Twentythree

It’s time to chow down on all of the pastries inspired by Fujiya’s famous brand of Milky candy and its little girl mascot, Peko-chan.

Perhaps no other candy holds as special of a place in Japan’s national consciousness as Japanese sweets company Fujiya’s longtime best-selling Milky candy–a soft, chewy, milk-flavored confection that serves up equal parts happiness and nostalgia for many adults. Fujiya’s mascot since 1950 has been the pigtailed, overalls-wearing girl Peko-chan, whose lip-smacking visual is instantly recognizable to all ages in Japan.

Those who adore both the candy and the girl will be pleased to know that a second Peko-chan Milky Time Cafe just opened on March 13 in the LaLaport Kashiwanoha shopping complex in Chiba Prefecture. This cafe joins the original one inside of Aeon Mall Urawa Misono in Saitama Prefecture as a place where you can enjoy drinks and sweets that were inspired by the hit candy. Naturally, we took this opportunity to check out the new offerings for ourselves.

Upon arriving at the third-floor dining area in LaLaport Kashiwanoha, we made a beeline to the new cafe and were surprised to see that there was already a long line forming at the entrance despite being officially open for only one minute at this point.

Listening in, we could hear the surrounding people chatting about how they were fans of Peko-chan, liked Milky candy, or wanted to get their hands on some of the special merch at the cafe.

At least we could check out the pastries as we slowly inched closer to the cashier. Donuts, muffins, and pastries galore teased us from inside the glass case.

The seasonal-limited matcha chocolate Milky donut looked especially pretty.

We were particularly intrigued by the assortment of mini pies (from left: soy bean “meat” pie, anko pie, apple pie)…

…and the banana-flavored Milky muffins, so we made a mental note to order them.

We also passed a sign for Drinkable Milky Shakes based on the flavor of the candy and seasonal sakura drink offerings.

There was even a variety of Milky-flavored soft-serve ice cream. How could anyone ever choose with all of these options?!

Importantly, we saw a poster advertising special Peko-chan Donut Sets (versions with five or 10 donuts)…

…as well as rare Peko-chan Milky Time Happy Bags (2,525 yen/US$15.80), both to commemorate the new cafe’s opening. We decided to spring for one of each.

Even though we had spent only 15 minutes in line, it felt like an eternity. We finally made it to the front, however, and grabbed a seat in the communal dining area to take a brief rest.

We had ordered an iced Drinkable Milky Ikeda Hojicha (450 yen) and decided to drink it while we were there. It was described as combining the fragrance of roasted green tea and the sweetness of the full-bodied Milky flavor, but how would it really stack up?

Our first reaction was that it was sweet–perhaps a bit too much so. However, that feeling changed as we kept drinking and were able to appreciate the balance of contrasting flavors. At the very least it definitely was not sickly sweet.

After finishing the drink, we headed home to check out the rest of our haul. First up was the commemorative five-piece Peko-chan Donuts Set (1,000 yen).

It contained one plain Milky donut, one white chocolate Milky donut, one plain Milky cream donut, one Kanagawa Prefecture-sourced yaezakura (a kind of cherry blossom) Milky cream donut, and one almond chocolate ring donut. We thought that the similar naming of the Milky donuts and Milky creme donuts might cause confusion for some customers while ordering.

The plain Milky creme donut came in a cute wrapper reminiscent of the kind that the candy is wrapped in.

It had a gentle flavor, with fluffy dough and a Milky cream-flavored center. It was also less sweet than we had imagined, and we finished the whole thing easily.

After sampling the other four, we concluded that the almond chocolate ring donut was our favorite.

It was unfortunate that some of the almonds had fallen off while in transport, though. We were also surprised that this one wasn’t as sweet as we had imagined.

Moving on, we were curious about the soy bean mini “meat” pie (345 yen) and the banana-flavored Milky muffin (222 yen).

The filling of the pie was densely packed within the pie crust. We probably would have thought that it was real meat if we didn’t know otherwise.

It turned out to be a perfect savory morsel between the slightly sweeter rounds.

Meanwhile, the muffin was moist with a light texture.

