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Mr. Sato (Page 30)

Kurand Sake Market opens Asakusa branch, Mr. Sato and Yoshio imbibe to their hearts’ content!

On September 2, Kurand Sake Market opened a new shop in the Asakusa district of Tokyo. This location is a sister branch to the original Kurand Sake Market which opened earlier this year in Ikebukuro, where sake lovers can sample 100 varieties of sake for 3,000 yen (US$24.64) per person with no time limit.

The Asakusa branch invited curious members of the media in for a sneak peek before its grand opening to the public, so we promptly sent our sake-loving reporters Mr. Sato, a veteran of the Ikebukuro shop, and Sailor Venus-cosplaying reporter extraordinaire Yoshio to check things out. But rather than write their opinions for each of the 30 individual brands they sampled, which would undoubtedly become tedious after a while, they decided to create a handy visual guide so that you can gauge their reactions to each cup with a picture, thus eliminating any language barriers in the process. Let the sake festivities begin!

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Mr. Sato smokes some dead leaves he found on the street 【Retro Sato】

With RocketNews24’s fast-paced global news cycle of Polish otaku nylon parties and Taiwanese McDonald’s employees, we can’t always keep up on all the escapades of our star reporter Mr. Sato. So, every once in a while we would like to take a look back to some of his past antics that we might have missed in a segment called “Retro Sato.”

This installment we’re going way back to the year 20 hundred and 14. It was a simpler time when Pharrell’s “Happy” was topping the charts and an Ebola outbreak was threatening to destroy us all. However, on one unusually chilly March morning Mr. Sato was taking a walk to ease his troubled heart. A sales tax hike was set to take place in a few weeks and that meant his monthly cigarette budget would have to go up as well. It was then that some dead leaves gently floated down in front of his eyes.

“That’s it! I’m a freaking genius!” thought Mr. Sato as he gathered a bunch of the fallen foliage in a plastic bag and ran back to the RocketNews24 offices.

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Mos Burger’s sauce-soaked Wet Burger sure is wet, but is it worth your burger bucks? 【Taste test】

A few days ago, we talked about fast food chain Mos Burger’s plan to unleash something called the Wet Burger, or Nure Burger in Japanese. Unlike normal sandwiches which are content to have their sauce on the inside, the Wet Burger is submerged in tomato sauce before serving.

But is this new challenger a legitimate rival to the standard Mos Burger, already considered one of the stars of the Japanese fast food scene? Or is it simply too bold and saucy for its own good?

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History Channel shows our Mr. Sato to the U.S.…as a student who’ll eat anything for five bucks?!?

Here at RocketNews24, we like to think our Japanese-language reporter Mr. Sato doesn’t just belong to us, but that he belongs to the world. After all, the value of panning for nuggets of wisdom in his stream of craziness transcends any mere national boundaries.

And now it seems Mr. Sato belongs to history as well, as we recently found out he was featured on American TV as part of the History Channel’s family of programing. It’s a great honor…except for the part where they mistakenly introduce him as a college student who’ll eat anything for five bucks!

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Mr. Sato discovers the band of his dreams: this small box

Hardcore readers of RocketNews24 may have caught the very few instances where Mr. Sato has pulled out a guitar and started playing. It’s easy to miss, though, as Mr. Sato is what’s known as a bochi gitarisuto (lonely guitarist) who plays alone at home solely for his own satisfaction.

But now our reporter is all too eager to show of his guitar stylings after discovering the Trio Band Creator by DigiTech. It looks just like a normal effects pedal but actually adds an automatic bass and drum accompaniment based on your own playing.

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Sushi shop in Tokyo has no name, passes savings on to you with 10-yen sushi!

In Yoyogi, Tokyo, there stands an unnamed sushi shop which sells impressively crafted sushi at rock-bottom prices. It’s a fairly new restaurant, known to locals as “The Sushi Shop With No Name” or “That Sushi Shop That Still Doesn’t Have A Name.”

To us, it became known as “The Place That Serves Yellowtail Sushi For Only 10 Yen (US$0.08) A Piece!” Granted, that’s not the catchiest of names, especially with the conversion to US dollars, but it’s definitely enticing.

