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Our Top 3 Meals of Mt. Fuji! (Because It’s Not All About the Climb)

Every year, thousands of climbers make the trek up Mt. Fuji, the tallest mountain in Japan and symbol of the country. Three of our wilderness-loving editors joined their ranks last month, persevering through bad weather, poor physical condition and light injury until they reached the peak.

If there was one thing that kept them from giving up it was the mountain huts lining the trail leading up to the summit. Here our adventurers were able to rest their weary legs and enjoy a hearty meal to refuel their stomachs and spirits.

“There was a surprising amount of variety and almost everything we ate was delicious,” writes one of our reporters.

It seems mountain cuisine is also one of the perks of climbing Fuji—but what’s on the menu? Check below for our trailblazing trio’s report on the food of Mt. Fuji!

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Lifehack for Curry Fiends: Get More for Your Yen at CoCo Ichibanya

Any Japanese curry fans out there? If you’ve tried it, you know it’s in a whole separate class from the Thai and Indian curries most Westerners are used to. The sauce is dark brown and generally thicker and sweeter than other Asian curries, though the taste varies from shop to shop, and is served with rice. Along with some onions, carrots and potatoes, you can usually find some nice chunks of pork or beef in your basic curry, and then you can choose from a variety of toppings to make it your own.

For curry connoisseurs there’s nothing sadder than when you are enjoying your plate of curry rice and suddenly realize that you’re running out of curry faster than rice. You’re left rationing the last of your curry or finishing your meal with a couple of bites of disappointingly plain rice. Most people don’t know this, but if you are eating at the popular chain CoCo Ichibanya–affectionately known as CoCo Ichi–you can order more curry for free! Read More

SmartHan Rice Tubes Offer Japanese New Way to Snack! Is This the End of Onigiri?

Tired of stuffing rice balls in your bag only to have them get squished and smear sticky rice all over your important work documents?

Takara Tomy Arts is here to answer your plea with SmartHan (han means “rice”), a revolutionary new way to enjoy your favorite rice dish from home while on the go!

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French fries, or “furaido potato”, as they are called here in Japan, are the standard side order to all kinds of fast food.  Which fast food shop has the best tasting fries in Japan? My Navi News  decided to find out by canvassing 1000 working men and women from the ages of 22 to 32 on Japanese social networking service Mixi.

The results show the top fast food shops ranked by their french fries along with a few select comments from those polled. Their occupations and genders are also shown and although there may not be any direct correlation in occupation to french fry tastes, their education does suggest a discerning taste in french fry eating.  The gender of the people taking the survey appears to have absolutely no significance except that ‘gender role-happy’ Japan cares about such information.

The survey was conducted by simply asking, “Which fast food restaurant makes the best french fries?”

And the winners are… Read More

Tokyo Restaurant Serves Sheep Brain Curry, We Investigate

About 95-97% of the population of Pakistan is Muslim, which means there’s not a lot of pork eaten in the country. Pakistanis do, however, eat a lot of sheep. And when they eat sheep, they eat all of the sheep — meat, heart, genitals, brains, you name it and Pakistanis have a recipe for it.

If you know where to look, you can even find Pakistani restaurants here in Japan that serve dishes using some of the more exotic parts of the animal.

One such restaurant is Maruhaba in Ikebukuro, Tokyo, which serves sheep brain curry.

We recently sent reporter Mr. Sato to Maruhaba to try the dish out; after all, he looks like he could benefit from a little more brain.

His report follows below:

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  • Aug 24, 2012

It seems there’s never a shortage of character-themed steamed buns (niku-man in Japanese) coming onto the market in Japan. In the past, we’ve seen buns modeled after Hatsune Miku, Spiderman, slime from Dragon Quest and Puyo Puyo to name a few. So who’s the newest character to be steamed into a tasty little bun? It’s none other than our beloved “cat of all trades”, Ms. Kitty! Read More

Chilled Soy Milk Ramen Topped With Rayu Ice Cream is Newest Creation at Adventurous Musashi Ramen Shop

The world’s most venturesome ramen shop, Musashi Noodles, fearlessly created a cold ramen dish with soy milk soup and rayu, or chili oil, ice cream.  Musashi Noodles is a Japanese noodle shop franchise.  Their Shinjuku branch held a Valentines special promotion back in February featuring Unique Chocolate Ramen.

Summer in Japan is when ramen shops do a booming business in cold noodle dishes like  hiyashi chuka.   This new creation dubbed ‘tonyu hiyashi men’ or soy milk cold noodles, is available for a limited time only.  Notice the  scoop of red rayu ice cream floating in the white soy milk soup.  A timely creation, full of national pride for all those medals won in the Olympics!   But what about the taste?  One of our reporters went to check it out. Read More

What kind of person are you attracted to?  Good looking and intelligent may be at the top of many people’s list of attractive attributes, but not all of us are blessed with an abundance of physical beauty and/or high intelligence.

Self sufficiency and outspokenness would normally be good characteristics to have but are also widely overlooked by the male species when searching for a female to spend time with.  ‘Ah she doesn’t need me’, would be a likely initial reaction.  This could be one of the great universal truths: cultural boundaries disappear in the need for us to be needed.

Alright, so something has to be done and since it takes time for someone to find your ‘inner beauty’, you may want to try these sure-fire tactics, courtesy of our female Japanese editorial staff, for getting someone you’re interested in to be interested in you.  Ladies, arm yourselves!

