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Take it From a Native! Recipe for Delicious Japanese Curry as Found at Coco Ichiban

Developed in India and then passed down through the hands of the British, curry has found a happy home with the Japanese and their cuisine. So much so that it’s known as one of Japan’s top three universally adored foods! Curry is served in schools, in homes, and in restaurants nationwide. There’s likely not a dining table in all of Japan that has never seen a plate of spicy rue pass across its surface. Japanese curry, filled with bits of meat and vegetables in sweet and spicy sauce and ladled over piping hot rice, is just superb! It’s the perfect comfort food, loved by kids and adults alike.

Tell me, is your mouth watering yet? We hope so, because today we’re bringing you a recipe for making curry just like the stuff you find at Curry House Coco Ichibanya, the Guinness World Record holder for largest curry restaurant chain. Often called simply “Coco Ichi” by Japanese locals, this popular chain has more than 1,300 restaurants world-wide!

Curry may be known for its complex balance of flavors, but even using store-bought rue, it’s easy to recreate the flavor of a top-class curry restaurant in your own home! Keep reading for the full recipe. Read More

We Sample Traditional Portuguese Cuisine… at McDonald’s

Our fast food correspondent Kuzo constantly travels the world visiting exotic countries and partaking of their McDonald’s menus to see what wonders they have in store. In the past, we’ve seen him visit McDonald’s restaurants in Turkey and Russia to name a few, but now his McSight is set on Portugal. Here is his super-sized McReport, translated into English for you, our beautiful, hungry readers.

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New MOS Burgers are 100% Beef, Still 0% Moss


Despite Japan’s image as a country where people mainly eat fish and pickled vegetables, the truth is the country has some serious carnivorous tendencies. Aside from scores of independent hamburger joints, you’ll find branches of McDonald’s and Burger King, along with home-grown chains such as First Kitchen and MOS Burger.

MOS Burger’s name becomes less intimidating, if no less nonsensical, when you find out it stands for “Mountain Ocean Sun” burger. With over 1,000 locations across Japan and a reputation for high-quality ingredients, MOS has legions of fans, so it was big news when the company announced a major change to its burgers. Read More

These Guys Keep All Their Cuteness Even When Cooked! We Try Deep-Fried Axolotl in Osaka

It came to the attention of our staff recently that there’s a restaurant down in Osaka that serves deep-fried axolotl. You know, the Mexican salamanders. The ones that had an enormous boom in popularity in the 1980s. the ones that are proudly kept in cool tanks as adorable pets. The ones that inspired the creation of the Pokémon, Wooper. Those axolotl!

Our sweet, little reporter Usagi didn’t realize that by bringing up the topic of eating axolotl she’s be asked to write an article about it, but that’s what happens when one introduces strange and interesting foods to our editors! It was time for our reporter to chow down on some deep-fried adorable salamanders. Read More

How to Make a Self-Contained Bacon, Egg, and Cheese Sandwich, a New Twist on an Old Favorite

Foreigners who live in Japan quickly learn that sliced bread is not this country’s bread and butter. Being a country that relies on rice for daily meals it’s near impossible to find a reasonably priced full-length loaf of sliced bread.

Instead most supermarkets offer small packs containing four to eight slices each of which can be monstorously thick. For people like me who like to make sandwiches every day, this means constant trips to the store to refill on bread.

However, one recipe that made it big on Twitter by Japanese user Yu Tsukari handed down by her mother thankfully can reduce my bread shopping by half. It’s an extremely simple yet clever way to take advantage of Japan’s thicker-sliced bread. You too can give it a try by following our illustrated guide.

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We Try One of the World’s Most Unique Boiled Eggs

Surely, this has to be one of the most unique boiled eggs in the world. In case you can’t make it out properly, we ought to explain that this is a duck egg. With a duck embryo inside. And that strip of black there is indeed baby duck fur. It’s an image so frightful to some that eating it became a featured challenge on TV shows like Survivor and Fear Factor. To others, however, this is simply a delicious Filipino street delicacy.

