Twentythree

Woodlands that inspired the creation of My Neighbor Totoro sit at the edge of the biggest city in Japan, but this fund helps keep them green.

Though My Neighbor Totoro touches on a lot of Japanese cultural values and traditions regarding the sanctity of nature, Totoro himself is entirely a product of the fertile imagination of director Hayao Miyazaki. But while there are no actual folktales about Totoros inhabiting the forests of Japan, there is a real-world woodland area with a deep connection to the Studio Ghibli character. Sayama Hills, on the border of Tokyo and Saitama Prefecture, served as the inspiration for the setting of the anime film, and Miyazaki’s frequently expressed reverence has earned it the nickname “Totoro Forest.”

With Tokyo being Japan’s largest city, though, and still growing bigger, natural spaces within or along its borders are always going to be candidates for future urban development. So to help keep the Totoro Forest as lush and green as a Ghibli movie background, there’s the Totoro Fund, a trust fund dedicated to environmental conservation in Sayama Hills. Naturally, Ghibli specialty shop Donguri Kyowakoku also wants to help protect the area, and they’re once again offering their line of Totoro Fund merchandise, with a portion of proceeds donated to the fund.

Cloth totes and reusable eco shopping bags featuring Totoro and the Catbus are fun and practical for nature walks and local errand running alike…

…and if you want to show your care for the Totoro Forest on your literal sleeves, there’s a long-sleeved T-shirt, in black or white, with Totoros, Soot Sprites, and the name of the fund itself across the chest.

You can actually make any of your possessions into a way to spread the word, since there’s a slew of Totoro Fund stickers.

And then there’s the most beautiful part of the Totoro Fund lineup, post cards and letter writing sets with watercolors and illustrations from Hayao Miyazaki himself.

Of course, arguably the only real differences between a post card, letter stationery, and a poster is the size and thickness of the paper stock, so using them for decorative purposes instead of correspondence is an option that’s entirely on the table/walls of your home too.

Prices range from 660 yen (US$4.30) for the stickers and post card sets to 4,510 yen for the shirts, so there’s something for fans of even modest budgets who want to own some cool Ghibli artwork and also help preserve the place that inspired it. The whole lineup is available through the Donguri Kyowakoku online shop here.

Source: Donguri Kyowakoku
Top image: Donguri Kyowakoku
Insert images: Donguri Kyowakoku (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11)
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Century-old lacquerware company, supplier to the royal family, turns its makie skills to a beloved Fire-type.

As a series with a long history, huge cast of characters, and no aversion to merchandising, you can find all sorts of Pokémon-themed plastic cups and bento boxes. They may not be fancy, but they’re fun all the same, and fans can always find room for one or two in their cupboard.

Today, though, we’re looking at some Pokémon tableware that most definitely is fancy, as it’s made by a Japanese lacquerware company that’s been in business since 1919. In the century-plus it’s been in business, Yamada Heiando has counted Japan’s imperial family among its satisfied customers, but Pokémon fans were added to the list last year when the Tokyo-based craftsmen added a series of Pokémon lacquer bowls to their offerings, and now they’re expanding the lineup with an all-new design featuring Ponyta.

Ponyta’s addition to the stable continues the collaboration’s theme of the eto, as Japan calls the animals of the Chinese zodiac. Previous entries in the Pokémon Eto bowl series featured Torchic, Dragonite, Arbok, and Swinub, representing the Chinese zodiac’s rooster, dragon, snake, and boar, and with 2026 being the Year of the Horse, it’s only fitting for Ponyta to join them.

Like how Pokémon can evolve into new forms, Yamada Heiando’s artists start with a piece of wood, which is turned to shape the bowl. The lacquer resin is then carefully applied, under precisely controlled temperature and humidity, and then the Ponyta painted, with the entire process done by hand.

The gold coloring takes on a particularly captivating shine thanks to a technique called makie, in which gold powder is sprinkled onto the painting to create a shimmering effect as it catches the light.

