Twentythree

Japanese convenience store chain serves up two green tea drinks for a limited time.

7-Eleven struck gold when it launched an exclusive line of smoothies at its stores around Japan in 2023. The freshly made drinks quickly became a hit with local customers and those visiting from overseas, spawning new flavours like Acai, Banana, and even Sweet Potato.

Amongst all these flavours, however, there was one that was particularly popular, but it was a blink-and-you’ll miss it release. Only available for a very short time in October last year, and at the pop-up 7-Eleven store at the Osaka-Kansai Expo, this smoothie flew off shelves and disappeared shortly after, leaving fans longing for its return.

Well, 7-Eleven has heard the cry and is now bringing that smoothie back, this time in two variations:

▼ The Uji Matcha Smoothie (420 yen [US$2.64])…

▼ …and the Fragrant Matcha Smoothie (420 yen).

Both new drinks have over a century of expertise behind them, as the Uji Matcha Smoothie uses powdered green tea from Kitagawa Hanbei Shoten, a tea wholesaler in Kyoto that was established 165 years ago, in 1861.

▼ Kitagawa Hanbei’s logo appears on the packaging for the new smoothie.

The Fragrant Matcha Smoothie is made with matcha from Marushichi Seicha, a tea merchant in Fujieda City, Shizuoka Prefecture, that was founded in 1907.

▼ Marushichi’s famous “七” (“shichi” [“seven”]) logo appears on the smoothie packaging.

Both smoothies boast a visually vibrant green colour and are said to contain a rich flavour and elegant aroma. Like all of 7-Eleven’s cafe smoothies, these too will be sold in the freezer section in pre-made form, with cubes filling each cup.

Simply take the cup to the register and pay for it, and then take it over to the smoothie machine on the counter, where you’ll scan the barcode and then pop it into the machine, which will whip it up fresh for you on the spot.

The only downside to these new drinks is their limited availability, as they’ll only be around in set areas from certain dates. The Uji Matcha Smoothie will be available in Fukushima Prefecture and the Kanto region (in and around Tokyo) from 21 April, then Hokkaido, Tohoku (excluding Fukushima Prefecture), Niigata Prefecture, and parts of Tokai from 28 April, followed by Kyushu from 5 May and Kansai (which covers Osaka, Kyoto and surrounding prefectures), Chugoku/Shikoku, and Okinawa Prefecture from 12 May.

As for the Fragrant Matcha Smoothie, it will be available in a much more limited area, coming to stores in parts of Nagano Prefecture, Yamanashi Prefecture, and the Tokai and Hokuriku regions from 28 April. Only stores equipped with smoothie machines will be stocking the new drinks, so it may require a bit of effort to get your hands on them, but as we discovered with the recent five-Frappuccino release from Starbucks, treasure hunts are as much about the journey as the gold you find at the end of them.

Source, images: Press release
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Sip your coffee to the backdrop of a magnificent, panoramic view next to this Starbucks in Toyama Prefecture.

Starbucks Japan will often go to great lengths in designing its branches to blend in with the local atmosphere. We’ve previously visited one such branch that is often said to be the most beautiful Starbucks in the world, which also underwent renovations not quite six years ago. That location is the one within Toyama City’s Fugan Unga Kansui Koen, called Kansui Park by the locals.

We were in the area and decided to pay the branch another visit, as it’s only a ten-minute walk from Toyama Station. This particular spring day still had a lingering chill in the clear air, but we breathed it in deeply as we strolled to our destination. Luckily, the walk was very straightforward, without any fear of getting lost.

When we reached the park, it took a moment to accept that this natural oasis was in the middle of the city. The canal itself was also wider than we thought.

We quickly located the Starbucks in the spacious park grounds. As it’s its own little building, we could quickly tell why it previously won the top prize in a Store Design Award. The exterior was simple and sleek, with gorgeous full-length glass walls that let in plenty of sunlight. It also looked absolutely natural perched on its little hill by the canal.

While the interior of the shop wasn’t incredibly spacious, the glass walls lent an extra sense of freedom. We looked around for a spot to sit down once we got our drink, but all of the seats inside were full, so we headed to the outdoor terrace instead. However, that actually turned out to be the best choice we could have made. We were able to sit right in front of the water with an unparalleled view of Tenmon Bridge, the main symbol of the park.

Gazing out at the view, it struck us how peaceful this spot must be regardless of the weather. Even a cloudy, damp day like this one had its own relaxed charm, and we were able to enjoy being outside for longer than we would have if the sun were beating down. Even the coffee seemed to taste extra special as a result.

