Bringing you yesterday's news from Japan and Asia, today.
food (Page 207)
On November 18, Asahi released its new Fuji-san Vanadium Natural Water Hot, apparently banking on the idea that regular convenience store-going human beings would both a) know what Vanadium is, and b) actually want to consume just plain hot water out of a bottle.
While out shopping the other day, I picked up a bag of prewashed rice. The grocery store was having a sale, so it was just as cheap as the unwashed kinds, and I figured, “Hey, there’s no advantage to having to rinse it myself is there?”
But as it turns out, the water left over after you wash the rice, called togijiru in Japanese, is actually pretty useful, as shown by these five ways you can reuse it instead of just dumping it down the sink.
If you’ve been on an apple diet, you know the pain of having to munch on nothing but apples all day long. Sure, they are sweet and juicy, but the same old apple can get boring. Just when you’re getting sick of the fruit, it’s time to start exploring more delicious ways of enjoying apples to spice things up a little. We have come up with a super easy way of making delicious apple compote that will satisfy your sweet tooth and not ruin your diet! I personally think this is one of the best discoveries we’ve made so far!
Oita, on the eastern coast of Japan’s southern island of Kyushu, has taken to billing itself as Onsen-ken. And while that title loses a bit of its rhyming appeal once it’s translated into English, it’s hard to deny that it really is the Hot Spring Prefecture, as Oita boasts more hot springs than anywhere else in Japan.
As a matter of fact, Oita has so much geothermal water that it can get creative with its most attractive and relaxing natural resource, as shown by these unique ways locals and tourists can enjoy the prefecture’s hot springs.
With such a wide range of delicious and delectable (and, erm, shall we say unusual) snack foods available in Japan, it’s a little hard to understand when people get whipped up into a frenzy over plainer options, such as toast and bread crusts fried with sugar. Now, twitter users in Japan are getting their tastebuds in a twist over the confusingly-named “English Toast”, a sweet snacklet that first became popular in Aomori prefecture and has now expanded into a whole range of conbini sandwiches. But what on earth is it?
When living in another country it’s only natural to miss some of the tastes of home. In my case, the extreme rarity of root beer has been a source of sadness. Time to time I’ll come across a supermarket or import shop that carries it and am sure to pick up a can despite its often exorbitant price of around 200 yen (US$1.69).
The reason for the absence of the drink on the Japanese market is obvious though. Although root beer has its share of detractors even in its home of America, the sheer number of people who can’t stand the stuff in Japan is huge. What is it that makes root beer so overwhelmingly disgusting to Japanese people?
Japan is always up for a little entertainment with its meals. As a result, dotted around Tokyo you’ll find restaurants where you can dine on food inspired by cute and cool characters from animation, video games, and the like.
Usually, these fictional icons are Japanese in origin, but it turns out that Snoopy and the rest of the Peanuts gang have enough of a following for not just one, but two new restaurants collaborations in Tokyo.
The moment it was unveiled earlier this week, dozens of English-language blogs and news sites slammed Burger King Japan’s new seasonal offering, suggesting that the very notion of a hamburger topped with berries and slathered with a sweet pink sauce sounded about as appetising as a sweetfish hotdog served with a side of sick.
Aside from the occasional slice of pineapple, it is indeed rare to find fruit slipped between a hamburger’s buns, but knowing how well meats like turkey and pork go with sweet and sticky glazes and sauces, we at RocketNews24 remained optimistic that Burger King was not in fact trying to kill us with its latest creation, and headed down to try it for ourselves.
And as it turns out, the Premium Berry burger is actually kind of awesome.
Which is worse, hair in your mayonnaise or mayonnaise in your hair? Assuming you haven’t actually eaten any, hair in your mayo is actually a pretty easy problem to rectify. You either toss the jar out, or you make lunch for any of your sworn enemies who’d accept a surprise sandwich from you despite your less than friendly relationship.
Mayonnaise in your hair, on the other hand, means you yourself are dirty though, and you’ve got to stop whatever you’re doing (such as crafting diabolical plots against your aforementioned enemies) to go and shampoo, right?
Actually, you don’t, according to people in Japan who say spreading a little mayo on your hair is actually good for it.
Preparing a delicious bowl of rice is an absolutely essential part of Japanese cuisine, and fortunately for most amateur cooks today’s modern rice cookers have made that task as simple as pressing as button.
While these handy machines can whip up a tasty bowl of rice with little to no effort, we wanted to try out a time-consuming cooking method we learned from the popular food-themed manga Oishinbo. In it, one of the main characters painstakingly examines and sorts each grain of rice to prepare what is described as “a taste you won’t forget in 15 years.” But is all that hard work worth it?
