Twentythree

New fusion food looks set to become a hit on social media. 

If you’re in Japan and find yourself in the mood for pizza, but with a hankering for sushi as well, there’s a new restaurant in Osaka ready to satisfy both those needs, all in one easy-to-eat slice.

Called Sushi Pizza, this new fusion food is the brainchild of Kaisen Monogatari, a sushi and izakaya restaurant in the city’s lively Dotonbori district. Osaka, and this district in particular, is bursting at the seams with so many places to eat that the word “kuidaore” or “eat yourself into ruin” is often used to describe it.

Released on 1 May, the Sushi Pizza features a crispy crust made from lightly fried seaweed and sushi rice, with a variety of seafood toppings to choose from.

Prices start at 1,078 yen (US$6.77) for the “Seafood Salad” or the “Oil Sardine” slice with sardines, olives, and tomatoes, and rise to 1,408 yen for the “Eel Butter” with eel, butter and egg and the “Chunky Seafood” containing shrimp, mussels, and squid tentacles.

The pizza is strong on visuals, making it perfect for attracting attention on social media, and the flavour is said to be equally impressive, with generous chunks of seafood and cheese delivering exciting contrasts in taste and texture.

Izakaya are often referred to as “Japanese taverns” in English, due to the fact that they serve up alcohol with a wide variety of small dishes designed to pair well with drinks. With Kaisen Monogatari specialising in seafood – the name literally translates as “seafood tale” – the sushi pizza is a novel way to showcase its expertise in the field, or should we say “waters”, while acting as an entry point for diving into more of its alluring offerings.

A slice of Sushi Pizza is a fun way to feast on seafood in the heart of Osaka, and it has all the ingredients to become a kaisen monogatari of your very own for you to recount to friends and family back home.

Restaurant information
Kaisen Monogatari Midosuji Store / 海鮮物語 御堂筋店
Address: Osaka-fu, Osaka-shi, Chuo-ku, Dotonbori, 1-10-7 Bonchi Building 4F
大阪府大阪市中央区道頓堀1-10-7 ぼんちビル 4F
Open 5 p.m.-11 p.m.
Website

Source, images: Press release
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Kayanoya’s Satoyama Cookies give you four flavors for a snack session unlike any other.

The other day, we found ourselves thinking “We want to eat some cookies.” In and of itself, that’s not at all an unusual condition for us to be in, but on this day we wanted specifically to eat some Kayanoya cookies.

Kayanoya is a company that was founded all the way back in 1893, and as you might expect from that, they make use of some characteristically Japanese ingredients in their cookies, such as matcha green tea and black sesame. Kayanoya isn’t a dedicated confectioner, though. They’re primarily a producer of dashi, Japanese soup stock, and yes, they have dashi cookies too!

▼ Some Kayanoya shops even have a counter where you can get cups of piping hot dashi soup (だしスープ).

The dashi cookies are part of the four-flavor Satoyama Cookie set. Satoyama is a Japanese word referring to farmlands adjacent to foothills and forests, and that retro rural community aesthetic is present on the box lid.

The 16 cookies inside are arranged neatly in their own little compartments, and we started our tasting with the matcha and black sesame cookies.

Fancy Japanese cookies tend to be crisp and a little crumbly in their texture, and that’s true of Kayanoya’s. Thankfully, they go easy on the sugar in the recipe, leaving the matcha and black sesame plenty of room to be the stars in their cookies’ flavor profiles, and they’re both delicious, in a sophisticated way.

Now, though, it was time for things to start getting unusual, and even before we got to the dashi cookie, we had a shichimi one to try.

Shichimi is a piquant allspice whose name translates literally to “seven flavors.” The exact mix of ingredients varies from maker to maker, but red chili powder is always present, and sesame and sansho, an aromatic type of Japanese pepper with bitter notes, are also regularly members of the shichimi team.

▼ Somewhat confusingly, Kayanoya’s shichimi cookies have black sesame sprinkled on top of them, while the black sesame cookies do not.

Since this is still a cookie, we wondered if Kayanoya would perhaps use just a touch of shichimi for a little spicy accent to an otherwise sweet flavor. But nope, just like with their matcha and black sesame cookies, the taste is crafted so that you really do taste shichimi more than anything else, and this is an honestly spicy cookie that little kids probably won’t enjoy, but adults with adventurous palates will.

And finally, we come to the dashi cookie.

Dashi is a bit of a catchall culinary term, and most commonly indicates a type of fish broth that makes heavy use of bonito stock. However, while Kayanoya does make fish-based dashi, for their dashi cookies they instead use their vegetable dashi, which is fish-free and instead made with onion, carrot, cabbage, celery, and garlic.

▼ This was reassuring, since we’ve had some bad experiences with fish-based desserts.

