
Mr. Sato: “Oh, Yuichiro! I am using it, but…”
▼ Mr. Sato: “Wait a sec… Oh my Antonio! Do you see this?!”
▼ Mr. Sato: “This is an Aladdin toaster oven!”
▼ Mr. Sato: “Hell ya! That makes me I-Can-Open-Your-Eyes Sato!”
▼ Mr. Sato: “First, lemme just pop this in here…”
▼ Mr. Sato: “Now, Yuichiro, would you mind terribly if I opened your eyes? I don’t know if you heard, but I can do that.”
▼ Yuichiro: “Yeah, my eyes are already open, thanks. Seriously, I can see just fine like this.”
▼ Mr. Sato: “Yeah, but you’re always so squinty! Here, lemme just…”
Yuichiro: “Come on, I’m fine. Really…”
▼ Mr. Sato: “Oh tut now… Here we go! I CAN OOOOOOOOPEN YOUR EYES!”
▼ Mr. Sato: “There… Doesn’t the world look so much better now?”
▼ Yuichiro: “I can see so much!”
Having opened Yuichiro’s eyes, Mr. Sato returned to his work. Now that the edamame had cooled, he put them on an aesthetically pleasing serving dish.
He then started putting long slices of the king trumpet mushroom into the Costco hotdog. These kinds of moves are really what set senbero experts like Mr. Sato apart from the rest of us. The art of the senbero is all about maximizing your foodstuffs.
In this case, it’s a matter of using his girthy mushrooms to pad out the hotdog for an even heartier dish.
This applies to the drinks too. He carefully portioned the remaining sake into two glasses with ice.
He then filled up the remaining volume with soda water in one and non-alcoholic beer in the other, for some budget-friendly cocktails.
And there you have it! Another successful senbero in the books and not just any senbero, a double senbero!
Our writer started by wetting his whistle with a sake fizzy.
He then tried the other beer cocktail and quickly realized that neither of them tasted good at all. That’s just the way it goes sometimes in the senbero game.
Luckily, he still had some sake left that he could drink by itself.
▼ Mr. Sato: “Bottoms up.”
▼ Mr. Sato: “Oh yeah… I never should have mixed this in the first place.”
Still, all in all, this senbero wasn’t bad at all. Prices in Japan have really shot up since Mr. Sato began making home senberos, so getting a good assortment of food and drink for under 1,000 yen is only getting harder as the days go by.
Double senberos are one of the few ways to get by. Had he shopped only at Costco, he probably wouldn’t have been able to buy the alcohol to put the “bero” (Japanese for “tipsy”) into the “senbero.”
The time then came for the main dish, the jumbo king trumpet mushroom Costco hotdog!
Costco hotdogs are well-known to be delicious and don’t really need much help. And combined with the mushroom this one is even more filling. It’s a hands-down winner!
*Knock, knock!*
▼ Mr. Sato: “Hmm? Who could that be?”
▼ Mr. Sato: “Oh, Toilet God! Cutieboy QT! Distorted Buddha! You’re all here!”
▼ Mr. Sato: “Well, I guess that’s it for today, folks! See you next time on Japan’s Best… Huh?”
▼ ???: “Oh, um… Sorry… Just a…”
▼ Mr. Sato: “Oh, a newcomer? And who might you be?”
▼ Robin Mask: “Um, hey there. I’m Robin Mask. Nice to meet you. Mind if I join in?”
▼ Mr. Sato: “Robin Mask, eh? Well, that might get us into legal trouble but sure! All are welcome at my senbero… Hmm?”
▼ Yuichiro: “S’up. Can I join too? I wanna join.”
▼ Mr. Sato: “Yuichiro, you’re not welcome at my senbero… You’re not even a zany character.”
▼ Yuichiro: “Oh but I am a zany character…”
▼ I-Can-Open-Your-Eyes Yuichiro: “I’m I-Can-Open-Your-Eyes Yuichiro.”
▼ Mr. Sato: “Hang on, you’re just ripping off my character! Besides, it should be ‘I-Can-Open-Your-Eyes Wasai” if you follow the last-name format properly.”
▼ I-Can-Open-Your-Eyes Wasai: “Sounds like someone needs a new perspective on things. Here, let me take off your glasses first…”
Mr. Sato: “Just a minute now…”
▼ I-Can-Open-Your-Eyes Wasai: “Come now… I can show you the WORLD!”
▼ I-Can-Open-Your-Eyes Wasai: “And I have such wonderful things to show you!”
▼ Mr. Sato: “NOOOOOOOOOOO! I can see it all!”
▼ Everyone: “Yay!”
▼ “To Be Continued!!!”
It just goes to show, there’s never a dull moment when you’re making a combination of alcohol and food for less than 1000 yen. But where will this new development lead our senbero hero? Find out next time on Japan’s Best Home Senbero.
Catch up on all our “Japan’s Best Home Senbero” articles here:
Episode #1 – Lawson Store 100
Episode #2 – Don Quijote
Episode #3 – Costco
Episode #4 – IKEA
Episode #5 – ABS Wholesale Center
Episode #6 – Aeon
Episode #7 – Kaldi
Episode #8 – 7-Eleven
Episode #9 – Milk and Cake for Dogs
Episode #10 – Hanamasa Meat
Episode #11 – Life
Episode #12 – Shokuhinkan Aoba
Episode #13 – Seiyu
Episode #14 – Amika
Episode #15 – Lopia
Episode #16 – OK
Episdoe #17 – Family Mart
Episode #18 – Manbero
Episode #19 – Ministop
Episode #20 – Yaoko
Episode #21 – Cosmos
Episode #22 – Daily Yamazaki
Episode #23 – Panbero
Episode #24 – Senpafe
Episode #25 – Valor
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[ Read in Japanese ]