Bringing you yesterday's news from Japan and Asia, today.
Born and raised in Los Angeles, Casey Baseel spent his formative years staring in frustration at un-subtitled Japanese TV programming shown on Southern California’s international channel. Taking matters into his own hands, he moved to Tokyo to study the language, then found work in Yokohama a decade ago teaching, translating, and marketing hotels he can’t afford to stay in. When not participating in the eternal cycle of exercising to burn the calories form his love of Japanese food, Casey scours used comic and game shops for forgotten classics, drags his wife around the country in a quest to visit all its castles, sings karaoke not nearly as well as he thinks he does, and counts the days until the summertime bars open on Enoshima Beach.
Posted by Casey Baseel (Page 528)
For those of us born without trust funds, there will be precious few purchasing decisions in life where cost is no object. As a result, it’s important to take advantage of, and savor, that rare opportunity to purchase the very top of the line, whether it takes the form of preferred parking or double-ply toilet paper.
Or, as it did for us at RocketNews24 recently, McDonald’s most expensive Quarter Pounders ever.
With so many hamburger chains in Japan, each has to find a way to differentiate itself from the others. For example, MOS Burger prides itself on its high quality ingredients, and Freshness Burger tells diners right up front where its priorities lie.
With Lotteria, there are two things we’ve come to expect; multiple patty sandwiches, like the nine-layer Evangelion Q burger, and unconventional ingredient pairings, as seen in the chain’s ramen burger. But Lotteria’s newest offering combines both of the restaurant’s signature sales points.
Puberty is a rough age. With your hormones insisting that you’re ready to start making some babies right now, yet your mind, parents, and teachers saying you’re really not, courtship can be difficult. In particular, figuring out an appropriate way to clearly show affection, while still respecting proper boundaries, can be a real quandary. Learning to find the proper middle ground, though, is an important part of growing up.
Or you could just do the like the kids at one Japanese elementary school who said the heck with it and went to town licking each other’s eyeballs.
The restaurant Fukugawa Tsuribune is famous for tempura, especially its anago don, tempura saltwater eel served over a bowl of rice. The restaurant’s version of this Japanese standard draws fans from all over the Tokyo area to its location 35 minutes by train west of downtown.
Needless to say, the restaurant must be doing something right, and once we heard the rumors that the anago portions are extremely generous, we couldn’t keep ourselves away and made the trip out to the restaurant to try it for ourselves.
Zima never really took off in the U.S.. Molson Coors’ clear malt beverage never even made it out of puberty in its home market, lasting just 15 years before the last Zima made for American consumption shipped in 2008.
In Japan though, it’s been a solid hit, particularly at clubs. The company recently asked the lofty question of whether the way human beings party is advancing at the same rate of other aspects of our modern lifestyle, and has decided to give it an evolutionary kick in the backside by creating a robot party band.
Mention Honda to most people, and they’ll think of a successful car company, if still a few rungs below giants Toyota, GM, and Volkswagen in sheer size. But Honda just happens to be the biggest engine manufacturer in the world, providing power for not just for passenger cars, but also motorcycles, scooters, boats, jet aircraft, and even lawnmowers.
Honda’s most die-hard fans point to the company’s racing pedigree and ease with which its engines can be tuned to make more power, both of which factor into its current project of building the world’s fastest riding mower.
Each of Japan’s seasons has its own unique charm. Whether it’s the cherry blossoms of spring, fireworks on the beach in midsummer, crimson maple leaves in the fall, or a hot spring surrounded by winter snow, there’s something to enjoy at almost any point of the calendar.
The glaring exception, though, is the few weeks of rainy season during June, when the constant threat of sudden squalls make the weather report about as reliable as a third-rate palm reader. You’re pretty much guaranteed of getting caught in a shower at some point, and if you’re not lucky enough to be around a 100 yen shop at the time, you’re stuck ducking into a convenience store and paying a premium for a clear plastic umbrella you’ll probably throw away as soon as you get home and can swap it for your sturdier regular one.
Thankfully, convenience store chain Family Mart has a new product to take some of the sting out of that situation.
Long ago, American automobile manufacturers dominated the industry, until Japanese producers started steadily offering superior products through the 1970s, 80s, and 90s. But following years of eroding sales, U.S. companies have finally stepped up their game and returned to competitiveness, with luxury marquee Cadillac recently recording its biggest sales spurt in decades.
Likewise, fast food restaurants from the U.S. initially dominated the hamburger field in Japan, but Japanese brands such as MOS Burger and Freshness Burger have been progressively eating into their market share. Will history repeat itself with a resurgence of quality American burgers? We sent one of our reporters, on assignment in the U.S., to McDonald’s to try its latest creation, the Bacon Habanero Ranch Quarter Pounder. Would it prove too much for the Japanese palate?
Instant ramen gets by far the most attention, but it’s not Japan’s only quick-fix noodle dish. Peyangu-brand instant yakisoba (stir-fried noodles) are available in just about any convenience store, and are an established hit with kids and adults alike.
