Twentythree

Unusual tempura takes this meal into weird territory.

Lovers of udon will tell you there’s one reasonably priced chain that never disappoints, and the name of that chain is Marugame Seimen. With branches around Japan and even overseas, Marugame Seimen is always looking to take noodles into new and unchartered territories, but their latest creation pushes the boat so far out it’s given rise to a love-it-or-hate-it dish.

The fusion dish is called Rich Cheese and Egg Carbonara Udon, and while that might not sound so surprising at first — noodles and pasta are both made from wheat so it’s not unreasonable to think they can be used interchangeably — looking at the meal will make you do a double take.

▼ The Carbonara Udon is priced at 790 yen (US$5.10).

What’s got people talking is the long piece of tempura inside the bowl, which you wouldn’t normally see in a carbonara. While Marugame Seimen has a wide selection of tempura for diners to add to their meals, they don’t usually serve this particular tempura either, because this is…

▼…bacon tempura.

A slice of deep-fried bacon is an ingredient that will ignite the ire of pasta lovers and noodle purists alike, so we couldn’t resist trying it for ourselves.

▼ It’s not just the bacon tempura that’s unusual — the dish contains kakiage (vegetable tempura) as well.

From the top, it looked like the tempura was the star of the show, but in actual fact, when we tasted it, the cheese and cream sauce was the real hero of the dish.

▼ The runny egg came in third as our favourite ingredient after the cream and melted cheese.

Meiji’s Hokkaido Tokachi Cheese is the type used in the dish, and it melts beautifully in the heat of the broth, imparting a rich and creamy flavour. In fact, it tasted so much like a Western-style carbonara that we ended up adding some soy sauce to bring the flavour over to the Japanese side, to create a better balance with the tempura.

▼ The tempura bacon was weird at first but then tasty, proving anything tastes great when it’s deep fried.

It was an odd combination of ingredients, but because we love cream and cheese as much as we love tempura, we thought this was a fantastic dish. It’s a flavour that people will either love or hate, though, so if you’re willing to take that leap into the unknown and find out which side of the divide you land on, you’ll want to stop by a participating branch, where it’s on the menu for a limited time.

Related: Marugame Udon
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History of the World manga series features design of Napolean and Leonardo da Vinci by creators of JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure and Promised Neverland.

As the publisher of Weekly Shonen Jump, Ribbon, and more than a dozen other manga anthologies, Shueisha is one of the biggest companies in the Japanese comics world. Their newest manga project, though, won’t be running in any of their weekly or monthly magazines. Instead, the company has announced that it’s updating its Educational Manga-History of the World series, featuring brand-new cover illustrations of some of history’s most notable figures by some of the manga industry’s most celebrated artists.

Educational Manga-History of the World (or Gakushu Manga Sekai no Rekishi, as it’s titled in Japanese) first went on sale in 2002 as a multi-volume collection of manga that teaches readers about important events in world history. As part of the new addition, every book in the series will have more than 50 pages added to it, and creators including the artists of My Hero Academia, Spy x Family, The Promised Neverland, and JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure have been recruited for the new covers. The complete collection consists of 18 volumes, spanning millennia of human history.

▼ Civilizations of the Orient and Mediterranean
Ramses II
Yasuhisa Hara (Kingdom)

▼ The Beginnings of Chinese Civilization and the Chinese Empire
Qin Shi Huang
Hiroyuki Asada (Tegami Bachi)

▼ The Glory of the Great Roman Empire
Caesar and Cleopatra
Kohei Horikoshi (My Hero Academia)

▼ The Islamic World and India
Suleiman I and Akbar the Great
Kozueko Morimoto (Gokusen)

▼ Christianity and European Development
Joan of Arc and Charlemagne
Yuki Tabata (Black Clover)

▼ Mongolia and Eastern Asia
Kublai Khan
Fusako Kuramochi (Itsumo Pocket ni Chopin)

▼ The Renaissance and Reformation
Leonardo da Vinci
 Posuka Demizu (The Promised Neverland)