We noted that the banana flavor wasn’t as strong as the overall Milky flavor.

Finally, it was time to open the Happy Bag. This limited set included an original tote bag, free donut coupons (labeled as “tickets”) for in-store use, a bag of Milky candies, a bag of Milky rusk, a Peko-chan Milky Time mug, and two Peko-chan Milky cookies.

Oops! We hadn’t realized that the Happy Bag came with the cookies because we had bought a couple of them on the side.

Oh well–we couldn’t really complain. The cookies were soft, sweet, and had a strong Milky essence.

The donuts coupons made the set a great value, but it was a little disappointing that only one could be redeemed at a time. That rule would make it inconvenient for anyone who doesn’t live near one of the cafes.

We were impressed by the size and design of the mug and started using it right away.

All in all, we were pleased at the contents and understood why some customers had been purchasing more than one of them.

By all counts, Chiba’s new Peko-chan Milky Time Cafe opening was a big success. We were surprised by how many people had eagerly lined up on its opening day, but now we could see why. There were also more Milky-flavored pastries than we had anticipated and many of them were less sweet than we had imagined.

For some of the other deals that Fujiya has offered up over the years, see the all-you-can-eat cake buffets at select branches and this frozen sweets vending machine in Tokyo.

Cafe information
Peko-chan Milky Time LaLaport Kashiwanoha / ペコちゃんmilkyタイム ららぽーと柏の葉店
Address: Chiba-ken, Kashiwa-shi, Wakashiba 175 Mitsui Shopping Park LaLaport Kashiwanoha 3rd floor community dining area
千葉県柏市若柴175 三井ショッピングパーク ららぽーと柏の葉3階 コミュニティダイニング
Open: 10 a.m.-8 p.m. (weekdays), 10 a.m.-9 p.m. (weekends)
Website

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Four years in the making, the new Panorama Box series shows Miyazaki’s art is “evolving”.

Hayao Miyazaki is known for being a brilliant illustrator and director, and part of what makes him so skilled is his long-held fascination with how we perceive images. At the Ghibli Museum in Tokyo, for example, there’s a whole room dedicated to unusual contraptions that bridge the gap between static and moving art, including a giant zoetrope that shows how movement and strobe lights can turn a model into a movie.

Now, the 85-year-old director is continuing his exploration beyond the page and screen with a brand new series of works. Announced at a press conference at Studio Ghibli’s Studio 1 in Tokyo on 17 March, the new series is said to be Miyazaki’s first since he finished work on the Oscar award-winning 2023 movie The Boy and the Heron, and it’s been nearly four years in the making, with the director starting on it in June 2022.

Despite being the creator, the famously reclusive Miyazaki was not in attendance at the press conference, with Miyazaki’s son Goro and Studio Ghibli co-founder and producer Toshio Suzuki facing the media instead. They both spoke enthusiastically about the new series of works, which the older Miyazaki has dubbed the “Panorama Box“.

▼ The Ghibli Museum shared a sneak peek at the special boxes.

今日は「宮﨑駿のパノラマボックス」のお披露目取材会がありました。

ご取材いただいた皆さまありがとうございました。

「子どものためのジブリが帰ってきた」という言葉、本当に心が温かくなりますね。

取材記事や報道、ぜひたくさんご覧ください。
実物は7/8にジブリパークで公開です！ pic.twitter.com/ViRr8pVVKn

— 三鷹の森ジブリ美術館　Ghibli Museum, Mitaka (@GhibliML) March 17, 2026

Goro says that although this term was coined by Miyazaki, it’s generally known as an “art box“, and it’s been around in some shape or form since the 16th Century. True to its name, Miyazaki’s picture box contains a panorama that gives you a glimpse into a contained world like a diorama, but unlike other boxes, where scenes are set out like a simple stage, Miyazaki’s creation makes extensive use of vertical compositions. This means that when you look inside the box, your eyes tend to move vertically instead of horizontally as you take in the scene, mimicking the way a camera might pan up or down in an anime, which Goro says is very “Miyazaki-esque“.

