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food (Page 285)

KFS? Kentucky Fried Chicken Japan offering deep-fried soup

It’s no secret that the RocketNews24 team is pretty enamored of life here in Japan. It’s hard not to have a good time in a country with such deep traditions and cultural events throughout the year.

That said, I always get just a little homesick when autumn rolls around. As great as Japanese festivals are, they simply can’t match American county fairs in terms of fried food offerings.

Thankfully, KFC Japan is ready to take a little of the sting out of fall this year with a new menu item: fried soup.

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Tokyo restaurant challenges us with a foot of tempura, we gladly accept

Tokyo is a massive, sprawling metropolis. There are so many twisting back alleys that by the time you’ve convinced yourself you’ve seen it all, something new has popped up back at the start of your route

Presented with this limitless variety, you could easily eat at a new restaurant every single day and never go hungry. So why did we go back to Fukugawa Tsuribune just two months after our last meal there? Because like handguns in the US, one of their tempura bowls is so serious there’s a waiting period to get your hands on it.

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Monster Hunter Rathalos cake available for pre-order, comes with Epitaph Knife and 49 res points

So you’ve slain the mighty King of the Sky Rathalos in one or all of the Monster Hunter series of games, and you probably felt pretty satisfied the first time you did it. But something was missing, wasn’t it? Being simply a mere video game you couldn’t feast on the dragon’s meat like a true hunter should.

Now website Premium Bandai and cake maker Chara Shoku Net are offering monster hunters a chance to live that dream with the King of the Sky Rathalos Cake which comes with a knife in the likeness of the Epitaph Blade.

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Cook rice inside your car with the new Takeru-kun

In the never-ending debate about which country makes the best cars, it’s common to derogatorily refer to a Japanese automobile as a “rice rocket,” “rice burner,” or “rice runner.” Really anything with rice.

But with a new product from Saitama-based company JPN, you can own that insult, and turn it into a positive.

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We combine McDonald’s and MOS Burger for forbidden deliciousness

Whether the blooming of the cherry blossoms in spring or the chirping of cicadas in summer, in Japan there is always a herald to the changing of the seasons. As incorrigible carnivores, for us fall begins when McDonald’s tsukimi burger returns to the menu. Tsukimi literally means “moon viewing,” a popular autumn activity in Japan, but in this case refers to the lunar-looking fried egg the sandwich contains. The tsukimi burger also comes with bacon. It has no linguistic reason to be there, but if you really need an explanation as to why someone would add bacon to a burger, we’ll be happy to explain after you finish your quiche.

Of course, the full moon has been known to do strange things to people’s minds, and we wondered if we couldn’t scavenge components from McDonald’s tsukimi burger to make something even better.

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Luxury hotel cooks up adorable melon bread based on JR West’s platypus mascot

As part of our quest to get paid for eating as many desserts as possible, we recently shared our impressions of the Suica Penguin cake, modeled after the popular mascot for JR East’s prepaid IC card train pass system, Suica.

But sometimes loveable mass transit mascots are like hardcore gangster rappers, and it turns out the Suica Penguin has a cross-country rival, in the form of Ico-chan, the spokes-platypus for JR West’s ICOCA train pass system. Not wanting to be shown up by the Suica Penguin’s foray into the world of cake, the only thing for Ico-chan to do was to transform himself into a tasty treat, too.

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Among the many colorful expressions in Japanese you’ll find kuwazu girai, which is used to describe a knee-jerk dislike to something unfamiliar before you’ve given it a fair shot. Kuwazu girai literally translates to “hating it without having eaten it,” and it was exactly the problem restaurateur Himi Okajima was having at his eatery, called Hakata Tonton, in New York’s Manhattan.

Okajima is a native of Fukuoka in southern Japan, and orders weren’t exactly pouring in from American customers for two of his hometown’s favorite dishes that were on the menu: pigs’ feet and cod roe.

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Yes, Hello Kitty really does need a fedora, and the reason why is delicious

Has Hello Kitty finally buckled to hipster fashion trends? Has she been tapped to replace the aging Harrison Ford in an upcoming new Indiana Jones movie, under the logic that if the franchise can include aliens, why not anthropomorphic cats, too? Or has she simply decided to make a living as a hard-boiled private eye?

That third theory actually isn’t so far off the mark, but as with any good mystery, the real culprit behind Kitty-chan’s throwback headgear is someone, or in this case something, you’d never expect: custard pudding.

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Eggciting News! McDonald’s Japan’s fall Tsukimi Burger line expanded

Fall in Japan is a very special time of year. The leaves go from green to a plethora of gorgeous colors, the hellish summer heat and constant cacophony of cicadas finally relent, and the legendary McDonald’s Tsukimi Burger becomes available to stuff into your eager face by the sack full. This year, fall is even more special, as McDonald’s is expanding the Tsukimi Burger lineup to four different delicious sandwiches. Be still, my tightening arteries!

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Lotteria craziness continues with the new okonomiyaki burger

In the crowded Japanese fast food burger industry, a chain has to establish an identity to be successful. McDonald’s is the place to go to fill up as cheaply as possible. MOS Burger is for people willing to spend a little more time and money for a sandwich made from higher-quality ingredients. And Lotteria is the place to go for a side of craziness.

While Lotteria occasionally goes completely nuts and has iconic horror movie characters work its registers, the chain’s eccentricity is primarily confined to the menu, with items such as the side-by-side double-patty twin burger and colossal Evangelion cheese burger with roughly a week’s worth of meat. The chain’s newest offering reimagines the savory Japanese crepe okonomiyaki as a burger.