It’s hard not to love onigiri, those handy little triangular parcels of rice and seaweed stuffed with tasty fillings ranging from plum to fish to chicken and more. Onigiri are a ubiquitous snack in Japan, available at every convenience store in a range of varieties for the cost of a few coins. But even though conbini onigiri are usually fresh and tasty, it’s also nice to run across smaller stands and stores selling hand-made onigiri sometimes. Unless you happen to stop by this establishment inside Shinagawa Station in Tokyo – because their onigiri leaves a lot to be desired when it comes to presentation. That is unless you like eating something with a big fish butt hanging out of it…
It’s amazingly easy to find good food in Japan, which is largely due to how hard many food industry professionals work when choosing ingredients are and preparing their dishes. Every now and then, though, the country stumbles across some new delectable that, by any logical standard, has no right tasting as good as it does while being so quick and simple to make.
For example, this week Japan discovered a delicious cheese snack with just one ingredient that you could be enjoying in literally two minutes.
When eating sushi, it’s customary to dip each morsel into a small dish of soy sauce before popping it into your mouth. True connoisseurs hold that the proper way to do this is to first turn each piece over so that just the fish, and not the rice, comes into contact with the soy.
However, gripping the piece firmly enough to pick it up, yet gently as to not crush the rice, rotating it 180 degrees for the dip, then spinning it back again to eat can be tricky, especially if you’re not used to chopsticks (or if you’re not used to the sake you’ve paired with your sushi). So if you’ve got a cultured palate but lack manual dexterity, this special sushi soy sauce spray is seemingly the solution.
Every place in Japan wants to be famous for something or other; to have one specific dish or product that nowhere else has as much of or does quite as well. And while the port city of Yokohama might be known for its vast and varied Chinese cuisine, when it comes to gyoza – those bitesized Chinese dumplings that have been so tweaked by the Japanese that they’re often considered home-grown – Tochigi Prefeture’s Utsunomiya City is undoubtedly the place to be, with its residents proud to call their prefecture the Japanese capital of gyoza.
After taking a trip to the prefecture, we think they might just be right. Along with the dozens of delicious gyoza stalls and restaurants we encountered, we quickly stumbled upon a number of unusual gyoza-infused offerings, three of which we just had to try for ourselves. Join us after the jump for our taste test of Tochigi Prefecutre’s Gyoza Burger, Gyoza Chips and Gyoza Bread!
There are a number of upsides to Sailor Moon Crystal, the recent reboot of the smash hit anime from the 1990s. Aside from benefitting from 20 years of advancement in animation technology and technique, the franchise’s proven record of success means that Crystal has a higher budget and sticks closer to creator Naoko Takeuchi’s manga than the previous adaptation did.
Still, a reboot is a reboot, and if you’ve already watched all 200 episodes of the original Sailor Moon, Sailor Moon R, Sailor Moon S, Sailor Moon Super S, and Sailor Moon Sailor Stars, then you’ve got a pretty big head start on many of the places Crystal’s plot is going. So if you’re the kind of person who snacks when you get bored, maybe some Sailor Moon tortilla chips will help you pass the time.
Although I never met the man, Colonel Sanders doesn’t strike me as a hurried individual. Anybody who’s willing to add 11 different seasonings to his fried chicken can see the value in taking the time to appreciate the finer things in life. I like to imagine that rather than rush through his meals, the KFC founder would linger at the table, at least for a few minutes, and when his schedule allowed, for periods extending to “a spell.”
That’s why I think he’d approve of KFC opening its first full-fledged café this month in Japan.
Japan loves to wow you with cute and tiny food. Sometimes the food is so tiny you need a magnifying glass to truly appreciate its beauty. Other times the food is so cute you can barely stand to eat it. However, you don’t often hear about the opposite end of the spectrum in Japan. The “Land of the Rising Sun” isn’t known for its gigantic foods and proportions. (You can leave that to the United States.)
But perhaps some restaurants are trying to separate themselves from the pack by adopting some more “Western” ideas. A restaurant in Nagoya is selling a dish of three humongous shrimp, and it’s definitely a sight to be seen! If you’ve never seen the largest shrimp in the world before, they make jumbo shrimp look, well…shrimpy!
North American fans of the mouth-less Sanrio feline can now rejoice as the first ever Hello Kitty Cafe will finally land on their continent!
Announced in the form of a bright pink food truck at the Hello Kitty Convention held in Los Angeles, fans were elated to learn that Hello Kitty will finally get her own cafe in California! Judging by the extreme cuteness of the pictures released so far, it seems like this cafe will take kawaii to a whole new level!
The vagaries of reading in Japanese mean that often the same text or numbers can be said a variety of ways. For example, some of the many readings for 2 and 9 and “ni” and “ku,” which combine to form niku, the Japanese word for “meat,” which is how November 29 became known in some circles as Meat Day. Going from the carnivorous to the carnal, 8 can be read as “hai,” making both November 28 and February 8 observed as Knee-High Socks Days.