When viewed from a distance, the art inside the box appears flat, but step closer and you’ll discover a landscape with depth, as the background and characters are drawn separately and arranged in multiple layers. In total, Miyazaki has created 31 different panorama boxes, all containing numerous artworks, many of which are completely original, and characters from famous Ghibli movies like Kiki’s Delivery Service, The Boy and the Heron, My Neighbour Totoro and Spirited Away.

▼ This news clip shows some of Miyazaki’s new Panorama Boxes.

Goro says his father’s love for the panorama box likely stems from his childhood, when he used to play with toys made from caramel candy boxes. According to Suzuki, Miyazaki once spent a long time studying Salvador Dalí’s “The Little Theater”, an art box they saw at MoMA (Museum of Modern Art in New York) when they were there to promote Princess Mononoke many years ago. Dalí’s art box consists of 11 paintings on glass with a light source, and was itself an attempted recreation of an “optical theatre” the artist had seen in a box when he was a child.

Though Miyazaki’s Panorama Box is designed to enjoyed by adults and children alike, Goro says the director received a lot of joy from watching children’s reactions to the boxes when they were shown to them ahead of the press conference. Miyazaki reportedly told him, “The Ghibli for children is back“, before shaking his hand.

Handshakes from Miyazaki appear to be the ultimate form of approval, as Evangelion creator Hideaki Anno received one himself when he visited the director in his Tokyo atelier the other day. When Anno shared news of his visit online through his production company’s Twitter account last week, he mentioned that Miyazaki was drawing “pictures” that he likes, and after the press conference Anno revealed that the art for the panorama boxes were in fact those “pictures”. Having seen them in person, Anno says that the “sheer wonder” of these three-dimensional artworks is hard to convey through flat photos so he wholeheartedly recommends seeing them in person when the Panorama Box exhibition opens on 8 July at the Grand Warehouse at Ghibli Park in Aichi Prefecture.

▼ Ghibli Park also expressed excitement for the upcoming event with a tweet showing the soon-to-be-seen Panorama Boxes.

この作品、実は「1枚の絵」ではありません…

箱の中に何層もの絵を重ねて作る#宮﨑駿 監督が描いた「#パノラマボックス」

2022年から宮﨑駿監督が制作を始め『風の谷のナウシカ』や『となりのトトロ』など、全31作品あり、その一部がきょう公開されました@ghibliparkjp pic.twitter.com/aPy6UHhz1N

— また、会えたね！ジブリパーク (@Mata_Ghiblipark) March 17, 2026

The Panorama Boxes were always designed to be shown at Ghibli Park, with Hayao Miyazaki himself offering to make them for an exhibition. Goro says children will be excited to stand on their tiptoes to peer into the mesmerising worlds when they go on display, and he encourages adults to squat down to a child’s level when viewing the boxes to get the most enjoyment out of them.

As for Goro’s father, he shows no signs of laying down his paintbrushes, with Suzuki saying he’s incredibly energetic and still wants to make movies. Though Suzuki says he doesn’t have any answers as to whether or not there will ever be another Hayao Miyazaki movie, he does say that when he looks at the Panorama Box, he can see that the power of Miyazaki’s images hasn’t diminished – in fact, he’s “evolving”. According to Suzuki, Miyazaki appears to be “trying to get ahead of Goro” at Ghibli Park, which he tasked Goro with creating. Suzuki goes so far as to say it’s his “driving force” as the older Miyazaki is “the kind of person who won’t lose to anyone and will create something interesting”.

Now that we think about it, these new panorama boxes do a great job of creating 3-D Ghibli worlds without the use of CG, an animation style that Miyazaki has long avoided, despite his son’s foray into that world with Earwig and the Witch. So if competition with his son, or a desire to continue teaching him and expanding his horizons, gives us more creative works like this, then let that driving force live on.

Sources: Aichi Prefectural Government, Ghibli Park, Mainichi Shimbun, FNN, NTV
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Latest forecast says peak sakura season is coming very early in 2026.

With this year’s first reports of the opening of cherry blossoms in Japan, sakura season is officially underway. However, that doesn’t mean that it’s time to blow off work, grab a six-pack of Asahis and a whole bunch of sakura sweets, and head to the park just yet. Well, actually we’d never say it’s a bad time to do that, but if you go right now, you probably won’t see many cherry blossoms.