By this point, we knew that the primary flavor of the vegetable dashi cookie was going to be dashi, but which of those five veggies would come to the forefront? We got our answer immediately, as we took a bite and immediately had the sensation of onion firing up our taste receptors.

Now, “onion cookie” might sounds like a cruel prank you’d play on an unsuspecting person who’s craving something sweet, but since we knew ahead of time that it was going to taste like vegetable dashi, the flavor wasn’t bad at all. It actually reminded us of the consommé flavor that’s the standard for Japanese potato chips, except here the supporting flavor underneath it is the buttery baked cookie dough, not an oily fried chip.

With their combination of unique flavors and high quality, the Satoyama Cookie set (which is priced at 2,268 yen [US$15]) is proving to be a hit. It was actually all sold out when we first swung by a Kayanoya store to pick some up, but that was right before Mother’s Day so it was a prime gift-buying weekend, so they should be easier to find now.

Related: Kadonaya location list
Photos ©SoraNews24
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A taste of the U.S. via Okinawa.

Our intrepid reporter Mr. Sato was recently in Fussa, a part of Tokyo west of the downtown area, where he discovered Tampopo, a retro pachinko parlor that lets you try your hand at the game without worrying about the gambling part of it. Fussa has more invitingly old-school vibes to offer, though, as Mr. Sato found while walking along National Route 16.

National Route 16 is actually a bit of an international thoroughfare, since it runs right along the edge of the United States Air Force’s Yokota Air Base. The base’s exact boundaries have shifted a bit over the years, and some former base housing sites and structures are now part of the civilian cityscape, with many of them having been converted into shops and restaurants with nods to their former occupants.

There’s even a section of Route 16 that’s been dubbed the Fussa Friendship Promenade.

As Mr. Sato ambled down the road, heading towards Ushihama Station, the next stop over from Fussa Station on the Ome Line, he spotted another sign representing a meeting point between Japan and America.

Blue Seal is a Japanese ice cream brand from Okinawa, but before that it was an American ice cream brand…but still one from Okinawa. Originally, Blue Seal was produced on, and only available at, U.S. military bases in Okinawa, created to supply American personnel and their accompanying family members a taste of home at a time before ice cream became readily available in Japan. In the 1960s, Blue Seal became available on the civilian market in Japan, and while ice cream is no longer hard to find in the country, among Japanese sweets fans Blue Seal has a reputation for being some of the very best.

However, Blue Seal isn’t so easy to find in the Tokyo area, and it wasn’t until 2006 that the chain finally came to east Japan, when it opened this Fussa branch.

As its first location in east Japan, the Fussa Blue Seal has a special “Big Dip” designation on its sign, just like the main branch in Okinawa’s Urasoe. The Fussa branch’s flagship status means that in addition to 25 different flavors ice cream, it also serves apple pie.

With the sun shining down brightly on him, Mr. Sato couldn’t say no to some Blue Seal ice cream, so he decided to take a break from his walk and refuel. He opted for the Blue Seal Sundae, which lets you choose one flavor each of scooped ice cream and soft serve for 750 yen (US$4.80), and made his selections salty milk and almond pistachio.

▼ And yes, his smile was just as big after he was done eating it.

Blue Seal has only three other Tokyo branches, one in the Ebisu neighborhood, one in Kokubunji, and one inside Haneda Airport’s Terminal 2. Given the brand’s roots, though, Mr. Sato feels like there’s a special sense of fun that comes from making an ice cream run at the Fussa branch.

Shop information
Blue Seal (Fussa branch) / ブルーシール（福生店）
Addres: Tokyo-to, Fussa-shi, Fussa 2475 Yokotakichi-mae
東京都福生市福生2475 横田基地前
Open 11 a.m.-10 p.m.
Website

Photos © SoraNews24
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There aren’t enough breath mints in the world to save us, but we’re going in anyway.

Japanese folk wisdom holds that garlic is a food that boosts physical stamina, and it’s supposed to be helpful in dealing with the adverse effects of hot weather too. The actual science behind those claims gets a little indistinct, but for garlic lovers, we’re getting into a time of year that provides ample excuses to load up on the seasoning. Today that leads us to Yoshioka, a ramen restaurant in downtown Tokyo’s Mejiro neighborhood.

You might have a little trouble spotting Yoshioka, because it actually shares space with a branch of the izakaya (Japanese pub) chain Torimero, with Yoshioka operating in the hours when Torimero isn’t and vice-versa.

▼ The Yoshioka (吉岡) and Torimero (鳥メロ) signs, and the stairway that leads up into the hybrid eatery.

Making the place a little easier to find for us on this day, though, was the sign that was placed at the bottom of the stairs advertising Yoshioka’s Garlic Ramen (“Ninniku Ramen” in Japanese), which included the bold statement:

“Try it once, and you’ll never be able to go back.”