Sometimes, though, you don’t need pun-filled pronunciations for an excuse to start a pseudo-holiday. Writing November 11 all in numerals gets you 11-11, and all those vertical lines look to some like a handful of enticing Pocky sticks. And so, this week Japan celebrated Pocky Day by not only devouring boxes of the stuff, but by turning the chocolate-covered treats into works of physical and photographic art.
Last month, Becker’s, Japan Railway East’s hamburger chain, announced its venison burger, which put us in a bit of a quandary. It’s part of our life’s mission to try every intriguing bun-based sandwich we come across, but could we really bring ourselves to eat something as cute as a deer?
Sure we could!
Foreigner’s request for help in Tokyo makes us sad for the state of society
Japanese city loses residents’ personal data, which was on paper being transported on a windy day
Mt. Koya planning to instate visitor’s tax to cope with huge tourist numbers
Should you add tartar sauce to Japanese curry rice? CoCo Ichi makes diners an unusual offer
Akihabara pop-up shop sells goods made by Japanese prison inmates
Red light district sushi restaurant in Tokyo shows us just how wrong we were about it
Osaka governor suggests lowering voting age to 0 to curb population decline
Historical figures get manga makeovers from artists of Spy x Family, My Hero Academia and more
Suntory x Super Mario collaboration creates a clever way to transform into Mario【Videos】
Ghibli Park now selling “Grilled Frogs” from food cart in Valley of Witches
McDonald’s new Happy Meals offer up cute and practical Sanrio lifestyle goodsForeigner’s request for help in Tokyo makes us sad for the state of society
Japanese ramen restaurants under pressure from new yen banknotes
French Fries Bread in Tokyo’s Shibuya becomes a hit on social media
Studio Ghibli releases new action figures featuring Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind characters
New private rooms on Tokaido Shinkansen change the way we travel from Tokyo to KyotoRed light district sushi restaurant in Tokyo shows us just how wrong we were about it
Tokyo Tsukiji fish market site to be redeveloped with 50,000-seat stadium, hotel, shopping center
All-you-can-drink Starbucks and amazing views part of Tokyo’s new 170 meter-high sky lounge
Beautiful Ghibli sealing wax kits let you create accessories and elegant letter decorations【Pics】McDonald’s new Happy Meals offer up cute and practical Sanrio lifestyle goodsForeigner’s request for help in Tokyo makes us sad for the state of society
Studio Ghibli releases Kiki’s Delivery Service chocolate cake pouches in Japan
New definition of “Japanese whiskey” goes into effect to prevent fakes from fooling overseas buyers
Our Japanese reporter visits Costco in the U.S., finds super American and very Japanese things
Studio Ghibli unveils Mother’s Day gift set that captures the love in My Neighbour TotoroJapanese ramen restaurants under pressure from new yen banknotesAll-you-can-drink Starbucks and amazing views part of Tokyo’s new 170 meter-high sky lounge
More foreign tourists than ever before in history visited Japan last month
New Pokémon cakes let you eat your way through Pikachu and all the Eevee evolutionsMcDonald’s new Happy Meals offer up cute and practical Sanrio lifestyle goods
Sales of Japan’s most convenient train ticket/shopping payment cards suspended indefinitely
Sold-out Studio Ghibli desktop humidifiers are back so Totoro can help you through the dry season
Japanese government to make first change to romanization spelling rules since the 1950s
Ghibli founders Toshio Suzuki and Hayao Miyazaki contribute to Japanese whisky Totoro label design
Doraemon found buried at sea as scene from 1993 anime becomes real life【Photos】
Tokyo’s most famous Starbucks is closed
One Piece characters’ nationalities revealed, but fans have mixed opinions
We asked a Uniqlo employee what four things we should buy and their suggestions didn’t disappoint
Princesses, fruits, and blacksmiths: Study reveals the 30 most unusual family names in Japan
Red light district sushi restaurant in Tokyo shows us just how wrong we were about it
Osaka governor suggests lowering voting age to 0 to curb population decline
Historical figures get manga makeovers from artists of Spy x Family, My Hero Academia and more
Suntory x Super Mario collaboration creates a clever way to transform into Mario【Videos】
Ghibli Park now selling “Grilled Frogs” from food cart in Valley of Witches
Sakura tree falls on man at Sannenzaka near Kiyomizu temple in Kyoto 【Breaking News】
Harajuku Station’s beautiful old wooden building is set to return, with a new complex around it
Smash Bros. director Sakurai stabs Kirby in the face, has delicious justification for it
Snuggle up to Totoro with cosy new three-piece Ghibli bag collection
Japan’s massive matcha parfait weighs 6 kilos, contains hidden surprises for anyone who eats it
New train recreates hotel atmosphere with wood interiors and views from the foot of Mount Fuji
Anime girl English teacher Ellen-sensei becomes VTuber/VVTUber and NFT
The best Japanese cosplayers from Day 4 of Winter Comiket 2019【Photos】
Haku is…Chihiro’s dead brother? Studio Ghibli fans blown away by Spirited Away theory