Keeping an open mind, we plucked up the courage to try one of these babies (pun very much intended) while on a recent trip to the Philippines with one of our Filipino friends. But what did it taste like? And what does a whole baby duck feel like inside your mouth? We give you everything you need to know, complete with mouth-watering photos.

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Say Goodbye, Japan — Häagen-Dazs to Close Last Store on April 25

Sorry guys, but no more pick-and-mix cups, cones or parfaits of tantalizingly delicious Häagen-Dazs ice cream will be available in Japan as of Friday, the last of the well-known brand’s outlets is scheduled to close up on April 25.

Though you’ll no longer be able mix your favorite flavors into a cup of scrumptiousness at a Häagen-Dazs-branded shop, the purveyor of pleasurable experiences (or so the ads tell us) will continue to sell pre-packaged offerings at convenience stores and supermarkets throughout the country.

So I can still get Häagen-Dazs at the supermarket, what’s the big deal you ask? Well, the brick-and-mortar locations carried flavors and creations not available in off-the-shelf form.
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Mos Burger Goes Green With Their Mos Natsumi Burgers

Just as KFC’s Kentucky Chicken Rice and other mega size deals appeared to put Japan on a slippery trans-fat laden slope to rampant morbid obesity, Japanese burger chain Mos Burger has stepped up and offered their own line of bunless burgers.

This time, rather than a pair of fluffy golden meat holders, your favorite Mos Burger sandwich will be nestled in the leafy green goodness of a wad of lettuce.

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Japanese Style Yakisoba Flavored Yakisoba: It’s Confusingly Delicious!

Yakisoba (fried buckwheat noodles) is a standard food in Japanese cuisine which can be found in restaurants, food stands, and convenience stores across the nation served in a variety of ways such as on hotdog buns or in an omelet.

There is also a variety of instant yakisoba noodle packs among which is the decades old Peyoung brand – loved by Japanese people of all ages for its delicious taste and easy preparation.

Occasionally the company releases special flavors like curry and super-hot, but this time they came out with perhaps the most unexpected flavor of all: yakisoba flavored yakisoba.

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Woman Barred From Boarding Flight with Foul-Smelling Durian Flies into Rage, Angrily Chows Down in Middle of Airport

There are a lot of things that can ruin a good vacation and lord knows one of them is the whole airport/airplane experience in general. Lost luggage, security checks, kids kicking your seat.

But this bizarre news story from China will make you grateful those security checks are there after all. Read More

There’s a Snake in my Soup! We Taste Test Some Popular ‘Soul Food’ from Hong Kong

Have you ever heard the phrase “you are what you eat”? Perhaps this is why every region has its own brand of “soul food,” embodying the heart and history of its people. For Japan, the most basic and invigorating dishes you can find would probably be natto and miso soup. But how about the powerhouse city of Hong Kong? Apparently, and much to our surprise, Hong Kong’s home-grown food for the soul is snake soup! Before hearing of this, the thought of eating a snake had never really crossed our minds, but we couldn’t help but be curious about the taste. And so, we took to the streets of Hong Kong in search of a restaurant that would sell us some freshly prepared snake. Read More

We Try Fried Piranha, Even Dead and Cooked It’s Pretty Dangerous

Nara Kenko Land is a well-known spa here in Japan which offers pools, baths, massages, and exercise equipment.

However, for a limited time they are holding the “Big Amazon Mysterious Fish Exhibit” giving us a rare chance to eat the South American river’s fish, including the deadly piranha.

Suspicious that a health spa would offer edible piranhas, our lovely reporter Usagi went down to check it out and perhaps eat a fish that eats people.

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Simple and Delicious Recipe for Herring and Pumpkin Pot Pie as Seen in Kiki’s Delivery Service

Inspired by a recent re-watching of the classic Studio Ghibli film Kiki’s Delivery Service, we decided to try our hand at making grandma’s signature dish, herring and pumpkin pot pie. Why? Because the movie made it look so tasty!

We don’t care what that the old woman’s granddaughter had to say, Kiki worked hard to help make that pie and deliver it in pouring rain, and… all right, so perhaps some of our desire to cook actually came from a need to understand how the young lady in the movie could possibly hate her sweet, sweet grandmother’s homemade birthday present. It took a bit of research, but we think we may have found the perfect recipe!

