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New item seeks to put four food categories in your hand all at once.

In 1987, Japanese fast food chain Mos Burger debuted the rice burger, swapping out the classic hamburger bun for a pair of lightly grilled discs of rice. By combining the joys of hamburgers and rice, Mos made something doubly pleasing to Japanese palates, and rice burgers have been part of their menu ever since. But now Mos is reaching new levels of multilayering its culinary appeal, with the introduction of something that combines the appeal of not just burgers and rice, but also bento boxed lunches and tempura rice bowls.

On sale as of March 12 is the Mos Rice Burger Noriben Ebitendonfu. Noriben refers to a kind of simple bento with dried seaweed (nori), while ebitendon is a traditional dish of a rice bowl (donburi) topped with tempura shrimp (ebiten), and elements of all of those go into Mos’ newest creation.

The Mos Rice Burger Noriben Ebitendonfu consists of shrimp, renkon (lotus root), carrot, onion, and mizuna greens all fried in tempura batter, sandwiched between discs of rice seasoned with the sweet sauce poured over tempura donburi. The whole thing is then wrapped in a sheet of crisp nori, of the sort you get in a noriben.

▼ As for the “fu” part of the Mos Rice Burger Noriben Ebitendonfu, it originally means “wind,” but also can be used to denote the “style” of something, as we talked about when discussing the strangest hotel buffet sign we’ve come across in Japan.

▼ Mos recommends pairing the sandwich/bento/donburi with either a cup of green tea or a cold beer.

Oddly, while the Mos Rice Burger Noriben Ebitendonfu would fit in perfectly on the Mos menu, it’s actually not available at the chain’s restaurants. Instead, it’s sold exclusively online, either at the Mos Burger online shop or through the Mos Rakuten storefront, with the Mos shop selling a pack of five for 3,900 yen (US$25) and Rakuten asking for 5,000 yen. While it does look incredibly tasty, even the Herculean stomachs of the SoraNews24 staff would have a hard time chowing through five of them in a single sitting, but you don’t have to since they ship frozen and you heat them up in the microwave before eating, which, to be fair, does look like it’ll save us a lot of time compared to making repeat runs to Mos to get more.

Related: Mos Burger online shop, Mos Rakuten storefront
Source: PR Times via Japaaan
Featured image: Mos Burger online shop
Top image: PR Times
Insert images: Mos Burger online shop, PR Times
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We leave this ramen joint half happy, half less than satisfied. 

Akihabara is world-famous for being a city within a city that’s bursting at the seams with electronics, maid cafes, and anything related to anime, video games and manga. However, in recent years, this bustling Tokyo neighbourhood has earned a reputation for something else as well: good ramen.

Now you can find a large number of old and new noodle joints drawing crowds of hungry diners in between their shopping sprees, but how do you choose between them all? One easy solution is to stop by Akihabara Ramen Center, where you can find meals on the menu for 500 yen (US$3.13).

With today’s rising prices, a 500-yen dish is always a good find, especially in the heart of Tokyo, but we wanted to know if the quality would be on par with the price. After hearing that they recently added a new miso ramen to the menu – they previously only served tonkotsu (pork bone) and shoyu (soy sauce) broth –we immediately headed over to the store to try it.

▼ This sign outside the store reads: “Sorry to keep you waiting! Miso Ramen has begun!”

Located just a minute’s walk from the Showa-dori exit of JR Akihabara Station, and a zero-minutes’ walk from Tokyo Metro Akihabara Station, the 24-hour Akihabara Ramen Center is in a very convenient spot, earning it a big tick of approval in our books for ease of access. Of course, the tiny 500-yen price point is another big drawcard, leaving us with one final checkbox to tick – taste.

▼ Oh, and if we’re factoring in appearance, there’s another tick earned right there.

Topped with green onions, bamboo shoots, and char siu pork, there was no skimping on the toppings like we feared, and it arrived about five minutes after ordering so we didn’t have to wait long for our meal. If you do want more toppings, you can always order them for an additional fee, but one thing you’ll want to note is you can’t order extra noodles.