That’s because as much as Japan looks forward to the opening of the sakura buds, even once that happens it still takes some time for the flowers to reach full bloom and turn the trees into those postcard-perfect, unforgettable-memory masses of pink flowers. Especially since cherry blossom trees don’t get their leaves until after their flowers appear, at the very start of sakura season their branches are still mostly bare and not particularly pretty.

Thankfully, the Japan Weather Association has just released an updated forecast of when the cherry blossoms are expected to reach full bloom in a number of cities across Japan. Since warm weather arrives in the southwest part of the country first, that’s where most of the earliest projected full-bloom dates are, with northeast Japan’s peak sakura times generally coming a little later.

The full-bloom forecast is:
● Nagoya: March 24 (9 days earlier than average)
● Tokyo: March 25 (6 days earlier than average)
● Kochi: March 25 (5 days earlier than average)
● Fukuoka: March 30 (1 day earlier than average)
● Hiroshima: March 31 (3 days earlier than average)
● Osaka: April 2 (2 days earlier than average)
● Kanazawa: April 4 (4 days earlier than average)
● Sendai: April 6 (7 days earlier than average)
● Niigata: April 6 (7 days earlier than average)
● Kagoshima: April 6 (1 day later than average)
● Nagano: April 8 (8 days earlier than average)
● Akita: April 13 (9 days earlier than average)
● Aomori: April 19 (7 days earlier than average)
● Sapporo: April 29 (7 days earlier than average)
● Kushiro: May 10 (9 days earlier than average)

Looking at the dates, we can see that full bloom is expected to happen about one week earlier than in an average year for most locations. Note, again that these are city forecasts, and so the March 30 listed for Fukuoka is for Fukuoka City, not Fukuoka Prefecture as a whole.

Kyoto is conspicuously absent from the forecast, despite boasting some of Japan’s most picturesque sakura spots. Of the cities that do have projected dates, though, Osaka is the closest geographically to Kyoto, and the two cities don’t have significantly different weather patterns at this time of year, so Kyoto’s cherry blossoms will probably also be fully open sometime around April 2.

Source: Tenki.jp
Top image: Pakutaso
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Myaku-Myaku, you’re such a tease.

In the Japanese entertainment business, some idols are also involved in gravure modeling. This is a style of modeling that technically isn’t adult content, but treads rather close to the line with revealing clothing and provocative poses. Some idol singers start out as gravure models, some do both modeling and singing at the same time, and some use it as a stepping stone to transition from singing and dancing to other corners of showbiz.

Speaking of which, Myaku-Myaku, the cellular stew of a mascot representing the 2025 Expo in Osaka, enjoyed a great deal of fame while the event was on and is still riding a considerable wave of popularity. But the mascot game is a harsh one, and today’s Myaku-Mayku can easily become tomorrow’s Miraitowa.

▼ If you’re thinking, “Mirai-who-now?” you’d be forgiven because the Tokyo Olympics mascot hasn’t been seen on social media in about 4 years.

So, in order to keep all eyes on Myaku-Myaku’s many eyes, it released its own gravure book entitled “I myaku you.”

This book was created when Myaku-Myaku took a two-night trip to Okinawa to frolic on the islands’ abundant beaches in soft focus. The gooey mascot worked very hard during the Expo, so this book represents a rare glimpse of it really letting its plasma down and relaxing.

Myaku-Myaku described making the book as “a lot of fun,” and said it would like to try as many different things as possible. It wasn’t without its challenges, too, however. The mascot said it had to practice to make sure all of its eyes were open in the pictures, which makes sense. Think about how hard it is to make sure you don’t blink during photos and multiply that by about three.

Also, when asked what the title of the book meant, Myaku-Myaku said it didn’t remember, but that the gist was to get everyone excited and think it was cute. And when asked what its favorite part of the book was, Big Myak said, “All of it.”