And so, our resident sushi expert Mr. Sato set out to find this shop with no name and see if their quality also makes this a place worth visiting.

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Mr. Sato travels the distance to try 100-yen takoyaki

When one of our Japanese writers grew frustrated with Mr. Sato spending so much money on his lunch while at the office, they decided to show him that it’s possible to get great food at a fraction of the cost. And not just any food, but takoyaki!

Cheap takoyaki? This place must be in Osaka, right? Wrong! Mr. Sato soon found himself on an altogether different flight from Haneda airport, bound for octopus balls and adventure.

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No dinner plans for Wednesday night? Why not eat a camel hump in Tottori, like we just did?

Here at RocketNews24, every now and again we come across a restaurant or snack maker offering something that doesn’t sound at all appetizing, but is just too unique to pass up. In the past, my coworkers Steve and Amy have sampled wasp-filled rice crackers and bee larvae, and my own stomach and psyche are only now recovering from a dessert of not one, but two types of cakes made with chunks of tuna.

Now, it’s out intrepid Japanese-language reporter Mr. Sato’s turn to pull up a chair to the crazy dining table, and camel hump is on the menu.

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This amazing sand sculpture museum is tiny Tottori Prefecture’s hidden tourist gem

Remember when Tottori Prefecture finally got a Starbucks after all these years of being one of the few places in the world without one? Oh man, that was crazy.

Tottori is just one of those places. The kind of area that’s so quiet and uneventful that not even Starbucks, the corporate giant that’s more than happy to smother historic cultural heritage sites with their over-roasted beans and pricey lattes for a quick buck, spent decades more or less pretending it didn’t even exist. The Prefecture’s population of just over half a million is shockingly small by densely-populated Japan’s standards, and it’s just generally ignored by the rest of Japan as a place that, well… doesn’t have much to see, to put it kindly.

But wait a second! What’s this?! Tottori has been sitting on an amazing tourist draw in the form of a sand sculpture museum that features mind-boggling, award-winning and massive sand sculptures and they basically haven’t even really told anybody about it.

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Does how you dress affect what a sushi restaurant serves you? We experiment in Ginza

Take a stroll down the streets of Ginza and you’ll have no trouble realizing it’s Tokyo’s epicenter of everything posh and luxurious. The neighborhood is packed with shop after shop boasting high-end fashion, jewelry, and dining, so it’s only natural to think that any sushi restaurants in the area cater to an upscale clientele.

That being said, three reporters from our Japanese-language sister site began to wonder what would happen if they went to a Ginza sushi restaurant dressed to varying degrees of formality and ordered a special o-makase (“leave it to the chef”) course.

Would they each be offered different menu items depending on how they were dressed? Would their bills come out to be significantly different? With these burning questions in mind (and the prospect of eating sushi in the guise of journalism), they decided to conduct a little experiment to find out for themselves!

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Mr. Sato went to Ganguro Cafe and discovered his beautiful inner gyaru 【Pics】

As you probably know, our ace reporter Mr. Sato has his own special way of doing things. Rather than just going to check out a popular speedy steak-cooking restaurant, he instead cooks the steak himself and shoves it in people’s faces. Rather than just buying some butter, he straps a bottle of cream to a helmet and goes around a track in a racecar, getting the g-forces to churn it for him.

So when he heard about the ganguro dress-up and makeup cafe Black Diamond in Shibuya, he couldn’t just write a quick review of the place and be done with it; he had to become one with the cafe and its staff. This is the story of how Mr. Sato became a fashionable gyaru for a day, and we have the glorious pictures to prove it.

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We try serving a steak in 8.6 seconds, turned out to be surprisingly erotic

The steakhouse chain Ikinari! Steak! is all the rage in Japan right now thanks to its unique method of cooking your steak immediately after you tell them how you want it. Combined with standing tables, it provides regular steakhouse quality meat at speeds that rival fast food joints.

It got our staff to thinking about how the speedy service of Ikinari! Steak! is so popular. If we, too, could get steak into the mouths of customers within just a few seconds of them ordering, then maybe we could get into the restaurant game and be even more successful.

