You remember those days when you wake up and you’re 15 minutes to start work and you’re less than ready? All you want to do is put on a shirt and some decent pants and run out of your apartment to catch a cab to work because it’s the 3rd time this month that you’re almost late because you’re hooked on your XBox 360. So you run down, hail a cab and realize that you almost knocked the cab driver with your wonderful morning breathe :P
Nevermind help is here for those mornings, and these gums are only available in Japan. The No Time Gum is a gum that contains tiny scrubs that cleans your teeth as you chew while imparting a peppermint freshness to your breath :)
I get quite upset when I see this but it is a part (albeit small) of the Japanese culture and their diet. However, I feel that this inhumane and barbaric activity must be stopped for good. The inhumane slaughtering of dolphins and whales in Japan showed very little consideration on Japan’s part to preserve these animals and our environment – it will not be long before they go extinct. And even if they do not, regulations and methods of killing the animal for consumption should be regulated in a very strict manner. Who the fuck eat dolphins anyway? These genteel and intelligent creatures do not deserve to be treated like this – they are not categorized as fish, morons.
To stop this we must act by boycotting whale and dolphin meat and products. Their hides are also used to make leather jackets, belts, wallets and bags. So Stop buying and eating them and the demand for these animals will stop.
Watch this gruesome but honest video for your own good. Because the truth is ugly when it comes to matters like these. Turning away does not make this inhumane killings go away.
Yeah, I know this is not exactly a food post but it is related to the things Japanese people eat. I am not jumping on my moral high horse here at all – I eat meat too. But the question here is not whether I should “turn vegetarian or shut the hell up”, the question here is whether it’s necessary to eat whales and dolphins?
IS IT NECESSARY?
Frankly, letting the dolphins flap around in convulsions after cutting their throats is most barbaric and inhumane – grossly lacking in compassion and respect for living things. After watching that video, and crying my eyes out, I just want to take my machete and cut those fishermen’s throats – let them flap around gasping for air like the dolphins while I laughed at them. What? Am I the cold blooded one now? $%#!$!$#$!!*&^%$-ers.
I have stumbled upon a very interesting and quite disturbing way of eating out from this blog. I mean, there are many weird ways to eat in Japan, much thanks to the innovation of some Japanese chefs. I am sure some of you know what Nyotaimori (literally translates to female body plate) where you eat sushi off a female body. The trend did become quite popular internationally as well in places where it is allowed.
But there is another interesting way of eating where a life human size “body” is made of food and placed on an operating table. This is one of those theme restaurants that imitates a hospital. The “body” is made from edible materials and is stuff with organs that are edible as well. Of course, it’s just replicas but it’s quite a disturbing sight nevertheless. The body bleeds like a real one when you cut into it and the organs and innards are red just like the REAl thing. Geez.
When you say ice cream, you think of flavors like chocolate, strawberry, vanilla, mint…things that are relatively “normal” for a dessert. In Japan, the whole ice cream scene is taken to a whole next level with flavors like Chicken Wing Ice Cream, Octopus Ice cream, Eel ice cream…and even Crab ice cream. How about that for dessert? :P
I got wind about cucumber flavored pepsi out in Japan recently. I am quite curious about it. Will someone be nice enough to send me a sample of the Cucumber flavored Pepsi all the way to the northern hemisphere?? :P
I like cucumbers and I can imagine the flavors going quite well with other savory food. Oh and thanks Billy for pointing it out the cucumber pepsi and octupus ice cream :D He said the cucumber flavored pepsi goes very well with the Umeboshi pickles. What an interesting thing. You guys need to try it out and let me know how it goes.
Umeboshi (Japanese: 梅干; literally “dried ume”) are a type of traditional Japanese pickle, known as tsukemono, and are very popular in Japan. They are usually round, and vary from unwrinkled to very wrinkled. They taste salty, and are extremely sour due to high citric acid content. Umeboshi are often cited in Japan as being extremely healthy, despite the high salt content.
Umeboshi are traditionally made by harvesting ume fruit when they ripen around June and packing them in barrels with salt. A weight is placed on top and the fruit gradually exude juices, which accumulate at the bottom of the barrel. This salty, sour liquid is marketed as umezu “ume vinegar,” although it is not a true vinegar. The salted fruits are then dried in the summer sun for about 3 days. Umeboshi made in this way keep extremely well (for decades or even centuries, see below), and are very salty (approx 20%).
Many modern umeboshi are not made in this way; usually less salt is used, and the ume are pickled in seasoned pickling liquid, or vinegar. These include umeboshi dyed red using purple perilla herbs (called akajiso), or flavoured with katsuobushi, kombu or even sweetened with honey.
Umeboshi are usually eaten with rice, in small quantities at a time due to its extreme sourness and saltiness.
* As part of a bento (Japanese lunchbox), a single umeboshi is often placed in the centre of the rice to recreate the flag of Japan.
* It is also a common ingredient in onigiri, rice balls wrapped in nori.
How many times have you seen TV Game shows in Japan where they punish their losing participants by drink this nasty green looking drinks? Maybe they don’t do it as much now but earlier in the years – they did. I myself saw a few videos of them drinking that nasty thing.