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Ninja life skills: Do you know the correct way to eat this traditional Japanese sweet?

Shingen mochi – a relatively common wagashi Japanese sweet similar to the more well-known warabi mocha – is a treat made from pounded rice lightly coated in roasted soybean flour (kinako) meant to be drizzled with syrup before consumption.

It comes in a plastic container which is then wrapped in a decorative plastic sheet and sealed with a small, flat spear-like utensil meant to skewer the mochi with while eating. That plastic sheet is also the key to the “proper” way of eating shingen mochi.

Unfortunately for anyone who has consumed shingen mochi until now, the manufacturer’s marketing department decided not to tell even one single person how to properly eat their product. Thankfully, a helpful YouTuber here in Japan has shared a video showing the correct way to eat this traditional sweet. Find out after the break.

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Imuraya brags about the stiffness of their sweet bean bars…“Watch your teeth!”

Imuraya Confectionary is a Japanese sweets company that specializes in the sale of adzuki (sweetened red bean) products. They pride themselves on sticking to traditional Japanese flavors and sticking to their strange marketing strategies just as hard.

Recently, Imuraya made a pair of official Twitter posts cautioning people against the stiffness of their top-selling Adzuki Bar! This frozen slab of bean paste is a summer favorite across Japan, but according to Imuraya’s own assertions, they can crack your teeth!

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We try some Taiwanese dishes to boost our vigor, includes snake venom and turtles

RocketNews24 reporter extraordinaire Kuzo was feeling a little at half-mast recently and was looking for some ways to put some lead in his pencil, and fast.

Luckily he heard about some Taiwanese dishes that promise to boost stamina and went out in search of them. What he found was some snake, softshell turtle, and Asian ginseng soups. Par for the course for our gourmet reporter but these soups were also served with the bodily fluids of the animals such as blood and poison. If that doesn’t get Kuzo up and going we don’t know what will.

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Monsters University pork buns are cute, delicious, and selling out fast!

Pixar’s highly anticipated Monsters University finally opened in Japan on July 6, and to celebrate FamilyMart have launched an edible collaboration of delicious pork buns. We rushed out to buy a few and put them to the taste test, all for the benefit of our dear readers, of course!

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The traditional onsen tamago, not widely consumed outside of Japan, follows a simple recipe of blasting an egg in its shell with hot steam or letting it slow-cook in hot water. It’s basically a poached egg that’s shelled after the poaching.

Seeing as perfectly poaching an egg the traditional western way is a messy and surprisingly complicated affair, it makes a lot of sense to just leave the eggs in their shells and stick them in some hot water for a while, or better yet, just leave them in a hot car, forget about them entirely, and go play some XBox. Next time you go on a beer run, you’ll find delicious onsen tamago waiting for you on your dashboard, like this Japanese Twitter user.

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Ooh la la! MOS Burger’s new premium hamburger packs a sophisticated punch

MOS Burger, the Japanese fast food chain famous for being a fresher, slightly healthier alternative to other hamburger joints, has recently announced that it will release a new hamburger sandwich to go alongside its existing range of plain and cheese “Tobikiri” hamburgers. The exciting twist? This one’s loaded with French demi-glace sauce and aligot, a sumptuous mix of potato and cheese that’s sure to send you to premium burger heaven.

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We hope Ishigaki Island’s specialty snack food goes viral in Japan… Uh, we mean that in the “popular” sense not the “virus” one

Ishigaki Island has a few well known specialty foods such as Ishigaki beef and Yaeyama soba noodle, but aside from these delicacies a little-known snack food has been making waves across the nation. They call it onisasa.

Onisasa should be mistaken for some gimmicky new flavor the city of Ishigaki has concocted just to drum up tourism. This little hidden gem had been around for a long time in the region before getting the attention of greater Japan. So just what is onisasa?

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Nestle Bennana to come to Japan minus rumors of being melt-proof

It feels like yesterday when our reporter Kuzo travelled deep into China for find the fabled “melt-proof ice pop” named Banana – a vanilla ice cream encased in a protective gummy sheath. However, this year Banana has come to the world (under a variety of names such as Bennana in Japan), and this October it will reach the shores of Japan.

To celebrate, Banana’s maker Nestle held a “Banana Day” event in Harajuku, Tokyo on 7 August. Yet another punny Japanese holiday on a Japanese reading of “8/7”, it involved the giving away of free monkey ears, T-shirts, and of course Bennanas.

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This could be the most macho 80-year-old we’ve ever seen

It’s come to that time of the year again when many of us will be thinking about getting in shape (or wishing we already had!) as our garments become skimpier and the amount of flesh on show sees an increase. For some, this means planning well ahead of the summer season and going through heavy exercise or muscle training sessions at the gym. However, I’m sure that if you came across the 80-year-old Japanese man in the photo above, you’d find it hard to believe that he was a professional bodybuilder. Perhaps the most natural response would be, “An old man keeping himself active.” But wait until you see the body that he’s hiding under that tracksuit.

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Japan is a rich country when it comes to specialty treats and dishes. Small towns all over the nation can offer up unique foods and drinks you’ll never find anywhere else.

Shigenobu Matsuzawa who has uncovered Japan’s hidden treasures such as Digital Kowloon City, The Life and Sex Museum, and Gunma Cycle Sports Center now has found one such snack in Mie Prefecture that you’re unlikely to find in most places: Maple Tempura.

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