The bowl is offered in the classic Japanese lacquerware colors of black and crimson, with the circular backdrop to the Ponyta painting in the contrasting hue. Though Ponyta is a fire-type, the bowl being made of wood means it has excellent heat insulation properties, so it won’t singe your hands even if it’s filled with piping hot miso soup or corn chowder.

▼ The bowl comes bundled with a lacquerware spoon.

▼ The still growing Pokémon Eto bowl series includes Pikachu, who isn’t customarily counted among the animals of the Chinese zodiac, but is welcome pretty much wherever and whenever he shows up.

As high-quality pieces that, if taken care of, should be usable for decades, the Pokémon Eto bowls are priced at 17,600 yen (US$115). Orders can be placed through the Yamada Heiando online shop here.

Source: PR Times
Top image: PR Times
Insert images: PR Times, Yamada Heiando
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The Yokohama-based donut specialty chain incorporates a unique ingredient into its dough that results in a divine texture and taste.

Sushi lovers may be tempted to read the “uni” in Uni Donuts as the word for “sea urchin” in Japanese, but it’s actually pronounced as in the English “university.” The freshly baked donut specialty brand is an offshoot of Uni Coffee Roastery that first opened shop in December 2023 in the Bandobashi area of Yokohama and now has over 20 locations in Japan and overseas. Uniquely, its dough recipe incorporates kabocha (Japanese squash), which results in a gentle sweetness and fluffy, melt-in-your-mouth texture when fully baked.

Uni Donuts is also known for offering seasonal flavors such as mango coconut in the summer and pumpkin in the fall. After an online poll through its social media channels earlier this month to determine which seasonal flavor to release for spring, the chain announced that the winning selection was sakuramochi, a traditional Japanese confection consisting of pink mochi filled with anko (red bean paste). This new flavor officially went on sale at Uni Donut locations on March 27.

The sakuramochi-inspired donut is a treat not only for stomachs but for eyes as well with its elegant, light-pink sakura-an (sweet bean paste) cream filling. The top of each donut is even garnished with fully edible pickled sakura blossoms.

This limited-time spring flavor will be available until April 23 at most Uni Donut locations excluding a few (exceptions can be found on the chain’s official website).

Speaking of limited-time flavors, you may want to also check out Starbucks Japan’s spring Frappuccino lineup and Krispy Kreme’s The Super Mario Galaxy Movie tie-in donuts if you still have some leftover dough.

Source, images: PR Times
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After a longer-than-expected renovation, this Ryogoku museum is finally ready to tell the human stories of Edo and Tokyo once again.

Many travel guides will say that the Tokyo National Museum, in Ueno Park, is Tokyo’s best museum, and with hundreds of officially recognized Important Cultural Properties, it definitely has a claim to that distinction. However, the Tokyo National Museum is first and foremost an art museum, and while its collection spans thousands of years of priceless pieces, they’re sometimes of such scholarly importance that they’re presented in ways that can make it hard to see how their historical context relates to the human side of Japanese culture unless you already have a background in Japanese historical studies.

So there’s an argument to be made that Tokyo’s best museum, especially for international travelers, is actually the Edo-Tokyo Museum. Located  in the Ryogoku neighborhood, the museum focuses on the span from the establishment of Edo (Tokyo’s former name) as the capital of the Tokugawa Shogunate through Tokyo’s economic recovery and subsequent prosperity following World War II, so the Edo-Tokyo Museum still covers roughly 400 years of Japanese history, but does so with a more human-oriented approach.

However, for quite some time the question of “Should you visit the Edo-Tokyo Museum or the National Museum?” has been moot, since the Edo-Tokyo Museum closed for renovations in the spring of 2022 for extensive renovations. The original timetable said the project would be done in three years, but it ended up taking one more. As of today, though, the Edo-Tokyo Museum is finally open again.

