honey
We try out Starbucks Japan’s two lactose-free drinks for spring, with their new revised soy milk formula!
Häagen-Dazs Japan has announced another tantalizing new flavor, and we’re already wondering what the combination of dairy and honey will taste like!
We’ve all grown to expect seriously enticing beverage offerings from Starbucks by now, haven’t we? Some of them even had customers forming long lines and selling out by noon, like the fresh banana Frappuccinos that they sold for a limited time earlier this year.
Well, according to buzz on the Japanese Internet, it seems Starbucks has done it again with another sweet-sounding Frappuccino, this one combining two already very popular ingredients: granola and honey. But this time, the tempting drink is only available in one area of Tokyo, the Roppongi Hills complex, which meant only one thing — we had to head off to Roppongi and try their new creation ourselves!
Summer is here and with it come the sleepless nights of rolling around in bed searching for a sweat-free spot. Of course, fans and air conditioners are at hand but they bring a whole other set of problems such as dry, sore throats in the morning and incessant buzzing that might make it even harder to nod off.
They say summer colds are the worst kind, and taking standard medicine with all the drowsiness they can cause is no good in this already delirium-inducing heat.
Now, we don’t promise this to be a cure (it’s a common cold, after all!), but for those suffering from summer sniffles and phlegm we humbly recommend a simple recipe using all natural ingredients: honey, daikon, and just a pinch of patience.
Yes, we Japanese love our beer. In fact, many a drinking session in Japan is begun with someone literally saying, “Let’s start with beer, shall we?” So it’s not really surprising to see Japanese beer companies come up with interesting beers to catch the public’s attention.
But we have to say this particular beer produced by Sapporo Breweries is truly one-of-a-kind. The limited edition beer, which will become available for pre-order online later this month, is made using a very unique ingredient — obtained with the help of some small, hard-working winged critters. It’s the Ginza Brown beer, the only beer in the world made from honey bee yeast!
Tokyo, as you know, is a huge metropolis where millions of people work in countless offices. But did you know that there are also some winged critters keeping busy every day in the middle of Tokyo to provide us with sweet nourishment? Yes, there are honey bees actually being cultured here in Tokyo for honey production, and at the shopping/dining/entertainment complex Hikarie in Shibuya, some special honey products were recently offered in connection with the date of March 28, which they designated honey bee day (because the numbers three, two and eight can be called mi for three, tsu for two in English and hachi for eight, which when combined sound like the word mitsubachi for honey bee in Japanese).
One of the items was a very special cake called the Miel Baum, created by renowned Japanese patissier Toshi Yoroizuka. And what made this cake so special? For one thing, it was made using honey collected right there in Shibuya, and secondly, it was sold on one day only — March 28. A cake made by a famous patissier using Shibuya-grown honey and available for just one day? Now that, we just had to try!