Japanese holidays

Cat-themed oden kit warms and fills our bellies and our hearts

We’ll never celebrate Cat Day and Oden Day any other way again.

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Hut Day is just around the corner in Japan…or is it Hat Day?

Huppy Hut Duy!

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Slacker Appreciation Day — The secret, unofficial Japanese holiday we all want but don’t have:

All thanks to one friendly robot cat from the future. 

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Subway rivals a traditional Japanese sushi roll with its own traditional Japanese BLT

Jared out, luck in!

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Government plan has everyone talking about a 17-day-long New Year holiday

Suga administration hopes everyone doesn’t party quite like it’s 1999 this year.

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What pandemic? Onsen towns, hiking trails and theme parks packed with crowds on four-day weekend

Startling photos have everyone concerned about a possible new spike in coronavirus cases.

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Overworked Japan loses last public holiday of the year, even though it’s still on the calendar

No Country for Old Holidays.

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Licca-chan gets the royal treatment in this gorgeous Doll Festival set

Toy brand Takara Tomy collaborates with distinguished doll maker Kyugetsu to release a limited 2016 edition of the Licca-chan Doll Festival series.

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From San-X to Attack on Titan, yummy cake rolls take over Bean-Throwing Festival’s sushi custom

Before you start obsessing over Valentine’s Day plans, let’s turn for a moment to another February whoop-de-do: the Japanese Bean-Throwing Festival or Setsubun. Celebrated on February 3 this year, it’s an intriguing blend of evil ogres and spirits, roasted soybeans, and chomping on a whole baton of thickly rolled sushi while facing in the proper direction. These somewhat disparate ingredients commingle on this day to assure good fortune and health for the year to come.

In recent years, western Japan’s custom of eating a special type of sushi called ehō-maki (恵方巻き, literally “blessed direction roll”) for Setsubun has spread across the nation due to marketing campaigns by grocery and convenience stores; what’s more, the sushi rolls have been evolving into scrumptious cream-filled Swiss rolls! Iconoclastic? Maybe. Delicious? Yes!

So let’s jump on the bandwagon and look into this holiday a bit before drooling over this collection of sushi and their sweet doppelgängers. And Yowapeda fans, I think I spy a Makishima-maki!

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