We weren’t sure if this open-ended prophecy was meant to imply that we would never be able to go back to less garlicky versions of ramen, or whether we’d have such strong garlic fumes coming out of ourselves that we’d never be allowed back into regular society. That second possibility might sound a little overly dramatic, but consider this: Yoshioka boasts that it uses 200 grams (7.05 ounces) of garlic in every bowl of its Garlic Ramen. To put that in perspective, an average-sized clove of garlic weighs about 5 grams, meaning that eating a bowl of the Garlic Ramen should be the equivalent of eating roughly 20 cloves of garlic.

And yet, when the restaurant staff set our bowl down in front of us, it had what looked like even more garlic than that.

This is an insane amount of garlic. Like, there’re enough cloves that you could eat them by the spoonful, like the world’s most powerfully pungent cereal.

Oh, and in addition to the dozens of cloves of garlic, you get a sizeable squirt of garlic paste waiting to be mixed it into the salty soy sauce-based broth too.

And the taste? Pretty much the fiercest punch of garlic we could imagine. This is an edible declaration of the idea that one can never have too much garlic, and if that’s a conviction you share, you’ll fall in love with this instantly.

The seasoning is so powerful that by the second bite of noodles it was no longer shocking, either because of the bliss we were wrapped up in or because we’d already consumed so much garlic that we were transitioning into a clove of garlic ourselves, and so the flavor now felt natural.

Speaking of the noodles, they’re of excellent quality, with a smooth and slippery surface and firm consistency. Actually, even the broth has a noteworthy texture, as there’s so much garlic in it that the liquid takes on some fluffy, sticky characteristics.

At 1,500 yen (US$9.70), Yoshioka’s Garlic Ramen is on the pricier side, but with how much garlic you get, it doesn’t feel like a bad deal at all, especially when you take into account that you’re allowed one refill of noodles for no additional charge.

All in all, the Garlic Ramen is an unforgettable food experience, but there is one potentially negative aspect to it. Remember how we said Yoshioka shares its space with another restaurant? Because of that, Yoshioka is only open for lunch, meaning you’re going to have to eat this garlicky-loaded bowl of noodles in the early afternoon, or maybe even the late morning, and there is no imaginable way that you won’t smell have the smell of garlic emanating from you wherever you go for the rest of the day. Still, if you’re a garlic lover, it’s worth it, and if you’d rather have some super-salty ramen, we can show you where to find that too.

Restaurant information
Yoshioka (Mejiro main branch) / 吉岡（目白総本店）
Address: Tokyo-to, Toshima-ku, Mejiro 35-13, Fujiya Building 2nd floor
東京都豊島区目白3-5-13 フジヤビルM2F
Open 11 a.m.-2 p.m.

Photos ©SoraNews24
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Cultural quirks have a hand in making the same name the favorite for dogs and cats in annual study.

Japan’s most famous fictional cat might be the one named Kitty, but when it comes to actual pets, owners tend to get a little more creative with their choices. To investigate what Japan’s most popular pet names are, Daiichi ipet, the pet insurance division of Daiichi Life Group, recently conducted a study of the animal companions it covers, and there’s a common theme among many of the top entries on its list of dog and cat names.

The rankings were compiled by examining the names of dogs and cats who were less than one year old when new insurance policies were taken out for them during the last fiscal year (April 2025-March 2026), and for the sixth year in a row, the most popular name for dogs is Mugi. Mugi is also the number-one name for cats, jumping up to take the top spot from last year’s most popular feline moniker, Latte.

● Top names for dogs
1. Mugi
2. Latte
3. Mocha
4. Cocoa
5. Komugi
● Top names for cats
1. Mugi
2 (tie). Latte/Luna
4. Kinako
5. Leo
6. Mocha

▼ There’s a pretty good chance that at least one of the cats in this photo is named Mugi.

Many pet owners choosing “Luna” are no doubt thinking of Sailor Moon’s cat mentor of the same name, and “Leo” which was the top pick for male cats, is clearly meant to invoke images of lions. Take those two out of the above-listed names, though, and every remaining name has something in common: they’re all food/drink related.

Mugi is the Japanese word for either barley or wheat, and komugi is wheat specifically. There are even more food/drink names if you look farther down the list, with Kinako (roasted soybean powder) and Marron (the French word for “chestnut,” but commonly used in Japanese by sweets fans) at numbers 6 and 8 for dogs, and Omochi (rice cake) and Cocoa at numbers 7 and 8 for dogs.

This isn’t a brand-new trend, either. All of the above-mentioned names were also in Daiichi ipet’s lists of the top 10 dog and cat names in 2024, and giving pets food/drink-related names has been a thing in Japan for much longer than that, and a lot of their enduring popularity probably comes from two reasons.

