Twentythree

Japanese convenience store food, like you’ve never seen it before. 

If you’re looking for value-for-money on your next convenience store run, then Lawson is the place to go right now, because the chain is holding a special “Super Happy Too Much! Challenge” campaign, where select products are being upsized for free.

This is the second week of the campaign, which brings us a new lineup of 10 larger-than-usual products, and the standouts for us turned out to be two products in the bread aisle.

▼ The 51-percent upsized Shrimp Crackers with Sweet Rice Wine got a second look from us as well.

While we ended up bypassing the crackers, we couldn’t resist purchasing the Too Much! Menchi Burger (387 yen [US$2.41])…

▼ … and the Curry Bread and Minced Meat Cutlet (192 yen).

These wildly inventive creations have been causing a buzz since they were released on 9 June, and when we saw them in person, we immediately understood why.

Firstly, the Too Much! Menchi Burger is visually stunning, as the weight of the menchi katsu (miced meat cutlet) has been increased by more than 51 percent compared to the regular version.

▼ The cutlet is now so big it juts out the sides like a meaty moustache.

While the menchi-to-bun ratio is now drastically outweighed, the taste remains outstanding. Since it’s prepared in-store, as part of Lawson’s “Machikado Kitchen” prepared food lineup, the menchi katsu comes out hot and crispy, with an irresistible, freshly fried crunch.

▼ The inside of the cutlet is plump and generous, with onion adding extra flavour to the juicy meat.

Next, we move on to the curry bread, which has a Japanese name that translates as: “Too Much Pairing! European-Style Curry Bread & Jutting-out Menchi Katsu“.

Curry bread, or “Kare Pan” as it’s known in Japanese, is usually served on its own, as a rounded morsel of battered, fried bread with a curry filling in the centre. This new product, however, changes everything we thought we knew about curry bread by using them as buns, and sandwiching a fried meat cutlet between them.

▼ A triple-fry burger, with a menchi katsu jutting out from the centre.

Despite the fry-heavy elements, this “burger” was actually less greasy than we thought it would be. Both the curry bread and the menchi katsu did have strong, distinctive flavors, though, so there were moments when we found ourselves thinking, “Wait, what exactly am I eating right now?” To be honest, the combination is so intense that it can leave your taste buds feeling a little overwhelmed as the two main ingredients compete for your attention, and it’s seriously filling so you might want to eat it in two sittings.

▼ The curry bread and cutlet were a full-on pairing, so it lived up to its name.

While Week One of the campaign went overboard with drinks that were extremely salty and extremely sweet, our choices for Week Two challenged our bellies and our preconceptions of what convenience store food can be.

We learned that too much menchi katsu can be well matched for a burger, while the too-much pairing of curry bread and menchi katsu can be too much for the taste buds. In the end, though, we were left with full bellies and a new appreciation for Lawson, who dared to take convenience store food to new realms with such bold, attention-grabbing creations.

Photos ©SoraNews24
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Grand theft arbor.

In this age of social media, it can be easy to get swept up in the lives of others and feel a pang of jealousy for those who have nicer things. Nevertheless, when it comes time to choose a plant to spruce up your home, it’s important to get one that fits your budget rather than splurging on the kind of high-end greenery all the famous celebrities are flaunting these days.

But for one 26-year-old man in the city of Takamatsu, Kagawa Prefecture, the allure of a really nice little tree in a local home center was, unfortunately, too powerful to resist. In the late afternoon of 7 June, the man was eyeing up a particularly premium potted plant selling for 275,000 yen (US$1,700). Averse to parting with so much money, he instead took a price tag from another item valued at 3,980 yen ($25) and replaced the plant’s one with it.

The plant in question is rather rare, so rare in fact, that it doesn’t even have a normal name and just goes by its scientific one of Operculicarya hyphaenoides in both English and Japanese. They’re native to Madagascar and are related to cashew trees. This type is also known as a caudex because of its fat trunk that stores water. These kinds of plants are quite popular for houseplant enthusiasts, partly because they have a natural bonsai feel to them.

▼ This video gives us a really good look at some.

However, when he attempted to purchase it, the cashier luckily had a keen eye for foliage and suspected something was wrong, refusing the purchase. The store had an incident involving someone swapping price tags the previous month, and was on high alert for it.

The man decided to leave without causing a scene, but the store contacted the police, who reviewed security camera footage. The video contained enough evidence to identify the man and implicate him for the houseplant fraud, resulting in his arrest on 8 June for the most recent incident.

The rareness of this particular plant also seems to have confused the media in Japan, which referred to it as a “cactus,” likely because it was in the cactus section of the home center where it was sold. Naturally, upon reading the news, many people online searched the plant’s name and were further confused by the mislabeling.

