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Too lazy to cook? Try these new ready-made meals from Japanese convenience stores!

Scott R Dixon
Dec 19, 2013
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If you are hungry, Japanese convenience stores are beautiful places that have pretty much everything your heart could desire, from a quick on-the-go snack to a yummy summertime ice cream treat. And some of the best things they offer are ready-made meals like curry and rice, pasta or ramen. These ready-made meals can be like a gift from heaven on a busy day when you don’t have time to cook and need to take a break from frozen food.

But did you know that many convenience stores in Japan put out a new ready-made meal every Tuesday? Since you may find it hard to stake out every convenience store, we sent our reporters to try out some new meals. Click below to see the six that they recommended!

Baskin Robbins Japan accepting pre-orders for Kagami Mochi Ice Cream Cakes

Master Blaster
Dec 18, 2013

With New Year’s just around the corner supermarkets and department stores all over Japan are displaying kagami mochi. These are mounds of the popular Japanese food mochi which is made from rice and has a gummy consistency.

They can serve as household decorations up until 1 January when they may then be happily, and hopefully safely, devoured. However, mochi has a subtle sweetness that some might find rather bland. If that’s the case for you then Baskin Robbins is hoping you’ll enjoy their Kagami Mochi Ice Cream Cakes.

Curry of the Dead: Zombie-bait curry that’s good enough for human consumption

Preston Phro
Dec 16, 2013

So, let’s say you wake up one morning, unlock your smartphone, and find yourself bombarded with all caps texts from friends about some “zombie apocalypse.” And probably a few Instagram selfies, too, just to mark the occasion.

You look out the window and, sure enough, there go a few zombies shuffling down the street, moaning about brains.

What would you do??

We try some “First Love” flavored gyoza in Tochigi’s “Gyoza Town”

Master Blaster
Dec 15, 2013

Utsunomiya City in Tochigi Prefecture is famous nation-wide for its Chinese fried dumplings known as gyoza in Japan. The capital city boasts over 200 gyoza shops many of which are densely located near Utsunomiya Station in what is known as “Gyoza Town.”

Our reporter, Usagi, braved the imminent threat of deliciousness and boarded a Tochigi-bound train. Next stop: Gyoza Town!

We go behind the scenes at Japan Airlines’ in-flight meal factory【Photos】

Jessica
Dec 13, 2013

Airline meals once had a pretty bad rap, but in-flight food has improved quite a bit since Seinfeld was wondering what its deal was. And really, isn’t it kind of amazing that you can get a hot meal at all when you are barreling through the sky at 600 miles per hour in a small metal tube?

For everyone that has ever wondered how that perfectly portioned food turns up on your tray, we’ve gone behind that scenes at the in-flight meal production center for Japan Airlines (JAL) to get the scoop.

Cakes disguised as Chinese food for under-the-radar sweet sneaking or just confusing your brain

Jessica
Dec 13, 2013

I recently went to a cake shop, but when the time came to order, I said, “I’ll have the soy sauce ramen with a side of fried dumplings.” Don’t worry, I haven’t lost my mind. I was just at a hot new sweets shop in Shinjuku called, Maplise, where the specialty of the house is a decadent dessert that looks like a hot bowl of noodles.

The top 10 Japanese restaurants outside of Japan

Rachel Tackett
Dec 13, 2013

Last month, the outspoken Japanese blogger Madame Riri gave us all a lesson in how to tell whether or not a restaurant abroad serves authentic Japanese food. But let’s be honest, it takes more than tradition to make a dish delicious, and there’s something to be said for adjusting the menu to match local preferences. We’ve certainly experienced this phenomenon in the wide world of sushi!

And so, to celebrate the creation of successful Japanese eateries across the globe, here are the top 10 restaurants that serve Japanese food in foreign countries!