Let’s start with the obvious one, which ties in to another common thread between many of the most popular names, which is that almost all of them are some shade of brown in color. The exception is Omochi, which is usually white, but even rice cakes take on a golden-brown color if you roast them, as is often done in Japan. A lot of dogs and cats have coats of fur somewhere on the spectrum between brown and gold, so giving them a food/drink name is a way to reference that physical trait.

Another factor that’s likely that in play here, though, is that in Japan it’s not very common to give pets the same names that people have. While there are also-for-people names in English that might have someone thinking of a dog first (like Rex or Rusty), you’ll also often encounter pets in the U.S. with names like Max, Daisy, Penny, or Charlie (all of which are on the American Kennel Club’s list of the most popular dog names in the U.S. for 2025). By comparison, though, it’s rare for Japanese pet owners to give their animals a modern for-people Japanese name like Haruto or Himari, as it would come off feeling overly dry and self-serious. The common logic in Japan is that pets should have names that are playful and fun. A food/drink-based name checks off those boxes, and if it matches the color of the pet’s coat, then there’s no need to explain the name to other people either.

When picking names for pets in Japan, foreign for-people names have a bit more pizzazz (in addition to being the number 4 name for cats in Daiichi ipet’s study, Leo was also the number 8 name for dogs), but then so do foreign food/drink names like Latte, Mocha, and Cocoa. There’s an interesting wrinkle to this, though, that shows up when Daiichi ipet’s study breaks down the most popular names for dogs by breed. Mocha, Cocoa, and Latte were all somewhere within the top three names for toy poodles, Chihuahuas, Pomeranians, and miniature Dachshunds. However, for the Shiba Inu, all three of the breed’s most popular names were Japanese words for foods: Komugi, Azuki (sweet red beans), and Mugi. Odds are this stems from “Shiba Inu” itself being a pair of Japanese words that’ve come to be the internationally accepted way of referring to the breed, making a Japanese-vocabulary food name feel like the best fit.

Source: Daiichi ipet via Otona Answer via Livedoor News via Golden Times
Top image: Pakutaso
Insert images: Pakutaso (1, 2)
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A new line of decorative mini figures made from gold pay homage to pioneering manga artist Osamu Tezuka’s massive influence on anime and manga.

U-Treasure, a Japanese jewelry brand that frequently partners with pop culture franchises for fun but classy keepsakes, is now taking preorders for the first three pieces in a new collaborative series paying homage to manga legend Osamu Tezuka.

The Osamu Tezuka World Gold Collection celebrates the 80th anniversary of the God of Manga‘s 1946 debut manga The Diary of Ma-chan (a four-panel newspaper comic strip). Tezuka continued to churn out classic works of manga for the rest of his life that revolutionized the genre and Japanese popular culture forevermore.

The standout piece of U-Treasure’s trio of offerings is undoubtedly the miniature figure of Tetsuwan Atom, better known as Astro Boy to English-speaking audiences. Tezuka’s original Astro Boy manga was serialized from 1952-1968, inspiring a groundbreaking 1963 TV series that is considered to be the first-ever serialized Japanese TV anime. Countless adaptations and collaborations have been produced since.

▼ Astro Boy, the robot boy whom we can thank for modern manga and anime

Costing 121,000 yen (US$760), the figure is crafted from 18-karat yellow gold and stands only 15 millimeters (0.59 inches) tall.

Nevertheless, it’s a faithful creation of the character, with Tezuka’s trademark large eyes and Astro Boy’s pointy, distinctive hairstyle.

The figure comes specially packaged in a black box inscribed with “Osamu Tezuka World” and “Testsuwan Atom” in gold, retro-style font.

Precisely because of its small size, it’s an elegant trinket that will upgrade any desk or shelf without taking up too much space.

While Astro Boy is undoubtedly the most recognizable of the new pieces, the two other characters in this release also hold a space place in Tezuka’s legacy. First, the 9-millimeter-tall Hyoutantsugi is a gourd-like character that was originally inspired by a doodle made by Tezuka’s younger sister. It became a visual gag that randomly appears in almost all of his works.

▼ Hyoutantsugi miniature gold figure (165,000 yen)

Second, the 12-millimeter-tall Buddha captures the likeness of Tezuka’s rendition of the life of Siddhartha Gautama in his 1972-1983 eponymously titled masterpiece.

▼ Buddha miniature gold figure (220,000 yen)

All three miniature figures are available for preorder between May 20 and June 22 on U-Treasure’s online shop and at U-Treasure Concept Stores Ikebukuro in Tokyo and Shinsaibashi in Osaka (location information here).

We’re looking forward to seeing what the next set of characters will be in U-Treasure’s The Osamu Teszuka World Gold Collection–and something tells us it definitely won’t be any of the erotic animal sketches that his daughter discovered locked in his desk drawer just over ten years ago.

Source, images: PR Times
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