“It cost that much, and it doesn’t even look like a cactus?!”
“It looks like a baobab tree.”
“I have no idea what is good about that plant.”
“It’s got a strange shape, but the leaves look cute.”
“Cacti prices have really gone up, haven’t they?”
“They say it’s easy to grow cacti. He should have tried that.”
“That staff member knows the prices well.”
“He probably just wanted to sell it online.”

Police are currently investigating the man’s motive and whether he was involved in any other related crimes. If he did plan to sell it, he would have had a hard time of it. Given the rarity of these plants and the fact that each one tends to have a distinct look, it would have been pretty easy for police to spot it as soon as it appeared online.

So, chances are he just likes plants, but lacked the patience and discipline to save up for one himself. Let that be a lesson to all of us who have heard that devil whisper in our ear, seducing us into committing felonies for really nice houseplants. It’s just not worth it.

Source: TBS New Dig, Itai News
Top image: Pakutaso
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These Japan-exclusive beverages are harder to get than most.

Starbucks might have originated overseas but Japan has refined its offerings and taken them to a whole other level. Case in point is the chain’s Tea & Cafe stores, which only exist in Japan, at 30 select locations.

These stores specialise in tea-based beverages made with Starbucks’ Teavana brand teas, and serve exclusive drinks you won’t find at regular Starbucks locations.

This summer, an exclusive duo of drinks will be released, based around the theme of “Urban Oasis“. The star ingredient at the centre of this oasis is Pineapple Kona Pop, a new Teavana tea blend that combines sweetly tart pineapple notes with the subtle sweetness of apple and plenty of rose and marigold buds and petals, making it a refreshing treat for summer.

Said to have a vibrant and fragrant flavour, the new blend is being featured in the Pineapple & Coconut Frozen Tea Float (933 yen [US$5.82]) for takeout and 950 yen for dine-in), and the Craft Iced Tea Pineapple Kona Pop (628 yen takeout; 640 yen dine-in).

The Pineapple & Coconut Frozen Tea Float is constructed in layers, with a juicy pineapple pulp jelly and orange marmalade at the bottom of the cup, a frozen Pineapple Kona Pop, layered with creamy coconut cream, in the middle, and a topping of vanilla ice cream and coconut chips. According to Starbucks, this is a drink that can be enjoyed like a parfait, so you can enjoy the layers separately, or mix them together for full-on tropical flavour.

The Craft Iced Tea Pineapple Kona Pop is an exquisitely made drink, with baristas brewing the Kona Pop tea fresh for every order. The tea leaves are strained with a tea strainer and then rapidly chilled over ice to maximise the pineapple flavour and enhance the brightness of the rose and marigold botanicals, ensuring every cup contains a delightful, vibrant aroma.

After getting a taste of the Pineapple Kona Pop blend, you might find yourself falling in love with it, in which case you’ll be able to pick up a box to enjoy at home.

▼ Each 80-gram (2.8-ounce) box retails for 2,350 yen.

While the tea leaves will be available year-round as a standard product at Starbucks Tea & Cafe stores, the new drinks will only be on the menu for a limited time from 17 June. If you’re unable to visit a Tea & Cafe branch, then the chain can still satisfy your summertime fruit cravings at other retail outlets, with fruit gummies, muscat tea lattes, and a Banana Affogato Frappuccino.

Related: Starbucks Tea & Cafe
Source, images: Press release
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Bringing futuristic solutions to historic streets.

Upon coming to Japan and exploring the cities, I soon came to one of many realizations: the country has a near-complete lack of public trash cans. While it’s technically possible to call into one of the many convenience stores to unload your pockets of snack wrappers into the store’s waste receptacles, there are almost always signs asking you to refrain from doing so, and you could potentially face criminal charges for dumping garbage from products not purchased in-store.

Instead, it is socially expected for any and all trash generated from snacking to be carried and disposed of at your house or hotel, so much so that it’s quite normal for people to carry around small plastic bags in your handbag or backpack to hold onto accumulated wrappers and napkins until the end of the day. As such, for those who are accustomed to having public trash cans being easily accessible, they can often end up with pockets filled with sticky waste and crumb-filled backpacks when they go sightseeing.

This cultural difference has been exacerbated considerably due to the post-pandemic boom in tourism, with millions of enthusiastic travelers flocking to sightseeing hotspots, like Kyoto, seeking to delve into the region’s charming history and food, which naturally increases the volume of sidewalk snacking. When you’re wandering through the picturesque streets of Kyoto’s Higashiyama ward, miles away from your hotel, the last thing you really want to be doing is holding the wrapper from your mid-morning Family Mart fried chicken snack for the rest of the day. So, the few trash cans available tend to fill up quickly and potentially overflow.