▼ The Sovereign Nations of Europe
Elizabeth I
Io Sakisaka (Ao Haru Ride)

▼ The Industrial Revolution and American Independence
Abraham Lincoln
Hikaru Miyoshi (Moriarty the Patriot)

▼ The French Revolution and the Road to Becoming a Nation State
Napoleon Bonaparte
Hirohiko Araki (JoJo’s Bizzare Adventure)

▼ The Advancement of Modernization and Imperialism
Hirobumi Ito and Otto von Bismarck
Yusei Matsui (Assassination Classroom)

▼ The Opium Wars and Xinhai Revolution
Sun Yat-sen, Puyi, and Empress Dowager Cixi
Masanori Morita (Rookies)

▼ World War I and the Russian Revolution
Vladimir Lenin
Satoru Noda (Golden Kamuy)

▼ Populist Politics and the Great Depression
Franklin D. Roosevelt
Shinichi Sakamoto (Innocent)

▼ World War II and the United Nations
Winston Churchill and Adolf Hitler
Tatsuya Endo (Spy x Family)

▼ The Cold War and Conflict Between the East and West
Mikhail Gorbachev, Mahatma Gandhi, and John F. Kennedy
Shinichi Sakamoto (Innocent)

▼ The Multipolar World
Yasser Arafat, Nelson Mandela, and Deng Xiaoping
Mari Yamazaki (Thermae Romae)

▼ Advancing Globalization
Posuka Demizu (The Promised Neverland)

Each volume is priced at 1,100 yen (US$7.25), with the entire set scheduled to go on sale October 4.

Source: Shueisha via Oricon News via Otakomu
Images: Shueisha
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New Horizon star appears in “private English lesson” videos.

Tokyo Shoseki makes textbooks and other educational materials, but a while back they also created a pop culture icon. Soon after the publishing company updated its New Horizon English textbook and added new anime-style illustrations of the characters featured in its sample conversations, Ellen Baker, a blond, baseball-loving Bostonian who moves to Japan to work as an English teacher, captured the hearts of an instantly forming fanbase.

Earlier this year Tokyo Shoseki announced that Ellen-sensei, as she’s popularly known, would appear in a light novel series. Now she’s embarking on yet another new venture as a virtual YouTuber/VTuber (or maybe we should call her a VVTouber – we’ll get to that in a second).

On Monday, Tokyo Shoseki released Ellen Baker-sensei Hajimete no Eigo Kyoshitsu, or “Ellen Baker-sensei’s English Classroom for First-Timers.” In contrast to the more textbook-like approach of New Horizon, this book takes a less scholastic approach to the subject. Rather than lessons and drills, it looks to be arranged in a more conversational tone, with Ellen offering explanations of things that can trick up Japanese learners in the early stages of studying English, plus manga interludes. Tokyo Shoseki even promises that the book “Contains no difficult English sentences whatsoever!”

▼ A section from the book

But where things get really unique is that Ellen Baker-sensei’s English Classroom for First-Timers marks Ellen-sensei’s debut as a VTuber, although there’s actually even one more additional layer to the “virtual” aspect. As a special bonus to early buyers of the book, the first printing includes a VTuber Ellen-sensei Private Lesson Video pack.

Across five videos with a total runtime of 17 minutes, Ellen-sensei will teach viewers basic greetings and daily conversation tips for communicating in English. Since the videos are aimed at entry-level learners, they’re subtitled in Japanese, for the benefit of those who can’t yet catch everything she’s saying.

However, while they’re called “private lessons,” these aren’t live-streamed, one-on-one sessions, nor are they being hosted on a conventional streaming platform. Instead, the VTuber Ellen-sensei Private Lesson Videos are structured as video-format NFTs, which those with access provided by purchasing the Ellen Baker-sensei’s English Classroom for First-Timers book can access and view through NFT website FanTop. So if you’re in the mood to debate the semantics, you could argue that Ellen-sensei, in this sense, is really a virtual virtual YouTuber.

