Known traditionally as “Pocky Day” in Japan, 11 November may become “Good Shopping Day” before long.
Pocky (Page 2)
Because after a hard day at the office, there’s nothing like unwinding with a glass of bourbon and a chocolate-covered pretzel stick.
Take an inside peek into the production process of Pocky, the beloved Japanese snack which has found its way into supermarkets around the world.
Popular Japanese snack Pocky has had a makeover and they’re now available heart-shaped and in “lucky” blue for a limited time!
‘Tis the season to eat Pocky! Celebrate Pocky Day with these amusing (and tantalizing) tweets from Japan!
The vagaries of reading in Japanese mean that often the same text or numbers can be said a variety of ways. For example, some of the many readings for 2 and 9 and “ni” and “ku,” which combine to form niku, the Japanese word for “meat,” which is how November 29 became known in some circles as Meat Day. Going from the carnivorous to the carnal, 8 can be read as “hai,” making both November 28 and February 8 observed as Knee-High Socks Days.
Sometimes, though, you don’t need pun-filled pronunciations for an excuse to start a pseudo-holiday. Writing November 11 all in numerals gets you 11-11, and all those vertical lines look to some like a handful of enticing Pocky sticks. And so, this week Japan celebrated Pocky Day by not only devouring boxes of the stuff, but by turning the chocolate-covered treats into works of physical and photographic art.
Famous Japanese confectioner Glico has been bringing us iconic Japanese sweets like Pretz and Pocky for decades. Now they have a real treat in store for us, thanks to an extra-special line-up to celebrate the upcoming 3-D movie, Stand By Me Doraemon.
The new specially marked packs include a hidden secret: 3-D moving images of Doraemon that come to life in your home. But these aren’t just any images. They’re created by you, with your very own colours and designs transformed into unbelievable, moving images, each with Doraemon acting out a fun scene before your very eyes! Check out all the different designs after the jump.
Who hasn’t had a daydream about being the best in the world at something? Unfortunately, most of us have already missed our chance to set the Guinness World Record for youngest professional drummer, yet are still a couple decades away for breaking the mark for oldest competing gymnast.
Thankfully, there are accomplishments that aren’t age sensitive, such as the world record for longest relay of people feeding each other, which is exactly what a group of teamwork-minded snack food enthusiasts got together to attempt in Tokyo.
Along with having a pleasing smell, one of the essential requirements of being part of the RocketNews24 team is a certain measure of eloquence. I can proudly say that the rest of the crew writes really, really good (they also help me out a lot, quite obviously).
But sometimes, words aren’t quite enough. How can mere prose do justice to the subtle hues of a cherry blossom, or the reverberations of a temple bell? Sometimes, in order to properly carry out our mission of spreading the simple joys of Japanese culture, we have to carry it with us and head out into the world, which is just what we did recently while traveling Africa.
Unfortunately cherry blossom season is still about five months away, and we couldn’t fit our cast-iron bell in the overhead bin, so we settled for the next best thing: bringing boxes of the chocolaty snack Pocky to share with the Maasai people of Kenya.
Every year on 11 November people in Japan celebrate Pocky & Pretz Day. In case you don’t already know, Pocky are thin cookie sticks with chocolate, strawberry, or other flavored frosting. Pretz are a more mature stick with salty flavors. Their simplicity is matched only by their sheer addictiveness.
Because of the date’s resemblance to the snacks (11/11), every year, their maker Ezaki Glico cooks up a special campaign. In 2011 on Pocky & Pretz Day if you tweeted a special sentence using Pocky and a particular hashtag you could have won free snacks.
However, for Pocky & Pretz Day 2012, Glico has their sights set on entering the Guinness World Records.
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