That wasn’t a dealbreaker for us, as we weren’t in the mood for a big meal, and we were more curious about the taste. Taking a first slurp of the broth, we found that the flavour seemed rather light for a miso ramen, lacking the deep richness you might expect.

▼ However, since it was miso ramen, it still had great flavour.

Picking up a mound of noodles, there weren’t a lot of them, but what they lacked in volume they made up for in taste, as they were delicious, with just the right amount of firmness.

If you spied another dish in the corner of the photo above, that’s because we were seduced into ordering another cheap meal that seemed like a great deal.

▼ A rice set with a “half-size” serving of stir-fried vegetables, priced at 450 yen for non-ramen diners or 250 yen for diners who’ve ordered ramen.

We ordered this set, which was undeniably cheap, but if we’re being honest, it’s a meal we won’t be ordering again. Though it tasted okay, it just didn’t seem to complement the noodles in a way that was worth the added expenditure.

When you can get a bowl of noodles for 500 yen, you don’t really need anything else, especially when you’re in the heart of Akihabara, where so many shops and arcades are beckoning for your time and attention. Adding more to your order tends to take away the great-deal feel of the cheap noodles, so in our opinion, you’re better off using the Akihabara Ramen Center as a short stop to refuel on a small meal before making your way on to other places in the area.

Store information
Akihabara Ramen Center / 秋葉原ラーメンセンター
Address: Tokyo-to, Chiyoda-ku, Kandahirakawacho 4-1
東京都千代田区神田平河町4-1
Open: 24 hours every day

Photos ©SoraNews24
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Anime fortress is ready to make the move into your home, but you’ll need to set aside a half-day or so to build it.

Howl’s Moving Castle is a multi-functional place. As shown in the Studio Ghibli anime film it shares its name with, it’s a home, a fortress, and a mode of transportation.

So it’s fitting that the Howl’s Moving Castle for your home that we’re looking at today isn’t limited to a single role either, as it’s an awesome decoration, a challenging puzzle, and a cleverly convenient organizer too.

Now available through Ghibli specialty shop Donguri Kyowakoku, this wooden reconstruction of the marque stronghold stands 15 centimeters (5.9 inches) tall…once you put it together. The assembly process apparently isn’t as simple and uneventful as putting together a simple model, either, as the designers say it’s a 3-D puzzle, and designate it with a five-out-of-five rating in terms of difficulty.

It’s recommended for builders age 15 and up, and the estimated time from start to finish is somewhere between eight and nine hours. For fans of the anime, though, that time investment is really just more time to admire all the little details that make the castle’s design so unique.

▼ For instance, did you ever notice that Howl’s Moving Castle has ears?

The product description says that it does come with an explanatory booklet, though, so it’s possible that even though it’s called a “puzzle,” it might be more like constructing a complex Lego set, and you probably won’t need to worry about getting stumped and ending up with a half-built castle.

The castle’s mouth is open, and not just to create a dynamic atmosphere. Once you’ve got the place put together, it starts serving some practical purposes.

Inside that turret is a compartment which you can stock with paperclips. Give the turret a twist, and the clips slide out to you through the castle’s mouth!

The smokestacks on the back? They’re pen/pencil holders, and the castle’s other slits, slots, and posts are places to hold cards, memos, photos, or rubber bands.

▼ With Studio Ghibli’s love of hand-drawn animation, it’s nice to have Howl’s Moving Castle support your stationery-related creative endeavors.

Officially, the puzzle/figure/organizer is called the Howl’s Moving Castle ki-gu-mi Howl’s Castle Color Version, and is priced at 17,600 yen (US$115). Though it’s been unavailable for a long time, it’s wandered back into the Donguri Kyowakoku’ inventory in a recent restock and can be ordered online here.

Source, images: Donguri Kyowakoku
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A trendy way to enjoy beer in Japan.

There’s been a lot of buzz online in Japan recently, about how adding Calpis to beer tastes good. Proponents say the sweet drink helps to balance out the bitterness of beer, transforming it into a well-balanced Japanese beer cocktail that’s very easy to drink.

