Two melons—yeah, melons—sold for $25,000 at a retailer near a large wholesale auction in Sapporo. Crazy!
The melons are from a city called Yubari, which is in financial crisis. It's only saving grace seems to be its very expensive, very juicy melons.
I don't know who bought them.
Why does this guy look so happy? All he's doing is dishing out some miso soup, right? Well, this is actually a specialty miso soup cafe in Nirasaki, Yamanashi prefecture, where a non-profit Miso Soup School was opened recently. For 100 yen, you can get a bowl of soup with fresh vegetables and serious pork. The region has historical ties to miso soup, which was considered battlefield food during the Sengoku Period, when battles were fought there.
Must be yummy. I have no idea where Nirasaki is but if anyone goes and tries a bowl, please let me know how it was.
I'm in New York City and the hotel I'm staying in doesn't have free Internet, so here's a quick post about the restaurant I had dinner at last night. It's called Basta Pasta NYC, and it's a Japanese-owned Italian restaurant with awesomely Japanese pasta dishes like tobiko-shiso spaghetti and onsen tamago. It's off of Union Square, and I was craving fish egg spaghetti so I went there with five of my college girl friends. They all live in the city but some of them hadn't seen each other since we graduated. Too bad I was too full for the purin (Japanese-style flan) they serve for dessert.
Anyway, strongly recommended for anyone who likes any kind of food with a Japanese touch. Not to be mistaken with fusion, which is often just western food infused with Asian.
Restaurant main page
Check out these crazy, intricately made lunch boxes that mimic popular album covers from the US. Here's a replica of Public Enemy's Muse Sick-N-Hour Mess Age, made of seaweed, fish cakes, sour plum, and rice. Continue reading for a couple more pics.
Continue reading "Lunch Boxes Featuring Popular Album Covers" »
A new fetish cafe in Akihabara called Little TGV features waitresses dressed like train conductors and cocktails named after the Yamanote Line. It's based on the story of a fake rail company called the New Akiba Electric Railroad, and instead of the usual "Welcome home, master" greeting familiar to maid cafe enthusiasts, these women greet you with "Thank you for boarding our train."
Train geekdom is actually a well-established obsession in Japan. So this cafe, though seemingly random, meets a very specific demand.
via Mainichi
OMG! I had no idea I had haphazardly stolen the name of my blog from a snack stand at Ueno station. (Or did the snack stand steal the name from me?) From this picture a reader sent me today, it looks like Tokyomangoes are actually limited edition mango cookies and wafers. Yummmmm. I think I have to quit blogging and go work here.
(Thanks, John-Mark!)
An article in the Feb 25 issue of Forbes Magazine argues that MSG (monosodium glutamate, or ajinomoto in Japanese) may actually be good for the world. In the US, health nuts avoid it like the plague, but in many parts of Asia, it sits on the table along with salt and pepper to enhance the flavor of meals. Kunio Torii, a leading expert on MSG and senior scientist at the company named Ajinomoto, insists that a definitive link between MSG and headaches, etc has yet to be proven. Further, his own research has shown that hospital patients who have lost their appetite were more likely to eat their meals when sprinkled with MSG. This, he postulates, could help elderly and sick people improve their appetites, get the nutrition they need, and live longer.
Other things he's studying: The nutrient absorption effect of MSG (putting MSG in bland diets available in impoverished countries could make starving kids healthier) and using MSG to fight obesity (
injecting MSG in a green pepper will make it taste like a hamburger).
My mom bought this pretty V-day cake for dessert last night. It had chocolate cream inside, and the hearts are made of "nama-choko" (raw chocolate) and the strawberries are glazed with sugar and it was really yummy.
Garlic chocolate is the newest thing this Valentine's Day. A company in Aomori is selling a little chocolate that's made of local fermented black garlic and cocoa powder. Word is that it tastes kinda like prunes. A box of 3 is 600 yen.
Little towns in Japan often make mashup versions of their local specialty food to promote their region. Takko—the town in Aomori that makes garlic chocolate—is one of the top garlic regions in the country, so this is probably a similar experiment.
A little over a year ago, the government announced plans to start a worldwide authentication program for Japanese food.
Then, in 2007, it cancelled the program. No precise reasons were stated, but I suspect it may have been because some protested, and some doubted whether this was biased to all those other hard-working restauranteurs who sell "fake" Japanese food.
Today, a revised campaign was announced. This time, the program is being initiated by a non-profit organization with the blessing of the agriculture ministry. And it insists that its goal is not intended to play "sushi police." Starting now in Bangkok, Shanghai, and Taipei and by the end of March in Amsterdam, London, LA, and Paris, government-approved restaurants will have an authenticity symbol—a pair of chopsticks holding a cherry petal in front of the rising sun—stamped on their windows next to the Zagat ratings and all that stuff.
What do you think guys? Good idea? Bad idea?
BTW, Italy does the same thing in Japan.
I love it if only because it will save me that occasional fifty bucks I spend on fake Japanese restaurants that do a pretty good job of pretending they're real.
(Thanks, Sam and Walter!)
Did I ever tell you how much Japanese girls like sweets? They really go gaga over desserts. Well here's something that will probably satiate any sweet tooth—a 2-kg-heavy giant parfait that costs a hefty $35.
If you finish the whole thing, though, it's free.
Kogyal food-fighter Gal Sone is heading over to Kijima Amusement Park in Beppu (where the parfait is located) to try her hand at it. She'll finish it, of course, because she can eat enough food for six without skipping a beat. (Too bad the vids of her eating were taken off of YouTube. She's incredible.)
The dessert consists of 3 kinds of ice cream, pancakes, cream puffs, and fruits. I think I see an ice cream cone in there too, and tons of whipped cream. So far, nobody's finished the whole thing.
I spent a big part of my childhood at Kijima Amusement Park, btw. Beppu is my dad's hometown.
Sick of ordering Domino's? This new ceramic pizza oven from Hakuho makes perfect 10-inch pizzas in about twenty minutes. The finished product looks—and apparently tastes—almost like real Italian pizza fresh out of the brick oven. It's about $90.
Hakuho via Impress Watch (Japanese)
These aren't just ordinary strawberries. They're actually composites of chocolate and berries created by an infusion technology, adapted for produce by a company called FCOM by freeze-drying the fruit, removing water components, and then sinking chocolate in between its fibers. It's a technique commonly used in industrial manufacturing for fusing metals. The strawberries are just for fun, but the company's hoping to apply the same strategies to create vitamin-infused fruits and mineral-infused rice for youngsters and elderlies reluctant to get their nutrition otherwise.
Check out my friend Alyssa's Japanese fried chicken cooking video. This is actually a recipe that I borrowed from my friend Satoko in college, and that Alyssa subsequently borrowed from me.
Maybe I'm biased because she's one of my best friends in the world, but I love listening to Alyssa's random musings. I always joke with her that she has no inner monologue.
I like to use thighs, not breasts, but I think this is a total dark meat/light meat preference thing. Also, I hate shrimp, so no changing it up with little shrimp things for me.
