Bringing you yesterday's news from Japan and Asia, today.
sweets (Page 96)
Even if you’re not a fan of McDonald’s burgers, fries, or food offerings of any kind, you have to admit the fast food chain knows how to make a pretty tasty shake. Thick and creamy, sipping on a McDonald’s shake can instantly bring back those feelings of happy contentedness you felt as a child, and in Japan part of the reason might be that the experience is designed to make you feel like a baby sucking down a meal of breast milk.
In Japan, going on a trip often means you’ll be coming back with about twice as much luggage as you left with, as you are almost always expected to bring back souvenirs for your friends, family, coworkers, teachers, neighbors…pretty much everyone you’ll run into at some point after returning from your trip, even if it’s just a weekend getaway.
The plus side of this? Pretty much anywhere you go in the country, you can find local treats available only in that specific area, and sometimes also limited to the seasons as well. Tokyo is no exception, and today we’re going to be taking a look at some rare, special eats that you’ll only find within the terminals of Haneda Airport.
Since coming to Japan, American ice cream outfit Ben & Jerry’s has been slowly but surely building up its fanbase. But while its high quality ice cream tastes as good in Japan as it does in the company’s home country, the humor behind its pun-filled names for its signature flavors doesn’t always translate.
As such, we’re not sure how many people will get the joke about Ben & Jerry’s newest Japan-exclusive flavor, Lemont. Fuji, but once they get a look at the mouth-watering, Japanese-sourced ingredients, we’re sure plenty of them will want to try it.
How well do you know your wagashi (Japanese sweets)? If you’re struggling to put a name to any of the traditional delectables pictured above, there’s a store in Kyoto that can help.
By creating decorative embroidered versions of some of Japan’s most popular confections, Kyoto-based Kyototo is giving us an education in the names and background of the hand-crafted treats that are often seasonal but always delicious. Come with us as we take a look at twelve of the most beautiful wagashi you can find in Japan.
Takeshita Seika, an ice cream and confectioner based in Kyushu, Japan, has been around for more than a century. They make all sorts of delectable edibles, from ice cream to cake, but are most famous for their “black mon blanc” ice cream bar. Now, the company is taking the most important meal of the day and turning it into the most delicious meal of the day too, with their new granola “breakfast ice cream” bar!
The English and Japanese-language teams at RocketNews24 have entered into a strange sort of competition, as they try to one-up each other with foods that don’t look anything like they should. The English side fired the opening salvo in this war of the eyes vs. the taste buds with a sneaky pink soy sauce taste test, and now our intrepid Japanese reporter Mr. Sato has decided that revenge is a dish best served sweet with this cake from a Tokyo bakery that looks exactly like a pizza.
This year marks the 60th anniversary of the Sendai Astronomical Observatory, which was opened in 1955 thanks to generous donations from the citizens of the city of Sendai and other contributors. Traditionally, the 60th anniversary gift is diamonds, and as everyone knows, diamonds are forever.
But don’t we also kind of hope that Earth is forever, too? One of the many items the observatory sells is a lollipop with the image of the earth printed on it. The effect will leave you…earthstruck.
Early ice cream production methods date all the way back to B.C. times, and even today people are still coming up with new and improved ways to enjoy this tasty treat. In Japan, this sometimes means inventing weird ice cream flavors or combining it with other popular foods like ramen. In fact, some Japanese people even believe you can learn a thing or two about another person’s personality by watching how they eat their ice cream.
But Japan isn’t the only country with a fondness for ice cream. The United Kingdom, for example, recently ranked in as one of the top 10 ice cream-consuming countries in the world. Not only do people in the U.K. enjoy satisfying their sweet tooth, they’re also coming up with ways to savor their ice cream longer, as a result of new research by two Scottish universities.
It’s so easy these days to try something new and creative since tons of people post really cool things to Instagram and Pinterest. A person can get a million fantastic ideas for their next project just by browsing for a few minutes. What’s especially helpful is that people will often post DIY tutorials and step-by-step pictures to allow even the commonest of folk to get their creative juices flowing. Whether your final product turns out as well as the instructions you are following is a bit of a crapshoot, it’s still extremely fun/funny just to try it for yourself.
So for a Studio Ghibli fan’s next big day, why not try and make one of these amazing Totoro cakes? Check out dozens of spectacular sweet treats featuring one of our favorite Japanese characters after the break.
Last week, I stopped by the Cup Noodles Museum in Yokohama to try its just-released Cup Noodle Ice Cream, with its chives, shrimp, and all the other fixings of instant ramen. It was definitely an interesting experience, but I did have one complaint, which is that Cup Noodle Ice Cream doesn’t actually have any noodles in it. Technically, it should be called “Cup Noodle Topping Ice Cream.”
Thankfully, it turns out there actually is a place in Japan where you can get ice cream with ramen noodles mixed in. Since I suddenly found myself with the unlikely title of RocketNews24’s resident ramen ice cream expert, I figured it was time to go another round with this unorthodox class of dessert, and to crown a winner in this battle of the ramen ice creams.
A few days ago, we heard that Nissin, maker of Cup Noodle, was now selling ice cream topped with meat, chives, and all the other fixings that are found in instant ramen at the Cup Noodles Museum. One of my coworkers, who lives not far from the Osaka Cup Noodles Museum, bravely volunteered to try it out, and I was all set to let him be our guinea pig, since I’ve already taken one for the RocketNews24 team as far as strange desserts go.