American chef perfectly captures the scrumptious soul of Japanese cuisine 【Video】

Rachel Tackett
Dec 12, 2013

A lot can be learned about a culture by investigating what it eats. Japanese cuisine is full of tradition in terms of preparation and presentation, thoughtfulness in regards to portion sizes, and an overall sense of resourcefulness. There are many things on the menu that may not sound appetizing to people with a Western palate when given a detailed description, but with good visual presentation, even the most obscure sounding dishes can become mouth-watering morsels.

The video From Japan with Love (and Dashi) produced by foodie and filmmaker Daniel Klein gives us all an amazing glance at some of Japan’s most iconic dishes. It gives a fine glimpse into the soul of Japan and is guaranteed to leave you hungry for Japanese cuisine!

12 culinary delights from Japan that you can find in New York City

Philip Kendall
Dec 12, 2013

As much as we at RocketNews24 love talking about Japanese food and introducing our readers to new places to eat or our own crazy culinary creations, we appreciate that for many, popping over to Tokyo or Osaka for a week of washoku dining bliss simply isn’t on the cards. But thankfully, great Japanese food can be found all over the world – if you know where to look!

For those of you to whom New York is a heck of a lot closer than Tokyo, Susan Miyagi Hamaker, one of our friends from JapanCulture•NYC, has prepared a fantastic list of 12 authentic Japanese foods that are available within the city, even sharing some tips on which restaurants to check out if you’re in town. Yup, the real just got that little bit closer!

Fresh sushi for night owls at Osaka fish market’s midnight restaurant

Casey Baseel
Dec 12, 2013

While Tsukiji in Tokyo gets the majority of the international attention, the Sakai Fish Market in Osaka is no slouch either, supplying seafood to diners in and around Japan’s second-largest city.

Unfortunately, much like at its counterpart in Tokyo, most of the sushi restaurants in and around the Sakai market open at the crack of dawn, and close for the day shortly after noon. So if you decided to sleep in, or don’t happen to work close enough to make a sushi run during your lunch break, you’re out of luck.

Unless you do like we did, and visit Osaka’s famous late-night sushi restaurant.

McDonald’s Japan now serving delicious balls of cheese and potato

Michelle Lynn Dinh
Dec 11, 2013

McDonald’s Japan, oh how we love you! You give us so many delicious, heart-clogging treats like the Idaho burger with a hashbrown nestled in the middle or the Mega Potato stuffed with well over half a pound of fries. Now the world’s most recognized burger chain brings us little fried clusters of potato and cheese to get us through the cold Japanese winter.

Video game maker’s Akihabara pizza joint has great food, not a single maid

Casey Baseel
Dec 10, 2013

Aside from software development, Japanese video game maker Nitroplus has worked on novelization and illustration work for popular anime franchises such as Puella Magi Madoka Magica, Psycho-Pass, and Guilty Crown.

Yes, Nitroplus has its fingers in a lot of pies, including, surprisingly enough, pizza.

10 Japanese foods you can make at home!

Joan Coello
Dec 10, 2013

If you’ve noticed, many of our writers here at Rocketnews24 have crossed the seas to make Japan their second home. Sure, we love the local flavor, but sometimes we just crave a solid meal that smells of our hometown. The same goes for Japanese nationals living abroad.

Even though Japanese cuisine has more or less infiltrated most of the major cities worldwide, domestic foodstuffs and condiments still remain mostly inaccessible and rare in most countries. Japanese blogger Madame Riri shares a list of 10 Japanese foods that can be made at home, no matter where that may be! We’d like to call it the lifesaver list for Japanese abroad, or the inspiration list for non-Japanese who would love an authentic taste of Japan in their own kitchen!

The 6 best frozen foods at a Japanese grocery store

Scott R Dixon
Dec 10, 2013

Have you taken a look in your freezer lately? Has that carton of ice cream from last summer grown into an ice fortress yet? What about that mean-looking freezer burn on that mystery meat? Maybe it is time to clean out the chiller and fill it up with some surprisingly yummy frozen foods from your local Japanese grocery store.