After a while, however, we got up to scope out a vantage point that the cashier had recommended to us about where to take in the best, sweeping views of the park. That recommendation was to climb up the observation towers on either side of Tenmon Bridge, pictured in the previous photo, all of which are free.

Upon reaching the top of one of them, we had no choice but to agree. Not only was the Starbucks building itself right in front of us, but we could even see the Tateyama Mountains in the background!

All we could think was that the locals are super lucky to have such an amazing Starbucks branch easily accessible to them at any time–and we were grateful to them for sharing a helpful tip with us.

Speaking of the Tateyama Mountains, you can enjoy more of the local scenery by taking the Tateyama Kurobe Alpen Route through some towering ice corridors.

Cafe information
Starbucks Toyama Fugan Unga Kansui Park / スターバックス富山環水公園店
Address: Toyama-ken, Toyama-shi, Minatoirifune-cho 5
富山県富山市湊入船町 5
Open 8:00 a.m.–10:30 p.m.
Website

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Anime will premier this summer and is the first made specifically for the Nagoya-area theme park.

If you’re planning a trip to Ghibli Park, the Studio Ghibli anime theme park near Nagoya, before you reserve your tickets you’ll want to check the schedule of the park’s Cinema Orion. Located within the Ghibli’s Grand Warehouse section of the park, Cinema Orion shows short anime films produced by Studio Ghibli that can only be seen at Ghibli Park or Tokyo’s Ghibli Museum.

Right now, for example, Boro the Caterpillar, directed by Ghibli co-founder Hayao Miyazaki, is showing, and from June 1 to July 6 visitors can see Mei and the Baby Cat Bus, the follow-up to My Neighbor Totoro.

But while both of those shorts are definitely appealing, it’s what’s coming after Mei and the Baby Cat Bus that’s really exciting, with the premier of the first new Ghibli short anime since 2018.

Majo no Tani no Yoru, or A Night in the Valley of the Witches, is the first Ghibli short anime produced specifically for Ghibli Park, and its story is set within the park’s Valley of Witches area, which opened in 2024 with recreations of the worlds of Kiki’s Deliver Service, Howl’s Moving Castle, and Earwig and the Witch. The anime will be co-directed by Goro Miyazaki and Akihiko Yamashita, who served as character designer and animation director for Howl’s Moving Castle and The Secret World of Arrietty, and also directed A Sumo Wrestler’s Tail, Ghibli’s short anime about sumo wrestling mice. The pair will be in attendance for a special screening on July 8, when A Night in the Valley of the Witches makes its debut.

The anime’s production is already finished, so that debut date is presumably set in stone, but Ghibli Park has yet to announce how long the short will run for. There’s also currently no word of whether or not it will eventually screen at Ghibli Museum as well.

Admission to Ghibli Park is available only through advance reservations, and tickets for July visits go on sale at 2 p.m. on May 10. Different categories of tickets include access to different parts of the park, but remember that even though the new anime takes place in the Valley of the Witches, you’ll need a ticket that includes admission to Ghibli’s Grand Warehouse in order to see it.

Related: Ghibli Park official website
Source: Studio Ghibli, Ghibli Park (1, 2)
Top image: Studio Ghibli
Insert images: Ghibli Park, Studio Ghibli
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Summer in Japan keeps getting hotter and forces linguistic evolution.

As we get into the back half of spring, it’s time to start getting ready for summer, doing things like taking your linen shirts out of storage, hitting the gym to get your beach body ready, and creating new vocabulary words for when the weather is really, really, really hot.

OK that last one might not be on most of our to-do lists, but it was something the Japan Meteorological Agency, part of the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism, wanted to get done before the start of summer. The JMA already has specialized vocabulary it uses to describe days when the temperature reaches 25, 30, or 35 degrees Celsius (77, 86, or 95 degrees Fahrenheit): natsubi (“summer days”), manatsubi (“midsummer days”), and moshobi (“fiercely hot days”). However, with summers growing hotter and hotter in Japan, the agency is predicting that the daytime high is going to climb higher than 40 degrees Celsius (104 degrees Fahrenheit) often enough over the coming months that it’ll need a word to refer to them too.

Last month, the JMA website conducted a survey, asking respondents to choose from a list of candidates, and based on the results, along with interviews with meteorological experts, the agency has made its decision, and says that henceforth it will refer to over-40-degree days as kokushobi, which translates to “cruel heat days” or “cruelly hot days.”

Kokushobi is written with the kanji 酷, 暑, and 日, meaning “cruel,” “heat/hot,” and “day,” respectively. Incidentally, the koku in kokushobi is the same as the koku in Evangelion opening theme “Zankoku na Tenshi no Teze”/”A Cruel Angel’s Thesis.”