It’s worth pointing out once again that unlike New Horizon, Ellen Baker-sensei’s English Classroom for First-Timers isn’t being marketed as a classroom instruction tool, and instead seems more to be aimed at older self-study learners, so this isn’t a case of NFTs being snuck into elementary school kids’ required-curriculum reading. The NFT angle seems to be something included as part of the videos’ distribution channel, as Tokyo Shoseki doesn’t make any allusions to a possibility of them rising in value and functioning as an investment for buyers.

Ellen Baker-sensei’s English Classroom for First-Timers is available through Amazon Japan here, priced at 1,430 yen (US$9.40).

Source: Tokyo Shoseki via Hachima Kiko
Images: Tokyo Shoseki
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A sandwich is a sandwich but Osaka Tonkatsu is a meal.

With these days of ever-increasing food prices, it’s important to get the most mileage out of your money when it comes to food. As Lawson’s wildly popular volume-increasing campaigns have shown, people are craving more bang for their yen and on that note, there are few places that do it quite like Osaka Tonkatsu.

This sandwich shop is run by former sumo wrestler Chiyomatsu, who has designed a range of sandwiches suited for big eaters like himself. The first Osaka Tonkatsu opened in 2022 near Umeda Station and was followed by a second food-truck-style location that opened last December not too far from the bustling Dotonbori area.

I was feeling a little peckish the other day and decided to stop by for a light lunch. The signature sandwich of Osaka Tonkatsu is made with a fried pork cutlet five centimeters (two inches) thick.

▼ As you can see from the signs, the staff are ready to cater to tourists can help you in English, Tagalog, and a little Korean.

However, last January, Chiyomatsu came up with two new chicken cutlet sandwiches, so I decided to try one of those this time. The Chicken Katsu Oyako Sandwich is a very large fried chicken cutlet topped with egg salad and a gracious amount of sauces.

Possibly because of the thickness of the cuts, the meat is slow-cooked for about 24 hours. This means that it’s all ready to go and my order was made surprisingly fast. The staff was kind enough to lend me their kitchen scale so I could get an official weight of this beast at 708 grams (1.6 pounds)!

Since it’s a food truck, most people would probably get their huge sandwiches to go, but there are some standing tables out front which I took advantage of.

Looking at these pictures you’re probably wondering the same thing I was at the time: “How the hell are you supposed to eat that?”

I was expecting a knife and fork, but instead got a pair of plastic gloves.

It made sense in a strange way since eating a sandwich with a fork and knife would seem to nullify its existence as a sandwich.

Careful planning was needed to defuse this calorie bomb and I opted to start at the ends with the largest amount of chicken jutting out. When eating this much fried chicken, quality is important and Osaka Tonkatsu delivered on that end. It was extremely tender with a lot of crispy breading.

Thanks to the tenderness of slow cooking, it goes down smoothly and I could eat through it at a fairly good speed. After eating off the overhanging chicken, I was left with something that started to resemble a normal sandwich.

By the way, this Osaka Tonkatsu location is set up right in front of the Doton Plaza shopping center. It’s a facility with a lot of duty-free shops, making it popular with tour groups from overseas. I mention this because as I ate a few tour groups walked past my table and took pictures of this little piggy with literal egg on his face.

It would have been nice if they asked before photographing this intimate moment between my sandwich and I, but at the same time, I took some civic pride in becoming one of the many sights that Osaka has to offer visitors.

Back to my eating strategy: I knew before I even started that there was no way all that egg salad was going to stay on the sandwich. So, partway through, I jettisoned the bottom slice of bread in order to rescue the lost egg and other debris later on.

After finishing off the main chicken I shoveled up the rest of the egg for a post-sandwich sandwich. It was a nice surprise too, because eating the egg salad on its own helped me notice how much attention was paid to its seasoning and overall flavor. I would have been satisfied with a sandwich of just that alone.

Needless to say, it was extremely filling but considering the sheer volume of it, I didn’t feel as sluggish as I expected. For 1,200 yen (US$7.75) it was enough food to carry me through most of the day. Pound for pound, it’s a really good value compared to other places.