Similarly, although the country is rightfully known for its scrumptious sashimi, Japanese cuisine also includes several varieties of tasty fish roe, including ikura (salmon roe) as seen at sushi restaurants and popular white rice topping mentaiko (spicy cod roe).
This month Peyangu instant yakisoba with tarako (plain cod roe) went on sale. Unable to pass up this convergence of our gourmet and lazy tendencies, we picked up a couple packs right away.
While travelling in Thailand, I was surprised by the large number of unattended dogs roaming about town. Much like the country’s citizens, though, they’re generally good-natured, and you’ll often see the laid-back pooches sleeping peacefully in plazas, next to temples, and along riverbanks.
Thai society appreciates the value of a good nap, but one canine in the city of Ayutthaya has more than just cultural justification for taking a snooze. Pui the Bangkaew dog has earned himself a little bit of rest and relaxation by saving a baby’s life.
With the rainy season already here in Japan it’s time to start planning out your summer activities. Anime fans already have July 20 marked on their calendars, being the day when the newest animated film from Studio Ghibli, The Wind Rises, is set to premier. With legendary studio head Hayao Miyazaki back in the director’s chair, expectations are sky high for the tale about Jiro Horikoshi, the designer of the Zero fighter plane used by the Japanese military in World War II.
It’s normal to see trailers for upcoming films when you go to the movies, and some theatres are currently showing an extended four-minute preview for The Wind Rises. What’s unusual is some cinemas’ decision to show the preview directly following the conclusion of the feature film viewers just paid to see.
Among the numerous luxuries the Conrad Tokyo provides guests is the hotel’s extensive list of amenities, such as uniquely-scented soaps, shampoos and rubber duckies to make bath time in your opulent, free-standing tub just that much better.
Of course, these pale in comparison to the perks offered for the traveler who books a room in the hotel’s newest promotional package, which include a 552-horsepower mid-engined supercar.
There are plenty of difficulties in learning Japanese, from the thousands of kanji characters you have to memorize to the fact that the language doesn’t have a future tense. Pronunciation, though, isn’t that big of a hurdle. Japanese contains only 47 syllables to master, which may sound like a lot, but is in actuality pretty paltry compared to most other languages.
One of the biggest effects this limited pronunciation repertoire has is that Japanese is filled with homonyms. For example, kyoushi could mean either “a teacher” or “death by way of insanity.” Where there are words that sound alike, there are puns, and now where there are puns, there’s the president of Domino’s Pizza Japan.
Something every guidebook mentions about table manners in Japan is that, while almost every restaurant and home keeps a bottle of soy sauce on the table, it’s there to add to things like sashimi and grated radish, and not to be poured on white rice.
This isn’t to say that people in Japan always eat their rice plain, though. A recent Internet popularity poll pitted four of the country’s top rice toppings against each other in a battle royale.
Among the extensive pantheon of ramen varieties is tsukemen, in which the noodles are served on a dish with a bowl of dipping sauce on the side. My first experience with the dish was in college, when a buddy took me to a tsukemen place that had opened up near our campus in Tokyo that was famous for their sauce made with fish stock. At the time it seemed like a wildly exotic concoction, but little did I know that years later my hometown of Los Angeles would produce an even more outlandish version of the dish: marshmallow ramen.
So here’s a tricky question: do desserts count as masculine or feminine food? On the one hand, a slice of chocolate cake is just as bold a statement of your culinary decadence as a nice fried pork cutlet. In either case, it’s at least a little wild and macho to eat something with such shaky nutritional value yet unquestionable deliciousness, similar to how I rationalize eating a pack of ham out of the fridge when I’m too lazy to go buy bread for a sandwich as being a natural result of my raging testosterone.
On the other hand, sweets are, well, sweet. Truly red-blooded males can’t even bring themselves to utter the word “sweet” unless they add “taste of revenge” after it while clenching a fist and glaring at the horizon.
Thankfully, Japanese convenience store chain Family Mart is here to help end this confusion with a line of desserts tailor-made for everybody born with a Y chromosome.
If there’s one thing Japan loves, it’s ramen, and if there’s a second thing, it’s hot springs (or onsen in Japanese).
We recently found a place in Tokyo’s Suginami Ward that combines both.
One of the greatest things in Japan are kaiten-zushi restaurants, where customers sit at a counter and grab little plates of sushi that go streaming by on a conveyer belt. With instant gratification, no language barrier, and a far cheaper price than traditional sushi restaurants, what’s not to like?
One of the most popular kaiten-zushi chains is Sushi Ro, with its low 105 yen (US$1.05) prices. The fish is quite tasty too, enough so that most customers don’t bother with the various non-sushi side dishes the chain also offers. But if you can pull yourself away from the succulent slices of tuna and amberjack for a moment, you’ll be doing yourself a favor to get an order of Sushi Ro’s French fries.
Changes are expected to be made to the Vietnamese constitution this October during sessions of the country’s National Assembly. The current constitution was ratified in 1992 as part of the doimoi political movement that relaxed many of the government’s economic controls, and was a major departure from its previous incarnation.