And so, research into such a steak service was underway, but as often is the case with our research, things somehow devolved into a cheesy porno starring one of our male writers in a bikini.

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Looking for a great meal in Tokyo? Try this cigarette stand

When starting a restaurant, creating a good appearance is important. In a way, the look of an eatery reflects the quality of food that it serves. Looks can be deceptive, however, as just like people, the beauty of a restaurant might be limited to the surface.

The opposite also holds true, though, as our own Mr. Sato learned during an excursion to the Dogenzaka area of Tokyo. Inside this unassuming cigarette stand that you wouldn’t even realize was a restaurant, he found one of the best meals he ever had.

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All-you-can-eat buffet for 500 yen?! Mr. Sato investigates

Swedish furniture store Ikea has made a name for itself worldwide, not only for the size of its stores and decently priced, assemble-it-yourself furnishings, but also for the extremely cheap fare found in their food courts.

Now, they’re really putting the icing on the cake: For a limited time, Ikeas across Japan are having an hour-long all-you-can-eat “Oriental Buffet” for the insane price of only 500 yen (US$4)! But what will only 500 yen get you, you ask? Actually quite the spread, it seems!

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There’s something hiding beneath this mountain of ramen toppings, but it’s not ramen

Ramen is pretty well-known around the world as a hearty soup of plentiful ingredients. Sure there are variations from country to country, but at the end of the day, it’s all just noodles and broth with the necessary toppings to add character.

At least that’s how it used to be, before one ramen restaurant felt bold enough to reinvent the wheel and take the “men” (as noodles are called in Japanese) out of ramen. But what did they put in place of the lovely noodles that traditionally define ramen?

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“Solid Sato” sneaks into Starbucks under cover of cardboard box, Metal Gear-style 【VIDEO】

Our resident oddball writer Mr. Sato loves his coffee, so much so that he finds it impossible to pass by a Starbucks without stopping in for a quick coffee break. The only problem is that he tends to favour “girly” drinks like frappuccinos, and lives in fear of being spotted by friends and acquaintances enjoying one.

The solution? Sneak into Starbucks underneath a cardboard box, Solid Snake-style, and see if the baristas will serve coffee to a cardboard box. Check out our video to see how he did!

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Mr. Sato tries to get ladies by transforming into a creepy version of L’Arc-en-Ciel’s Hyde

If you’ve been reading RocketNews24 for a while, you’ve probably come across the name Mr. Sato. If not, let us explain. Mr. Sato is a hilarious reporter for our Japanese sister site. But he’s so much more than just a writer; Mr. Sato is a teacher, a foodie and is also very patient.

One thing Mr. Sato is not, however, is married.

At roughly 40 years old, Mr. Sato wants to be impressing the ladies, so he’s tried time and again to transform himself to look like different famous people. But so far, nothing has worked. He has a new model in mind, though, that he thinks is fail-safe…

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Lotteria continues to try making burgers out of noodles, this time they brought rice to the party

Despite a rather weak track-record for its hamburgers with patties of noodles, fast-food chain Lotteria is back at it with the Moko Tanmen Burger. This time around they’ve also come up with the Moko Don Burger which uses a wad of rice as the patty. Good thing Dr. Atkins isn’t around to see this.

They say the definition of “insanity” is doing the same thing twice and expecting different results. We’re not sure what to call RocketNews24 reporter Mr. Sato then, because he is returning to Lotteria for a fourth time to try these noodley sandwiches in hopes of some redemption.

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Do you own your face? If Uniqlo can’t tell, they might not let you put it on a T-shirt

As he’s shown in the past, RocketNews24’s intrepid Japanese-language reporter Mr. Sato is a stylish guy. As a matter of fact, he’s got such a flair for fashion that when clothing brand Uniqlo brought back its service where you can design your own T-shirts, which can then be purchased by other shoppers, he leapt into action and created the most seductively sensual look possible: a black short-sleeve plastered with his own handsome mug.

Unfortunately, Uniqlo rejected the design, and not just because Mr. Sato’s visage is so steamy its borderline illegal, but because of a lack of confirmation that he owns it.

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