After having gotten a taste of the quality, I’m now really interested in trying the regular pork cutlet sandwiches, but I’m going to need a few days to get hungry enough to return to Osaka Tonkatsu.

Store information
Osaka Tonkatsu (Formerly Chiyomatsu) / 大阪とんかつ(旧店名ちよ松)
Osaka-fu, Osaka-shi, Chuo-ku, Shimanouchi 2-15-10 Doton Plaza
大阪府大阪市中央区島之内2-15-10 DOTON PLAZA
Open: Noon – 8 p.m. or while supplies last
Instagram

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Exclusive drink is joined by a new summer customisation to jazz up any beverage.

Starbucks customers in Japan just can’t get enough of melons. Not only has the super-popular flavour been returning every year in a limited-edition Frappuccino since the summer of 2022, this year the chain is giving its customers even more of the fruit in its second melon Frappuccino of the season, called Motto Gohobi Melon.

The new limited-time drink continue this year’s theme of “Splash Summer, Let’s Burst”, which started with the Gohobi Melon Frappuccino released earlier this month. The Japanese word “gohobi” means “reward”, and is commonly used to refer to something you want to treat yourself with after a stressful day, so the new Frappuccino aims to provide you with an even more rewarding experience, as indicated by the addition of the word “motto” or “more“.

▼ Think of it as a “More Rewarding Melon Frappuccino“

There are actually two new Frappuccinos coming our way, the first being the Motto Gohobi Melon Frappuccino, which contains the same ingredients as the drink released earlier this month — a blend of green melon juice and milk atop an orange melon pulp and jelly base — but with an added hit of orange pulp on top for motto melon flavour.

The second Frappuccino is the Vanilla Cream Frappuccino with Melon Pulp Customisation, which transforms an everyday staple on the menu into a fruity classic with a dollop of orange melon pulp. This theme of adding more melon to drinks is extended even further with a “melon pulp customisation” option, where customers can choose to add the pulp to any Frappuccino on the menu for an additional 69 yen (US$0.45) for takeout, or 70 yen for drink-in.

The customisation will be available while stocks last from 26 April to 28 May, which is the same sales period for the Frappuccinos, although Starbucks Rewards members will be able to purchase the drinks through the official app from 25 April.

The Motto Gohobi Melon Frappuccino will be on the menu priced at 756 yen for takeout or 770 yen for drink-in, while the Vanilla Cream Frappuccino with Melon Pulp Customisation will be slightly cheaper, at 639 yen for takeout or 651 yen for drink-in.

With both drinks claiming to deliver a luxurious taste and texture, we’re looking forward to trying the new drinks to see if they’re even better than last year’s, which wowed us with its melon whipped cream topping.

Source, images: Press release
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Pokémon plushies and nearly one-pound burgers promise a very good night’s sleep.

“Playing video games” has long been one of the most tempting reasons to stay up past your regular bedtime and whittle down the amount of sleep you get. So it was actually very thoughtful of The Pokémon Company to think of a way for fans to have it both ways with the release of Pokémon Sleep, which rewards you in the game for getting more and better sleep in the real world.

Of course, the more comfortable you are, the better you’ll sleep, and so with the game’s one-year anniversary coming up, the Grand Hyatt Hotel will be offering special Pokémon Sleep-themed rooms for you to stay in, immersing yourself in a Pokémon-themed environment before drifting off into ostensibly Pokémon-filled dreams.

There are two different plans available, the first of which is called the Pokémon Sleep Suite Room Stay. Based on the hotel’s chairman suite, this plan sees the main room transformed into a recreation of the campsite from Pokémon Sleep’s Greengrass Isle, with game artwork decorating the walls and a quintet of sleeping Pokémon plushies (Snorlax, Pikachu, Slowpoke, Cubone, and Chikorita) to keep you company.

The nearly life-sized Snorlax is obviously too big to lug home, but the four other plushies are yours to keep, as is a wellness bag bundle with a T-shirt, backpack, pouch, drink bottle, herbal tea, and bath salts.