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Jellied Eggs, Pleasing to the Eye and Good for the Skin

Did you know that along with the ultra violet rays of the sun, summer heat reduces collagen in the skin?  We have enough to worry about with what aging does to our collagen reserves!  The winter provides lots of opportunity to boost collagen intake through eating gelatinous  ingredients like pork and chicken cartilaginous cuts of meat, in nabe, the hot-pot dish where everyone helps themselves while sitting around a steaming pot of simmering ingredients.  But who wants to eat nabe in summer!

Gelatin is the answer!  Gelatin consists of collagen and is used to gel things.  A web search for good gelatin recipes resulted in finding jellied eggs from this website, ediva, “Jellied Eggs: Great Recipe for Easter”.  Well it isn’t Easter but never mind,  jellied eggs can also be eaten in the hot summer, a cooling healthy treat. Read More

“Slime” Flavored Gum Now on Sale in Japan, Grants 1 XP

Dragon Quest’s Slime was always one of the tastier-looking characters in the series. I mean, come on, he’s basically a blue gummi with a face drawn on—how could you not want to stick that in your mouth and chew on it?

Well now you can, with Fit’s MAGIQ Slime Flavor chewing gum by Lotte!

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Rey Ayanami’s Spear of Longinus is a Large and Unsightly Broken Churro

On August 15, Japanese convenience store chain Lawson launched a Evangelion tie-in campaign to promote the November release of the film Evangelion: 3.0 You Can (Not) Redo.

Like any other Japanese convenience store promotion, Lawson is selling a small collection of limited-edition Evangelion goods and snacks. Among them is a package of 2 “churro sticks” called “Rei Ayanami’s Spear of Longinus,” supposedly modeled after the iconic weapon.

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If you ever visit Japan and want to sample one of the staples of local cuisine, find a convenience store and grab an onigiri, or rice ball. Easy to make, plentiful in variety and an essential component of any bento lunch, the onigiri is to Japan what the sandwich is to the West.

But with so many different fillings, how do you know which onigiri to try out? If you want a taste of the REAL Japan, you need to eat what REAL Japanese people are eating, which is why we’d like to share with you this REAL list ranking the most popular onigiri fillings in Japan.

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The Very Bitter Gourd ‘Goya’ Ripens into a Sweet Treat!

The goya represents summer in Japan in many ways.  This bitter gourd is a staple of Okinawa cuisine with a tropical image, its bitterness is celebrated as one of the healthiest foods around.  If you can stand the bitterness then it is excellent for the skin, a beauty aide for women!

The ever popular ‘green curtain’, which is a vine plant grown on netting over windows to keep out the heat, often consists of goya plants.  The leaves grow thick and can keep direct sunlight out considerably saving on cooling costs!

Goya growers and super markets throw out the over-ripe goya when it yellows, I suppose because it stops being the well-loved summer vegetable we all know.

But wait!  If you let it ripen, it turns into a bright yellow sweet fruit!  WOW!  Where did that bitterness go?
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“Shiba Inu Plump Booty Curry” is the Curry of Choice for Dog-Lovers and Booty-Lovers Alike

The Shiba Inu is one adorable little ball of fluff, especially from behind. I mean, who can resist that curled up tail nestled atop a plump little posterior that shakes back and forth as they trot along.

Japanese blogger and Shiba Inu-lover Takedatake has recently found inspiration in that captivating rear view for a novel at-home recipe he calls: “Shiba Inu Plump Booty Curry.”

Instructions on how to make the dish follow below:

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A lone salaryman walks in to a room with bento in hand and sits down at a table to enjoy his lunch in privacy. He unties the knot holding together the bandana bundle to reveal a small brown bento box and chopsticks case. Finally, the man removes the lid from the bento to unveil a mouth-watering assortment of…colored yarn?

What follows is some hardcore lunchtime needlework.

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Kit Kat Ice Cream Cone is Seriously Just a Kit Kat in an Ice Cream Cone

You’d think that when someone at Nestle proposed making a Kit Kat ice cream cone, they would have taken the conventional route and used ice cream with crushed up bits of Kit Kat in it.

But that was not the case with the frozen treat we came across at a supermarket during a recent trip to Sakhalin. Instead, this “Kit Kat Cone” was nothing more than a regular store-bought ice cream cone with a single Kit Kat wedged in the top.

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McD’s “Miami Fries”, Only in Italia! We Went to Have a Taste

They don’t mess around in Italy. Next to the regular french fries on the McDonald’s menu, you’ll find Miami Fries. Customers regularly substitute these fries with the combo sets. Read More

Tomato Juice Fad Dead at 6 months

We had a lot of fun here at RocketNews informing you of the tomato juice diet fad earlier this year, followed by the shocking announcement of tomato juice preventing drunkenness.

Despite my own personal hatred for this beverage that tastes like vomit chilled in the freezer for 30 minutes, it was good to see people get into this otherwise healthy drink.

Sadly, it looks as if this fad has run its course, based on the latest tomato juice based research sponsored by juice maker Kagome.  Coroners have estimated the time of death for the fad to be 9:20pm on July 2nd.

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  • Jul 4, 2012

Pile It On! Beef Rice Bowls May be Japan’s Favorite Rice Bowl Dish, But This Pork Bowl Certainly Offers a Tasty and Voluminous Alternative

Okay, it’s a fact that the Japanese love “gyu-don“— braised beef and onions on rice, sometimes topped with a raw egg. All over Japan, you can find a gyudon shop on almost every street. But what if you’re in a mood for something other than a beef rice bowl? Well, we’ve found a shop that offers an excellent alternative, “buta-don“, or pork on rice. And we’re not talking about just any regular buta-don. At this shop, you can order an extra-large buta-don that really piles the pork on – so much, in fact, that you can barely see the bowl beneath all the pork! Read More

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