“I myaku you.” is set to be released on 13 April by Felissimo Publishing. It will sell for 3,960 yen (US$25) from the Felissimo online shop, official Expo 2025 online shop, and the Expo sections of Maruzen and Junkudo bookstores, and each book comes with one of five special photo cards of Myaku-Myaku in a sensual yet playful pose.

It will probably make a great collector’s item as well. Once Myaku-Myaku finally gets its Academy Award for best supporting amorphic organism, your book of sexy photo spreads will surely triple in value.

Related: Felissimo online shop
Source, images: PR Times
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Simply add hot water and you can easily make hot spring eggs at home.

Our reporter Go Hatori is addicted to hot spring eggs, or “onsen tamago” as they’re known in Japanese. While he doesn’t have the means or patience to make them himself – onsen tamago are traditionally slow-cooked in hot spring water to give them their runny, silken texture – he has been buying them from the supermarket and eating them whenever he can, even popping them into salads to get his runny egg fix.

Just the other day, though, he found a product that could level up his onsen tamago obsession, allowing him to make them fresh at home. Called the “Honkaku Onsen Tamago Ki” (“Authentic Hot Spring Egg Maker“), this nifty little item was made by respected local manufacturer Yamada, and sold at chainstore Daiso for 110 yen (US$0.69).

According to the blurbs on the pack, this handy gadget lets you make onsen eggs with nothing else but eggs and hot water, and what’s more, there’s no stovetop or microwave cooking involved.  This seemed way too easy, and like a dream come true for Go, so he immediately purchased one and took it home to try out straight away.

The product actually consists of three parts – the main body, a drainage tray on the bottom, and the lid.

▼ The bottom of the main body had what looked to be a drainage hole.

The whole thing is incredibly easy to use – first, lay the tray on the bottom of the container and place two raw eggs, still in their shells, on top of it.

Then, move the container over to the sink and pour freshly boiled water into it, up to the specified line. Go measured the amount of hot water he used, and it turned out to be about 550 millilitres (18.6 ounces), so it’s good to prepare that amount of water beforehand.

After adding hot water up to the line, simply put the lid on the container and leave it in the sink for around 13 minutes.

During this time, hot water flows slowly out of the small hole at the bottom, so the water level gradually drops.

After 13 minutes, Go opened the lid, where he discovered that although most of the hot water had been drained away, there was still some left in the container.

With the manual stating both “13 minutes” and “until the water is completely gone” as the benchmark for when the eggs are ready, Go wasn’t entirely sure what to do. Deciding to err on the side of caution, he left the container for a few minutes more, until, at the 16-minute mark, the water had completely drained away.

▼ Now for the exciting part – comparing these freshly made hot spring eggs with store-bought ones.

Go started the comparison by cracking open a store-bought hot spring egg, which turned out to be exactly to his liking – soft and jiggly, with a nice, glossy appearance.

▼ So what happened when he cracked into his homemade hot spring egg?

▼ Ah.

There was clearly a difference in look and texture, with the white of the egg being much harder than it should be, suggesting they may have been left in the hot water for too long.

▼ Perhaps 13 minutes would’ve been a better time at which to pull out the eggs.

Slightly disappointed with the look of the eggs, Go decided to investigate the texture more closely, using a pair of chopsticks to see how easy it would be to break into the yolk.

▼ A soft and easy break is the sign of a good onsen egg, and that was easily achieved with the store-bought variety.

On the other hand, the yolk made in Daiso’s container was a lot harder to break into, as it was firm with very little runniness.

With Go’s egg failing him in terms of appearance and texture, how would it taste? Slurping half of it up in one go, his eyes widened in surprise as the egg actually tasted fantastic. It was just as good as the store-bought egg, and he was happy to eat both of them with a sprinkling of salt and pepper and nothing else.

▼ The Yamada egg maker redeems itself in the end.

According to Go, the hot spring egg maker is a great contraption that’s well worth the tiny expenditure of 110 yen. He’s since been making his beloved onsen tamago in it and is now totally converted to its ease of use and the eggs it creates. Though he’s yet to fully master the gadget, he says that time is an integral factor that can make a world of difference to the texture, and he’s having a lot of fun eating the eggs he makes on his road to mastery.

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