Since it can be tough to fall asleep when your stomach is growling, the accommodation plan keeps you well fed too. For dinner, the hotel staff will deliver to your room a massive 450-gram (15.9-ounce) Snorlax cheeseburger.

The burger is accompanied by a real-word version of Pokémon Sleep’s in-game Snoozy Tomato Salad, but don’t worry, they haven’t forgotten about dessert, as your in-room dinner also includes a slice of the game’s Lucky Chant Apple Pie.

▼ Whether you’re asleep or just in a food coma, you will be relaxed after eating this.

A breakfast of Pokémon pancakes is also served in your room.

Only one room in the Grand Hyatt is becoming a Pokémon suite, but there will also be 10 Pokémon Sleep king and twin-bed rooms.

Instead of the giant Snorlax plushie, these are outfitted with a special Snorlax blanket, plus one of the four smaller sleeping plushies, who appear to need to stay behind in the room when you check-out. The non-suite rooms do still have a wellness bag bundle, though, with a canvas tote bag replacing the backpack…

…and also include a Pokémon pancake breakfast, served as part of the hotel’s French Kitchen buffet. That does mean that you’re on your own for dinner, although the Snorlax Burger is still a possible option, as 10 will be served daily in the hotel’s Oak Door steakhouse, as will 10 Pikachu dessert burgers, which are chocolate banana sundaes in sandwich form.

The Grand Hyatt Tokyo will be offering the Pokémon rooms and food from July 1 to August 31. Oh, and if those dates don’t match up with your travel plans, we can show you how to make your own Pikachu burgers at home.

Related: Grand Hyatt Tokyo
Source, images: PR Times
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Former wholesale fish market’s plot has been idle since 2018.

In 2018, Tokyo’s aging Tsukiji Fish Market closed down and its wholesale operations relocated to the Toyosu district of the city. This wasn’t because Tsukiji was a bad location, however. If anything, the location was too good, as being in a developed, transportation-connected part of downtown meant there wasn’t space to build a new facility for the fish market to move directly into, and so the Toyosu site was constructed while the Tsukiji one was still in business.

That means that since the wholesale market left Tsukiji, there’s been a huge plot of unused land sitting at the edge of the neighborhood next to the Sumida River. The Tokyo metropolitan government has finally announced what’s going to be done with it: it’s going to serve as the site of a brand-new stadium, along with adjacent hotel, commercial, and office developments.

▼ Concept renderings of the new development for the old Tsukiji wholesale market site

11 different companies are currently involved in the project, including Mitsui Real Estate and the Yomiuri Newspaper group. The roughly 19-hectre (46.95-acre) plot sits adjacent to the Hama-rikyu Gardents.

▼ Currently a parking lot is pretty much all Google Maps shows for the site.

The developers are referring to the stadium as a “multi-stadium,” suitable for a variety of sporting, musical, and other entertainment events and expositions, with a capacity of roughly 50,000 visitors, roughly on par with Tokyo Dome, which opened 36 years ago, and much larger than the approximately 14,500-seat Budokan (though still smaller than the Japan National Stadium built for the Tokyo Olympics in 2021). The involvement of Yomiuri has some speculating that the Giants, the professional baseball team owned by the publisher that currently plays its home games at Tokyo Dome, will be associated but the team has made no public statement to that effect at this time.

Despite the Tsukiji wholesale market closing, the neighborhood continues to be a major leisure and tourism destination. Tsukiji’s “outer market,” the dense collection of restaurants and seafood shops on the streets in front of the wholesale facility, have remained in business, and those were the always the primary attraction for non-restaurant industry visitors in the first place. Especially with the Toyosu market having gained a reputation as a place catering to particularly deep-pocketed foreign tourists, Tsukiji has remained a vibrant part of the city, so building on that energy with a stadium and hotel isn’t a bad bet.

The first sections of the development are projected to open in 2029, with most of the place up and running by 2032.

Source: Yomiuri Shimbun, NHK News Web
Top image: Wikipedia/Kakidai
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