Fortunately, Kyoto has started tackling this problem with some high-tech efficiency. On May 27, two futuristic, eco-friendly smart trash cans called SmaGO, made by Forcetec, were introduced near the busy southbound Kiyomizu-michi bus stop, a highly traversed area for anyone looking to explore the area’s streets and temples.

The SmaGO units run entirely on solar power and feature an automatic trash-crushing mechanism that compacts waste down to just one-fifth of its original volume. They also connect to the internet to report exactly how full they are in real-time, allowing collection crews to swoop in before the trash starts to overflow and propagate to the nearby vicinity.

While these are the latest two units of a total of 34 throughout Kyoto, these eco-bins were actually donated to the city by the famous Kiyomizu temple and the nearby Rokuharamitsuji temple, with the Bank of Kyoto stepping in to provide the installation location, in the hopes of creating a more comfortable and beautiful city for both citizens and tourists.

So, the next time you venture into the historic former capital of Japan, you can rest assured that waste management will be one less thing to factor into your travel itinerary.

Source and images: PR Times
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Luna Azul can take you from Tokyo to Akita or Aomori while you snooze.

The Shinkansen is usually the fastest way to get from Point A to Point B when traveling within Japan. Since the stations tend to be centrally located and there aren’t any time-consuming security checks to go through, the Shinkansen can get you to many destinations even more quickly than flying.

That doesn’t mean, though, that the Shinkansen is always the most time-efficient way to get around Japan, since as fast as the bullet train may be, the ride is still going to take up part of your day. On the other hand, a new train from JR East/East Japan Railway Company will take you between Tokyo and Japan’s northeastern Tohoku region while using up hardly any of your day, because you’ll be making most of the trip while you sleep.

JR East’s newly announced Luna Azul overnight sleeper train will connect Tokyo’s Shinagawa Station with Aomori Station in Aomori Prefecture, all the way at the northern end of Japan’s main island of Hokkaido. The 10-car train will pull out of Shinagawa at 9 p.m. and have you in Aomori at 9 a.m., with brief stops at Tokyo, Ueno, Omiya, and Takasaki Stations along the way at night and then at Akita, Hirosaki, and Shin Aomori Stations in the morning. The trip in the opposite direction will leave Aomori at 4 in the afternoon and get to Shinagawa at 7 a.m. the following day.

The train looks to strike a balance between comfort and utility, with differently designed private compartments to suit the needs of solo travelers, pairs, and families. The preview image below shows, clockwise from the top left, the Luna Comfort Grande, Luna Premium Wide, Luna Comfort Wide, and Luna Comfort configurations.

Guestrooms are found in nine of the cars, and the tenth is a lounge with wide windows and, presumably, drinks and snacks available for purchase.

The Luna Azul will make two round trips a week between Shinagawa and Aomori, traveling along the Joetsu and Uetsu Main Lines. Because Tohoku is especially cold and snowy in winter, though, travel demand for the region dips significantly during that part of the year, Shinagawa-Aomori will be the Luna Azul’s route between spring and autumn. In winter, it’ll instead switch to a seven-car express train that still goes out of Shinagawa in Tokyo, but runs to Naganoharakusatsuguchi Station in Gunma Prefecture, a non-overnight journey. Gunma isn’t exactly balmy in the winter either, but Naganoharakusatsuguchi Station works as an entry point to Gunma’s Kusatsu Onsen hot spring resort area, a popular place for travelers in the mood for a cozy warming soak.

▼ The Luna Azul’s spring-to-autumn route (red line) and winter route (pink line). The winter route also includes a stop in Shibukawa, another popular hot spring area that also boasts skiing options.

The Luna Azul is scheduled to go into service in the spring of 2027.

Source: JR East, PR Times
Images: PR Times
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People have been traveling to Amanohashidate for centuries, and this week apparently bears are too.

Amanohashidate, located on the northern coast of Kyoto Prefecture, is considered one of the three most beautiful places in Japan (the other being Miyajima and Matsushima). Amanohashidate translates to “bridge to the heavens,” and it got that name because the strip of land that stretches across the bay here is said to look like a pathway rising into the sky.

Celebrated in poems and painting for centuries, Amanohashidate’s beauty continues to draw travelers today, with people coming from across Japan and around the world to take in the view. This week’s visitors, however, have included two bears.

In another instance in the growing trend of bears showing up in unexpected places in Japan, shortly after 4:30 in the afternoon on June 10 a call was placed to the 110 emergency services phone number reporting a bear that was spotted at the north end of Amanohashidate. The strip of land was evacuated and sealed off, and police and animal control personnel were dispatched to the scene. Firecrackers were used to scare the bear off of the bridge, after which it fled into the ocean and swam back towards the bay’s northern shore to the west of Amanohashidate. After coming back onto dry land, the bear climbed a tree and was then shot with a tranquilizer dart, falling asleep around 10:40 p.m. No injuries to humans were reported.