That drink is none other than the beneficial and healthy vegetable drink called Aojiru. It’s made from Kale mostly, which is why the color is dark green. The drink is also known as green drink or green juice in English, a direct translation of the Japanese meaning. (In modern Japanese, the character 青 ao means “blue”, but it is commonly still used in older contexts to refer to green vegetation.)
Aojiru was developed in October 1943 by Dr. Niro Endo (遠藤仁郎, Endō Nirō), an army doctor who experimented with juices extracted from the discarded leaves of various vegetables in an attempt to supplement his family’s meager wartime diet. He credited the cure of his son from pneumonia and of his wife from nephritis to aojiru, and in 1949 concluded that kale was the best ingredient for his juice.
Aojiru was popularized in 1983 by Q’SAI (キューサイ, Q’SAI), who started marketing 100% kale aojiru in powdered form as a dietary supplement, and sales boomed after 2000 when cosmetics giant Fancl started mass retailing of the juice. Today, many Japanese companies manufacture aojiru, usually using kale, young barley or komatsuna leaves as the base of the drink, and the size of the aojiru market was well over $500 million in 2005.
Apparently, new formulation of the drink is now decreasing the bitter greenish taste of the juice in bids to suit more consumer’s taste.
This a very bizarre fast food option. Well, what do you call it as a start? Noodles? Burgers? This innovative fast food is the brain child of Sadaishi Koji with his burger stand in bright red van at the corner of the car park of the Costa Yukuhashi shopping complex in Yukuhashi, Fukuoka Prefecture. Every day, during after work hours you’ll find women stopping by this van and just buying the ever innovative and obviously delicious Kan-nana Noodle Burger.
It looks like a hamburger but instead of a meat patties, you’ll find roasted pork and noodles that have been fried together into a patty so they hold together in the burger bun. They also have a burger will season chicken balls as its filling too.
Personally, I am not too sure about eating a burger with noodle patties because that’s like eating white rice with potatoes…carbs on carbs just doesn’t work for me that well….i am sure it tastes good but the health conscious me is screaming “ARE YOU NUTS?!”. :P I’d go for the chicken ball ones though :) Do leave a comment if any of you have tried this :)
I know Japanese love their octupi and other cephalopods, namely the squids or cuttlefish. They even think the ink drink-worthy *squirms* Okay, i love eating them as well although i don’t know about drinking their ink. The Japanese calls them tako, you will see them braised in a reddish kind of sauce in sushi places and they are really, really delicious! I have a recipe to share. A curry recipe that you might love, which involves octupi (btw, octupi is just plural for octopus if you didn’t know). It’s very simple as the curry is great with rice or with bread. I know the Japanese love their chicken and beef curry which they slather over plates of rice, perhaps this is something new for you guys to try. Before the recipe, here’s a cutesy (or grotesque) picture from my boiling pot of curried octopi :P
please don’t eat me!
It might just turn you vegetarian eh? :P
Anyway, without further adue, here’s the recipe:
1/4 cup of curry base (blend 3 onions, 1 knob of garlic, 1inch ginger, keep the extras for other curries :))
1 teaspoon of black mustard seeds
1 teaspoon of fennel
1 teaspoon of coriander seeds
1 star anise
3 cloves
1 teaspoon cumin powder
1/4 cup curry powder
1 teaspoon turmeric
1 tablespoon paprika powder
1/4 cup water
3 tablespoons oil
5 octopus
2 tomatoes, halved
1 medium sized eggplant, chunks
Method:
1. Heat oil in pan and add all the ingredients in except water, octopi, tomatoes and eggplant. Saute until fragrant for about 8 mins.
2. Add water and let it come to a simmer before you add your eggplant.
3. After that, add your octopi in and tomatoes, cooked for 10 mins under medium heat.
4. Scoop out your octopi and tomatoes and let the broth simmer under low heat for another 10 mins.
5. Serve your octopi curry with rice and freshly sliced cucumbers.
I was a little at lost about how to categorize this, should it be strange or savory or both? In the end, what’s strange to me may not be strange to the Japanese people because to them horse meat sashimi is a delicacy. Horse meat is not strange to many culture in the world. Places like France, Belgium, Quebec, Poland, Kazakhstan eat horse meat too.
This delicacy of horse meat is called called sakura (桜) or sakuraniku (桜肉, sakura means cherry blossom, niku means meat) because of the meat’s pink colour. It is very chewy and can be served raw as very chewy sashimi in thin slices dipped in soy sauce, often with ginger and onions added. In this case, it is called basashi (Japanese: 馬刺し). Fat, typically from the neck, is also found as basashi, though it is white, not pink. Horse meat is also sometimes found on menus for yakiniku (a type of barbecue), where it is called baniku (lit., horse meat) or bagushi (lit., skewered horse); thin slices of raw horse meat are sometimes served wrapped in a shiso leaf.
Kumamoto and Matsumoto city are famous for basashi, and it is common in the Tohoku region as well.
Perhaps I WILL name this as strange as there is also a dessert made from horse meat called Basashi ice cream. I’m at lost for words for a few second after reading that line, but I recovered quickly when i thought about other ice cream flavors such as natto in the market as well. The company that makes it is known for its unusual ice cream flavours, many of which have limited popularity.
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