Although minor revisions were made to the constitution in 2001, far more extensive alterations are expected in the next round. Among the many points to be discussed is the possibility of altering the country’s official name.
Who needs copyrights when you’ve got over nine dozen iconic anime characters?
The past few years have seen a handful of anime projects featuring anime characters crossing over from one franchise to the other. Famed thief Lupin III crossed paths with the great detective Conan himself in 2009, and the pirates of One Piece have teamed up with both omnivorous master hunter Toriko and Dragon Ball hero Son Goku.
But what if instead of just combining one or two series, you tried to combine all of them?
Secret hot spring onsen in Japan is a hidden gem waiting to be discovered by tourists
A trip to see the breathtaking mountain beauty of Nagano’s Kamikochi【Part 1】
Japan Weak Men’s Center suddenly cancels men-only train event
Does Starbucks Japan’s new holiday Frappuccino really taste like a cup of fallen snow?
Japanese samurai randoseru backpack lets you carry the bushido spirit with you wherever you go
Pokémon doughnuts appear at Mister Donut, with Diglett as the star!
Sip with Snorlax – Clever drinkware design creates Pokémon in your glass with every pour【Pics】
Cat paw yoghurt is now a thing in Japan
New heater-less pet kotatsu is a safe way to keep your furry friends warm this winter
What’s the most popular way to prepare Japan’s beloved breakfast dish, Tamago Kake Gohan?
Nintendo’s controller capsule toys are so cool, even the machine you buy them from is awesome【Pics】
American gun owner opens our eyes to a different way of life in Tokyo
Japanese communities giving their skylines a spring clean and saying goodbye to power lines
New Akita Inu and Hachiko marshmallows are the best and squishiest souvenirs from Japan
Burger King Japan creates Kyoto Whopper, its most Japanese burger ever, with Kyoto rice merchant
Starbucks Japan unveils new Holiday goods for 2024Sip with Snorlax – Clever drinkware design creates Pokémon in your glass with every pour【Pics】
Totoro stamp collection lets you add adorable Ghibli touches to cards and letters【Photos】
Overwhelmed by modern social media? Japanese company is bringing back pagers with an emoji-twist
Discovered: An even better way to open Japanese convenience store rice balls【Video】
Studio Ghibli releases new insect whistle necklace from Nausicaä of the Valley of the WindNintendo’s controller capsule toys are so cool, even the machine you buy them from is awesome【Pics】
Totoro sequel anime Mei and the Baby Catbus will screen at Ghibli Park this winter
Tokyo Disneyland loses top-attendance crown for Japanese theme parks for second year in a row
Starbucks Japan unveils Halloween Frappuccino for 2024, and it’s like drinking a magic spell
Evangelion creator Hideaki Anno returning to anime with new project for 50-year-old franchise
Studio Ghibli releases new Howl’s Moving Castle goods that capture the magic from the anime movie
Adult Jam Bread causes a stir at store in Tokyo
What’s the deal with akebi, the perfectly purple, alien-like fruit that’s in season now in Japan?
Kyoto becomes City of Yokai, with Night Parade of One Hundred Demons festival this autumn
McDonald’s new Happy Meals offer up cute and practical Sanrio lifestyle goods
Foreign tourists on Shinkansen bullet train break suitcase etiquette, angering local passengers
[Deleted] Article written for April Fool’s Day 2018
Japanese government to make first change to romanization spelling rules since the 1950s
Foreigner’s request for help in Tokyo makes us sad for the state of society
Ghibli founders Toshio Suzuki and Hayao Miyazaki contribute to Japanese whisky Totoro label design
Japanese convenience store Family Mart announces abolishment of eat-in spaces
Princesses, fruits, and blacksmiths: Study reveals the 30 most unusual family names in Japan
Doraemon found buried at sea as scene from 1993 anime becomes real life【Photos】
Life-size vibrating Legend of Zelda Master Sword for sale from Nintendo【Photos】
Pokémon doughnuts appear at Mister Donut, with Diglett as the star!
Sip with Snorlax – Clever drinkware design creates Pokémon in your glass with every pour【Pics】
Cat paw yoghurt is now a thing in Japan
New heater-less pet kotatsu is a safe way to keep your furry friends warm this winter
What’s the most popular way to prepare Japan’s beloved breakfast dish, Tamago Kake Gohan?
Daiso opens massive new 25,392-square foot Tokyo flagship store with its two sub-brands included
McDonald’s Japan now sells pies in…Dalmatian dog boxes
Dark and edgy Jujustu Kaisen teams up with bright and cheery Sanrio for new merch line【Pics】
We tried a Japanese egg steamer to achieve the perfect breakfast eggs without a stove
How to cook miso soup (the right way) in a few simple steps【RocketKitchen】
Junior high student shut down 444 school websites to “remind teachers they are incompetent”
Japanese Prime Minister once criticized deploying military to fight Godzilla
No one knows what Bandai’s real-life Pot of Greed does, but it’s still pretty cool