As beer lovers who actually enjoy its bitter flavour profile, we wondered whether this was a trend we could get on board with, so we went straight out to the supermarket and picked up a bottle of Calpis concentrate.

▼ Leaving the grape flavoured variety on the shelf, we went home with the original and the peach.

When using the concentrate, the ratio of Calpis to water should be 1:4. Figuring this same ratio would work for beer, we added 87.5 millilitres (3 ounces) of Calpis to a glass and then poured a whole 350-millilitre can of beer on top of it.

The nostalgic scent of Calpis initially filled the air, but the addition of beer created an odd, not-quite beer aroma to the drink. Stopping to take a look at the concoction, we could see that the head was airier than usual, and the body of the beverage had a hazy, cloudy look to it, similar to a white beer.

Taking a sip, we were surprised to find that the Calpis beer tasted amazing – the alcoholic bitterness and aroma of beer was still there, but it had an added complexity to it, thanks to the unique, sweet flavour of Calpis. It was kind of like an “adult” Calpis designed for mature palates, with both the sweetness and bitterness reigned in to create a perfect unison between flavours.

▼ It was so good that we dared to try it with the peach-flavoured Calpis as well.

In terms of appearance, it looked just as cloudy as the previous mixture, but when we tasted it, it was ripe with peach. Though it was delicious, it was markedly more sweet, so we recommend trying the standard Calpis first, unless you love fruity beers, in which case, this will make your toes curl in delight.

While you can try this hack with a can or bottle of pre-mixed Calpis, including the carbonated varieties, you get a richer and more flavourful result with the concentrate.

▼ Plus, this bottle will last significantly longer, so you can use it for many future beers to come.

Just remember the 1:4 dilution recommendation, although when using it with beer instead of water, you can add a touch more Calpis to stand up against the strong flavours.

Once you’ve tried beer and Calpis you may never want to return to plain beer again. It’ll give your tipple a unique Japanese flavour that you can’t get from any other mixer, and trying it with different types of beers will open your palate up to brand new taste horizons.

Images©SoraNews24
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This might be the perfect hanami table.

With sakura season officially underway and full bloom coming to many parts of Japan over the next two weeks, it’s time to start finalizing hanami (cherry blossom-viewing) party plans. The classic, and many would say still the best, way to enjoy the cherry blossoms is to head to a park, find a spot under the sakura trees, and enjoy a leisurely day of relaxing, snacking, and drinking, either soft drinks or alcoholic beverages, under the pink petals.

Ah, but it’s easier to eat and drink if you’re got a table, isn’t it? However, with public transportation being the primary way of getting around in Japan, lugging a standard folding table to the park isn’t really an option. However, it turns out there’s a handy, convenient, and extremely affordable alternative.

We actually bought this 487-yen (US$3.15) Folding Cardboard Table a while back, through Amazon Japan, while putting together a disaster preparedness kit. It says right there on the packaging, though, that it’s perfect for outdoor events like cherry blossom parties, and since we’ve got a bunch of those coming up in the very near future, we decided to test the table out at home first to see if it really works as well as advertised.

Folded up, it measures roughly 26 by 36 centimeters (10.2 x 14.2 inches), making it compact enough to easily slide into a moderately sized backpack or tote bag, but once it’s put together the tabletop is a more expansive 34.5 by 51.2 centimeters. Being made of cardboard it’s light too, weighing just 420 grams (14.8 ounces).

After removing the wrapping we saw that the entire thing consists of just three parts: the tabletop (which folds in half), the base, and one additional piece. To assemble it, you actually start by unfolding the tabletop and placing it on the ground, upside down. Then you unfold the base so that it crisscrosses like shown in the photo below, and slide in into the tabletop’s notches.

The base has two notches in it too, at corners of its central diamond…

…and this is where you insert the third piece, which acts as extra bracing.

Once you’ve done that, all that’s left is to flip your table over!

The whole process takes literally just a few seconds, and the tabletop is actually rather steady, with no significant wobbling when we tried jiggling it with our hand.

However, because the table is so light, it could get blown around if you’re outside with it on a particularly windy day. There’s an easy solution to that, though, and it’s something you’ll no doubt be planning to do: put stuff on it, which will help weigh it down.