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April in Japan is a month of changes. As well as the beginning of the new tax year, the new school year begins, staff are rotated between departments, and new employees enter companies wearing plain black suits and fixed smiles that are betrayed only by the thin layer of sweat on their foreheads and nervous, darting eyes. It’s also the time of year that millions of university students experience life away from home for the first time, installing themselves in halls of residence or nearby apartments with no one to check up on them.

In an effort to help their students settle in and start their studies off on the right foot, a university in Tochigi Prefecture, Japan, is operating a free breakfast initiative, inviting all new students to stop by the cafeteria from eight o’clock each morning to eat a nutritious, home-cooked meal, thus ensuring that they consume at least one meal during the day that hasn’t come out of a plastic cup or a convenience store microwave.

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Release Your Inner Vampire by Feasting on Blood in the Philippines

What comes to mind at the mention of stew? Maybe a hearty beef stew or some creamy chicken soup? Well, it seems that many fast food restaurants in the Philippines will sell you stew that’s made from the blood of domesticated animals! Holy cow! Or maybe it’s horse. Sheep? Exactly what kind of blood are we talking here?! To find out more, we flew our top investigative reporter to the Philippines to fill us in on the heart of the matter. Read More

Customers’ Behaviour Changing Sushi Culture in Japan

Kaitenzushi, or conveyor belt sushi restaurants, are one of Japan’s most famous contributions to the dining world. The concept is simple: customers sit around a revolving conveyor belt packed with different sushi dishes, and take the plates they like as they roll by. But now in Japan there’s a new trend that’s threatening to put the brakes on the traditional conveyor belt system. It seems that Japanese customers no longer want to take any dishes off the conveyor belt, instead opting to use it as a giant, revolving display case. Customers are now pointing at the perfectly edible sushi as if they are plastic sushi replicas and ordering them with the wait staff.

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Noodles Go Gourmet: We Sample “Udon Sashimi” in Tokyo

The choices we make in life define who we are. Your friends may not admit it, but when you choose mint chocolate chip ice-cream (and bravo by the way), they’re scribbling a couple of lines about you in their mental scrapbook. When you leave your iPod on your workmate’s car, they’re either nodding along or guffawing as they cycle through your albums before bothering to call and tell you they’ve found it. As a wise man once said, “books, records, films; these things matter.” And noodles, my Asia-loving friends, are no exception. Do you like ramen or udon? Udon or soba? When you take a trip to soba town, to you eat them steaming hot or cold and dunked in mentsuyu dipping oil? If you could only eat one kind of noodle for the rest of your life, which would it be?

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Mr. Sato Takes on the “Mammoth 2kg Fried Chicken Curry”

Super-sized menus have been steadily on the rise in Japan, and one place in Akihabara, Tokyo has upped the ante further. On top of their original 1kg dish, Mammoth Curry has released a 2kg monstrosity of chicken, rice and sauce.

Fresh from the beauty salon, RocketNews 24 Curry Eating Classic runner-up Mr. Sato looks for redemption and has some advice for other 2 kilo curry challengers.

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Newly Opened Café/Bar Shuminova Offers Mini 4WD Races and Nintendo with Your Chicken and Whiskey

Opened on 3 April, Shuminova is a new kind of drinking and eating establishment. It’s named is derived from the Japanese word shumi which means hobby, and the nova refers to the explosion of nostalgia for middle-aged men contained within.

Among the guitars, laptops and game consoles are the main attraction of Shuminova: Tamiya Mini 4WD’s. You can enjoy some tasty food and drink while tinkering with your own customizable car utilizing advice from the owner, a Mini 4WD expert.

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Six Things I Learned at Tokyo’s “Food and Bev Expo”

This week, a major food and drink expo was held in Tokyo’s Odaiba area called The World Food and Beverage Great Expo 2013. It’s actually a combination of six different events, including a dessert and wine fair. With hundreds of exhibitors from Japan and abroad showing off their latest and tastiest concoctions, we decided to check it out and see how many free samples we could gobble up. Here’s what we learned. Read More

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