But as it turns out, the Cup Noodle Ice Cream is available exclusively at the second Cup Noodle Museum in Yokohama. Hey, wait a second! That’s where I live!
Uh oh…
Alongside the famed Tokyo University, Kyoto University is definitely one of the top universities in Japan, known in particular for their innovative scientific research. It so happens that the university is currently holding its annual Open Campus event from August 6 to 8, and many prospective students are sure to be visiting for a chance to take a look inside one of the most prestigious institutes of learning in Japan.
Visitors to this year’s event may be surprised to find out, however, that they’ll be able to try a dessert made using a very unique ingredient indeed, and one that was discovered by one of the university’s own research teams — a bacterium found in the gut of gorillas!
We’re not even halfway through summer here in Japan yet, and already we’ve seen a number of strange collaboration combinations, including barley and eel soda and soft-serve sushi.
This time we’d like to introduce another curious combination, in the form of a new Mercedes-Benz x Ice Monster shop that recently popped up in Roppongi, Tokyo. But what do luxury car makers know about making the perfect frozen ice treat? Our ever-popular reporter Mr. Sato heads out to investigate.
Although online dating services allow you to peruse profiles of potential paramours from the comfort of your home, they can also be a prime opportunity for fraudsters who pray on the lonely. Last month, for example, we took a look at a ring of dating sites which claimed 2.7 million “users,” only one of whom turned out to be an actual female.
Thankfully, a man from northeastern Japan who joined a dating site actually got to go out with a real girl, and probably thought she was quite the catch, seeing as how she’s decades younger than him and a medical student. Regardless of whether he was looking for something serious or just a fun dinner out, we imagine he was having a great time right up until she drugged him right there in the restaurant and robbed him blind.
When we heard about a special dessert called the suika baumkuchen being offered through online retailer Rakuten, we were pretty psyched, since it combines two of the greatest things on the planet: watermelon and cake. As a matter of fact, we were so excited that at first we thought it was only going to be available for one hour on August 1.
But as we spent hours drooling over the watermelon cake’s webpage, which had us so captivated we barely had time to use the Internet to look at pictures of cats and swimsuit models, we noticed something: the suika baumkuchen is actually available right now! We put in our order right away, and now we’re here to bring you our report on this incredible culinary crossover.
Those who’ve tried Lotte’s Bikkuriman love it for two reasons: beacuase it’s a cheap but delicious waffle peanut and chocolate snack, and, more importantly, because of the sweet stickers that come with it. These collectible stickers featured devils, angels and protectors that kids could trade and swap to assemble the whole set. What made them unique at the time was that there were also rare stickers that had a sparkly holographic design which made them more valuable to collectors.
This new collaboration between Star Wars and Bikkuriman is definitely desirable, but is it something that is worth your money? Which characters show up and which ones are shiny? No need to worry because we bought the whole set and we are definitely impressed.
Remember those beautiful edible “jewels” that we shared with you a couple of weeks ago? Made simply from sugar, agar-agar, and a beverage of your choice, the jewels are both pretty to look at and make a cool – in both senses of the word – summer treat.
They’re still all the rage right now on Japanese social media, so our Japanese reporter Shimazu decided to try making some jewel flavor combinations for herself. She even experimented with three different manners of preparation–serving them right away, freezing them, and letting them sit for a few days to harden.
Which method of making them do you think she enjoyed the most?
If you’re in the mood to cook but running short on ingredients, there’s always the old tactic of asking your neighbor for a cup of sugar. If you are in Japan though, why don’t you ask your neighbor for a cup of mirin, or sweet sake used for cooking, instead?
The Sanshu Mikawa Mirin Distillery has recently been promoting sweets made with mirin. This notion is bound to turn some heads as there doesn’t seem to be a correlation between mirin and sweets in Japanese cooking, where it’s instead often used to add a flavorful touch to grilled fish or sushi. So how is it that this seemingly savory flavor can be substituted for the sweetness of sugar? The RocketKitchen is going to get to the bottom of this and eat some pudding too!
Okay, Japan, I’m trusting you on this one. There have been a lot of times in the past when I was skeptical about your foods, and repeatedly you’ve proven me wrong.
You hit a home run with the raw fish thing. Pasta with spicy cod roe and seaweed? Now one of my go-to choices for a quick, hot meal. Grilled chicken cartilage? Stuff is delicious.
And now you want me to try desserts made with tuna? Sure, let’s do this.
It so happens that this past Saturday was kind of a big day for sweets lovers in Japan (well, at least for this writer). That’s right, June 20 was the much-anticipated grand opening of the Dominique Ansel Bakery, home of the original cronuts, in Tokyo’s Omotesando district.
For those of you who may not be into sweets, the cronut is a hugely popular baked creation the bakery is known for which can be described as a hybrid between a croissant and donut. Not surprisingly, stories of people forming long lines every morning at the New York City-based bakery for the cronuts and other delightful baked treats have reached Japan, and many sweets fans were ecstatic when it was announced that the shop would be opening in Tokyo. Not to miss out on the sugar-filled excitement, we were there bright and early on opening day, all psyched up to try the cronuts we had heard so much about!
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