As the seat of power for the last 300 years of feudal rule, Edo was a center of samurai activity, but the country finally having a unified government also made the city a vibrant cultural epicenter, with ukiyo-e painters essentially creating the genre of popular art among the common people and the courtesans of the Yoshiwara pleasure quarter influencing fashion developments. The museum’s exhibits are designed to tell the stories of all those groups, with representative historical artifacts and recreations of shopfronts and homes showing that history is comprised of the lives lead by the people of the times.

The Edo-Tokyo Museum is open as of March 31, and is conveniently located right next to Tokyo’s Kokugikan sumo arena, another great place to immerse yourself in Japanese culture, even if you don’t yet know much about it.

Related: Edo-Tokyo Museum official website
Source, images: PR Times
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New system allows you to travel with just a credit card on more than 50 lines in and around the capital, but with one major holdout.

It was a big deal when train lines in Japan added the option to pay for your fare using an IC card. Rather than having to buy a paper ticket from a machine to feed through the gate every time you wanted to go somewhere, all you had to do was tap your prepaid card and the fare would be automatically deducted.

Nowadays, though, that sort of pay-with-a-tap functionality is something that’s built into a lot of credit cards, and so it’s time for another change in train ticket purchase options. As of March 25, credit card tap payments can finally be used via an integrated system for nearly a dozen rail operators in the Tokyo area, allowing you to easily ride and transfer between their lines just by tapping your card, with no need to fiddle with tickets or to purchase and recharge IC cards.

The new system supports credit card tap payments for a total of 11 operators, including both Tokyo subway companies (Tokyo Metro and Toei). Also part of the system are the lines operated by Keihin Kyuko/Keikyu, Keio, Odakyu, Odakyu Hakone, Sagami Railway, Seibu, Tobu, Tokyu, and Yokohama Rapid Railway (operator of the Minato Mirai and Kodomonokuni Lines). Aside from the Tokyo city center, that network provides access to destinations as far as Hakone and Yokohama in Kanagawa Prefecture and Kinugawa in Tochigi. The credit card tap network also connects with Haneda Airport to the Tokyo subway system via Keikyu train lines, which should make it especially convenient for international travelers who’ve just landed in Japan and want to get to their hotel or sightseeing destinations ASAP.

The complete credit card tap network consists of 54 lines and 729 stations. The current list of usable cards consists of Visa, Mastercard, American Express, Discover, Diners Club, JCB, and UnionPay.

Notably absent from the new credit card payment system is East Japan Railway Company, a.k.a. JR East. However, while JR does operate the Yamanote Line loop that encircles downtown Tokyo, most of its other lines are more useful for local residents commuting to/from the suburbs, so if you’re in Tokyo for on vacation, your credit card might be all you need to handle your train and subway fares.

Source: Impress Watch, Toyo Keizai Online
Top image: Pakutaso
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There’s a beautiful reason why Mr. Matsuda didn’t name his restaurant after himself.

As Japan’s biggest restaurant chain for gyudon (beef bowl), and also its primary ambassador abroad, Yoshinoya is practically synonymous with the dish, But have you ever wondered how the chain got its name?

Looking at how Yoshinoya is written in Japanese, 吉野家, it seems like the reason could be pretty obvious. The first two kanji, 吉野, are pronounced “Yoshino,” which is a family name, and the last kanji, 家, pronounced “ya,” means “house,” “home,” or “family,” and by extension can also sometimes be used to refer to restaurants or places of business. So putting those two concepts together, we arrive at the tempting assumption that Yoshinoya was founded by someone whose family name was Yoshino…but that’s not true, because the man who opened the very first Yoshinoya, all the way back in 1899, was named Eikichi Matsuda.

▼ Eikichi Matsuda

That first Yoshinoya was in Tokyo, but Matsuda wasn’t a native son of the capital. He was born in Osaka, and so many people who know about his roots then assume that he named Yoshinoya after the Osaka neighborhood of Yoshino…except Matsuda didn’t grow up in Yoshino. He grew up halfway across Osaka in the Sumiyoshi district, so if he’d named the chain after his boyhood home, it would have been “Sumiyoshiya.”