▼ And yes, some of the response team was equipped with handheld shields, like they were knights heading out to face off with a dragon or ogre.

Now, a visit to one of Japan’s top sightseeing spots, a quick swim, and getting to bed at a relatively early hour would be a pretty good day for most people, but the city of Miyazu, where Amanohashidate is located, doesn’t ordinarily get bears in this district, and so its appearance is cause for concern…and that concern has grown deeper with the spotting of a second bear, which was seen at Amanohashidate on the morning of June 12 at roughly 7:30. This bear was spotted by a foreign tourist, and after the report came in Amanohashidate was once again evacuated and closed off. As of this writing, the bear remains at large.

Source: TBS News Dig (1, 2), Nitele News
Top image: Wikipedia/Sylvestre
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Ordinarily cheap Matsuya opens a high-priced Matsuya inside another upscale Matsuya.

Japanese department stores have food departments on their basement levels, and naturally the fancier department stores offer fancier foods. So it might surprise some shoppers at the Matsuya department store in Tokyo’s upscale Ginza neighborhood to find that one of Japan’s cheapest restaurant chains now has a presence in the store’s food section.

June 10 was the grand opening of Matsuya Premium Ginza, the new department store spinoff of the Matsuya gyudon/beef bowl restaurant chain (which is a separate company from the Matsuya department store). As the name implies, Matsuya Premium is positioning itself as a more luxurious, upgraded version of the Matsuya restaurant chain, offering takeout meals exclusive to Matsuya Premium, such as beef bowls made with Kobe beef.

▼ Premium Matsuya’s Kobe beef gyudon

▼ Premium Matsuya’s Kuroge Wagyu Hamburger Steak Bento with tomato sauce

Obviously, Matsuya Premium’s prices are higher too. At a normal Matsuya, for example, the standard beef bowl is just 460 yen (US$3), but Matsuya Premium’s Kobe beef version will cost you 1,390 yen. There’s a gap in price between the price for regular Matsuya’s tomato sauce hamburger steak set (1,180 yen) and Matsuya Premum’s Kuroge Wagyu Hamburger Steak Bento (1,681 yen).

Here’s the thing though. Regular Matsuya’s food isn’t just cheap, it’s also really tasty. Sure, the restaurant chain is friendly to your wallet, but it’s just as kind to your taste buds, which raises a question.

If regular, cheap Matsuya is already so good, is there any point in paying extra for Matsuya Premium?

To investigate, our Japanese-language reporter Seiji Nakazawa sprang into action, first stopping by Matsuya Premium to pick up a Kobe beef gyudon and Kuroge Wagyu Hamburger Steak, then swinging by a regular Matsuya to procure their more plebian counterparts as well.

▼ Matsuya Premium on the left, basic Matsuya on the right

The Matsuya Premium items do come in more elegant-looking containers, but visually there isn’t much difference to be seen with the food itself.

But beef is always beautiful, and we’re paying extra for what’s supposed to be the special flavor of the Premium items, not enhanced aesthetics. So now it was time for Seiji to taste-test the different versions back-to-back.

He started with the beef bowl, and right away he could taste that the Kobe beef version has something the regular Matsuya beef bowl doesn’t. The marbled quality of the Kobe beef gives it a much heavier dose of umami flavor, which melts in your mouth and merges with the flavors of the stock that the beef is simmered in. That combination danced across his taste buds and fired up his taste buds with a greater intensity than the regular Matsuya gyudon, in which the meaty flavor of the beef is less pronounced and the stock plays a more prominent role.

Moving on to the hamburger steaks, the most striking difference here was the texture of the meat. The Matsuya Premium version is tenderer, and it’s juicier too. Switching to the regular Matsuya hamburger steak after trying a bite of the Premium, Seiji couldn’t help but feel a that the cheaper version is drier and tougher, and, with such a closely-timed comparison, had a twinge of frozen-food feeling to it, he says.

So Seiji is happy to report that Matsuya Premium isn’t just charging more because of its location, and that it genuinely does deliver a more refined eating experience than what you can find at a regular Matsuya. The new venture might not quite match the value-for-money that standard Matsuya is known for, but Matsuya Premium delivers on giving you the quality you’re paying for.

Shop information
Matsuya Premium Ginza / 店名　松屋PREMIUM銀座店
Address: Tokyo-to, Chuo-ku, Ginza 3-6-1, Matsuya Ginza basement level 1
住所　東京都中央区銀座3-6-1松屋銀座 地下1階
Open 11 a.m.-8 p.m. (11 a.m.-7:30 p.m. Sundays and final day of consecutive holidays)

Photos ©SoraNews24
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