While this is far from world-class gourmet dining, the following six foods will definitely make your stomach happy on a night when pushing the microwave’s “start” button is all the cooking you want to do. Click below to find out which Japanese frozen foods are worth your hard-earned yen!

Ramen characters prove there’s more to Fukushima than just nuclear sadness

Oona McGee
Dec 9, 2013

Before March 11 2011, Fukushima Prefecture was pretty much unknown outside of Japan. Within the country, however, Japan’s third-largest prefecture was known for much more than its nuclear power plant. Along with being a producer of delicious, mouthwatering peaches and home to areas of stunning natural beauty, Fukushima was also known as a hotspot for incredible ramen noodles.

Now, some of the more prominent ramen restaurants in the area have banded together to remind us all that the real heart of Fukushima has always been fuelled by ramen power. And they’ve even got shiny, new anime characters to prove it!

We made monjayaki with a Pon de Monja doughnut!

Joan Coello
Dec 6, 2013

Yesterday, we wrote about Mister Donut’s new Pon de Umaimon series, which are basically savory varieties of the doughnut ring leader’s signature product, the Pon de Ring. Speaking of savory doughnuts, some genius in the office thought, why not go all the way with it! So we attempted the ironic stunt of making a monjayaki with a monjayaki flavored doughnut to see if it blends in with the real deal.

Monjayaki is a Kanto dish, so we had our very own Tokyo native, Mr. Hatori, work the monja magic for us!

The legendary “pet bird” ice cream now comes sandwiched between pancakes!

Joan Coello
Dec 5, 2013

A couple of months ago, we shared an article on “pet bird” flavored ice creams produced by the bird-loving folks at Torimi Cafe. Now we get to enjoy the bird-inspired frozen treats in the form of Doraemon’s favorite snack!

How to master the elements by setting ice on fire, then eating it 【Recipe】

Casey Baseel
Dec 5, 2013

Recently, Meg, one of our RocketNews24 colleagues from our Japanese-language sister site, came to us raving about a great dessert she’d just tried. Since we’re always thinking about food, we were happy to listen as she gushed. “It’s called yakigori,” she informed us, “and people have been making it in Japan for over 100 years!”

“Oh, you mean, kakigori, right?” we responded, mentioning the Japanese word for shaved ice. “Yeah, we have that overseas, too. By the way, you should really take some medicine for that cold.”

“No, not kakigori, yakigori,” Meg insisted. To help us understand, she even wrote it down in Japanese. We read the kanji characters, 焼き氷, once, then double checked it. There was no mistake, though. Meg was talking about a dessert named “roasted ice.”

How much would the world miss Japan if it suddenly disappeared?

Rachel Tackett
Dec 5, 2013

When you live in a country for long enough, it’s easy to forget the things that set it apart and really make it special. In largely homogenous societies, like that of Japan, it’s easy to take daily amenities for granted without ever stopping to consider that commonplace objects are unique to the culture and perhaps novel to people of other nations.

A recent book released by Earth Star Entertainment aims to give the people of Japan a fresh perspective on their island nation, as well as celebrate the many things that it has to offer to the world. The book’s title translates to What if Japan Disappeared: Japan’s Ability to Support the World, and from the few short excerpts we’ve seen, it’s obvious that Japan thinks quite highly of its contributions to the world’s economy, entertainment, and food options.

But in the grand scheme of things, how much would the country really be missed if it suddenly disappeared from this world?

Enjoy buttered potato, muscat, or Japanese pizza…doughnuts

Michelle Lynn Dinh
Dec 4, 2013

Mister Donut, arguably the most popular doughnut chain in Japan, is full of creative and interesting fried dough creations. Just a few months ago, Misdo (as it’s called in Japan) unveiled Hello Kitty jack o’ lantern doughnuts for Halloween and are currently selling Snoopy and Woodstock Christmas treats. But their newest offering sounds more bizarre than delicious. Officially called “Pon de Umaimon,” these rings of flavor come in eight sweet or savory regional varieties that are sure to make you wonder why such a doughnut exists.