However, Matsuda’s decision to call his restaurant Yoshinoya was born out of a desire to give a shout-out to one of his favorite places in the region of Japan he’d come from, though not his specific home prefecture. The inspiration for the Yoshinoya name actually comes from Osaka’s neighbor, Nara Prefecture. Though Nara is best known for its deer and temples, it has one more claim to fame: the breathtakingly beautiful cherry blossoms of Mt. Yoshino.

The slopes of Mt. Yoshino have so many sakura that they’re grouped into four sections: the lower, middle, upper, and inner “senbon,” or “thousand trees.” That’s not an exaggeration, either, as there are way more than 4,000 cherry trees on the mountain, with the actual total being roughly 30,000, with the pink forest so vast that a helicopter tour is one of the best ways to get a sense of its full scale.

Since Yoshinoya’s standard interior and logo design doesn’t make use of any cherry blossom motifs or colors, the connection between the Nara mountain and Tokyo-founded beef bowl chain isn’t one that most customers make, although we have to say that sakura and gyudon are both very beautiful, just in very different ways.

So maybe as we’re shopping for stuff to take out to cherry blossom picnic parties this year, we might need to grab some Yoshinoya takeout too, in keeping with the inspiration for the chain’s name.

Source: Yoshinoya
Top image: SoraNews24
Insert images: Yoshinoya, PR Times, SoraNews24
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As Donbei celebrates its 50th anniversary, two of its original noodle recipes return.

Nissin might be most famous for their Cup Noodle ramen, but they know a thing or two about speedy udon and soba noodles too. They offer both as part of their Donbei instant noodle line, which has been a hit ever since it first went on sale in 1976.

Over the years, Nissin has tinkered with the Donbei recipe, adapting and updating it to suit changing preferences. To celebrate the brand’s 50th anniversary, though, they’ve brought back the original Donbei recipe in what they’re calling Donbei Classic. It’s going on sale March 30, but we were able to bend time and get an advance taste of this flavor of the past when we received a Donbei Classic box set prior to its official launch.

▼ The box is cleverly designed to look like a TV from the ‘70s.

Included in the set are four bowls of Donbei, with both the current and classic versions of their Kitsune Udon and Tempura Soba represented. We decided to start our taste test off with the udon, which comes in the green bowls.

▼ The Classic version (shown on the left) even recreates the packaging style from 50 years ago, but the overall look has stayed pretty consistent, especially the font used to write Donbei (どん兵衛).

Both the Classic and current kitsune udon take the same five minutes to cook after you add boiling water, and as soon as we picked up a mouthful of noodles with our chopsticks, we could see that they’re thinner for Classic udon than they are for the modern version.

▼ Classic Donbei Kitsune Udon

▼ Modern Donbei Kitsune Udon

While they share a smooth, slippery texture, the modern Donbei udon also has a chewiness that you don’t get with the Classic’s less substantial noodles. Similarly, the modern Donbei’s broth has a stronger presence, with more pronounced dashi (bonito stock) notes than the original recipe delivers. It’s not that the Classic Donbei is bland, but it doesn’t match the depth of flavor that the current recipe has. The trend continued with the aburage (fried tofu) topping, which is plumper in the modern Donbei.

Next up was the Tempura Soba. Since it uses the same broth as the udon, we had the same feeling, that the modern Donbei broth has a deeper, richer flavor. The newer Donbei also uses straighter noodles that have a more pronounced and enticing buckwheat aroma, and its tempura is crispier too.

▼ Classic Donbei Tempura Soba

▼ Classic Donbei Tempura Soba again

To be clear, the Classic versions aren’t bad at all. They’re tasty, entirely viable options, and might even be to one’s individual preference if they’re in the mood for something simple and light. Eating both the new and old Donbei back-to-back didn’t leave us disappointed at the Classic ones, but rather impressed that even 50 years ago, Nissin’s instant noodles were this good, and with the Classic Donbei priced at just 236 yen (US$1.50), this is about as affordable as quasi-time travel gets, so they’re worth checking out, even if, in the end, we’re glad to be living in the present.

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