According to the manufacturer, the Foldable Cardboard Table can support five kilograms (11 pounds) of weight, and with a standard-sized can of beer or soda weighing around 370 grams, that means you should be able to put 13 of them on there. Unfortunately, we didn’t have quite that much liquid refreshment stockpiled for our test, but the table did handle two cans, plus a bottle of wine, with no problem in structural integrity or stability.

So yeah, this thing should work perfectly for a cherry blossom party. While you can’t fit an entire opulent feast on top of it, it’s big enough to accommodate you and a couple buddies.

In addition to the low cost and light weight, the cardboard construction also means that if you’re picnicking with kids, you can let them doodle or put stickers on it, and if/when the table reaches the end of its service life, you can put it out with your other recyclables on trash day. And should you need more space, in addition to a single table for 487 yen, Amazon Japan is also selling a bundle of two for 974 here.

Photos ©SoraNews24
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Japan’s favorite domestic burger chain, the one that introduced the teriyaki burger to the country, launches seventh-generation sandwich.

Mos Burger is Japan’s favorite domestic hamburger chain, and not only was it the creator of the rice burger, it was also the first chain in Japan to sell teriyaki burgers. Mos’ teriyaki burger made its debut in May of 1973, but while it’s been on the menu ever since, the teriyaki burger it serves today isn’t the same as the one it sold 53 years ago. As a mater of fact, it’s not even the same as the teriyaki burger they sold last week.

That’s because Mos Burger is using a new recipe for its teriyaki burger as of March 18. This is actually the seventh generation of the Mos teriyaki burger, and its first update since four years ago.

▼ A sign announcing the new teriyaki burger, with an excited “Renewal!” (リニューアル), which is used in Japanese to describe renovations and reformulations

With Mos’ reputation for excellent quality, the idea of a new teriyaki burger was both intriguing and worrying. On the one hand, the chain has a strong track record of cooking up tasty chow, but on the other, with their teriyaki burger already being a hit, you could argue this is a case of a company trying to fix something that’s not broken. Still, Mos said that it has “updated the flavor” of its teriyaki sauce “to fit with the current times.” Slightly more specifically, they said that the new teriyaki sauce has “a gentle sweetness within a sauce packed with rich umami flavor that leads to a clean finish.”

Drawing taste-test duties this time around was our Japanese-language reporter P.K. Sanjun. Since there was no overlap between the availability of the new and old sandwiches, P.K. headed to Mos Burger for one last old-teriyaki burger dinner on March 17, then hit the chain up again the next day to try the new version.

Appearance-wise, the new Mos teriyaki burger, which at 470 yen (US$3) us 10 yen more than its predecessor, keeps the same overall look: nice fluffy bun, crisp lettuce with a dollop of mayo mixed with teriyaki sauce, and a teriyaki-slathered patty.

Having securely input the flavor of the old teriyaki burger into the part of his brain for food memories the night before, P.K. took a bite of the new version…and it tasted very good!

However, it didn’t taste very different. He could perceive a little extra sweetness in the sauce, but not so much as to majorly shift the balance of the flavor profile, and he might have only been able to notice it because he was specifically looking for it, since Mos had said that “gentle sweetness” was going to be the biggest difference between the new teriyaki sauce and the old recipe’s. Being the biggest difference, though, doesn’t automatically make something a big difference, and P.K. thinks that many people, unless they’re also armed with prior knowledge that Mos has changed its teriyaki sauce, probably won’t notice that anything has changed.

However, this isn’t a criticism. Like we mentioned earlier, the old Mos Burger teriyaki burger was already awesome, and it’s hard to imagine how they could have strayed from its recipe very far without making the results worse. At the same time, P.K. isn’t upset that Mos Burger has made a subtle shift in its sauce. That kind of incremental evolution may not be the most dramatic way to update your menu, but it’s just the sort of fine-tuning that makes Mos Burger one of the most reliably satisfying burger options Japan has, and with a final verdict of “Yep, new Mos teriyaki burger tastes pretty much like the old one: delicious,” the last part is really what counts.

Photos © SoraNews24
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