Kokushobi was by far the most common response in the JMA’s survey, garnering 202,954 votes, more than double any other candidate, with second-place finisher chomoshobi (super fierce heat day) receiving only 65,896 votes. Kokushobi also had strong support from meteorology experts for being easy to understand and also because it’s the same term that the Japan Weather Association, a non-government weather forecasting organization, has been using since 2022, so it already has some linguistic traction.

Hopefully this will be the last time the JMA needs to create a new name for extremely hot weather, because we’re not sure if all the breezy pilgrim fashion and ramen shaved ice in Japan could save us from 45-degree-plus heat.

Source: Japan Meteorological Agency (1, 2) via Hachima Kiko
Top image: Pakutaso
Insert image: SoraNews24
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Who’d have guessed there was a centuries-old snack shop too just a quick stroll away from one of downtown’s busiest rail hubs?

Ikebukuro might not be as world-famous as Shibuya or Shinjuku, but it is, without a doubt, one of the busiest, most developed parts of downtown Tokyo. As you can see in the picture above, massive department stores, multi-level shopping complexes, and office towers surround Ikebukuro Station.

But believe it or not, just a 10-minute-walk away from Ikebukuro is a place that makes it feel like you’ve somehow warped to another part of Japan, and maybe even another period in Japan’s history.

We stumbled across this surprising spot while on an ambling, initially destination-less stroll in the neighborhood. After exiting the east side of Ikebukuro, we were in the most congested part of the district, so we kept walking until we came to an intersection, a little beyond the Junkudo bookstore, where this narrow little side street caught our eye.

The sense of mystery only intensified as the surface turned from asphalt to cobblestone, with scarcely enough space for two people to walk past each other without brushing shoulders.

Now way too captivated by curiosity to turn back, we kept going and crossed over into Zoshigaya, one of Tokyo’s temple districts.

The path we’d been walking on came to an end at a T-intersection, so we zigzagged left and then right again, putting us on another cobblestone path, this one lined with trees.

And after walking a little further, we found ourselves at a temple called Zoshigaya Kishimojin…

…and then standing underneath this amazing icho (gingko) tree.

Even standing at the edge of the grounds, it was difficult to fit the entire tree within a single photo.

Craning our necks to look up at the branches, filled with healthy green leaves that provided shade from the sun even as they nearly glowed in the afternoon light, we wondered how tall this tree was.

Thankfully there was a sign next to it ready to provide that information: slightly over 30 meters (98.4-feet) tall (or 1.67 Gundams, to use the international scholarly standard for measuring height). The sign also informed us that the trunk has a circumference of 8 meters, and that the tree is…more than 600 years old!?!

▼ 樹齢　六百年以上 = Tree’s age: more than 600 years

Though the exact date of planting isn’t known, the tree is said to have been at the temple since the Oei era (1394-1428), and its historical value has earned it official designation from the Tokyo metropolitan government as a natural monument.

This isn’t the only thing on the temple grounds with an amazingly long history, either. Once we could finally manage to look away from the icho, we turned our head and spotted this snack stand, called Kawakamiguchiya.

Yes, the name is a bit of a mouthful, but that’s not entirely inappropriate for a store that sells all sorts of things to munch on. Specifically, Kawakamiguchiya is what’s called a dagashiya, a store that specializes in inexpensive, traditionally old-school treats of salty, sweet, or sour flavors.

A lot of dagashiya have retro aesthetics, and in Kawakamiguchiya’s case they’re absolutely warranted, since the shop first started selling snacks to temple visitors in 1781, making this its 245th year in operation.

▼ Our walking route from Ikebukuro Station to Zoshigaya Kishimojin

▼ There’s also a charming shopping street on the south side of the temple grounds.

Despite being just 10 minutes from Ikebukuro Station, Zoshigaya Kishimojin is so different from the congested buzz of downtown Tokyo that it feels like a little pocket dimension, or maybe a part of the city that’s magically frozen in time, and definitely worth checking out if you’re looking for something different than what modern city life offers.

Temple information
Zoshigaya Kishimojin / 雑司ヶ谷鬼子母神
Address: Tokyo-to, Toshima-ku, Soshigaya 3-15-20
東京都豊島区雑司が谷3丁目15-20
Website

Photos ©SoraNews24
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Hopefully, this is just a mini stop on Ministop’s road to success.

The convenience store ecosystem in Japan is dominated by three apex predators: Family Mart, 7-Eleven, and Lawson. Then, there exists a secondary tier of stores like Daily Yamazaki and Ministop, the latter of which has been dealing with some money troubles as of late. It was recently reported that Ministop experienced their third straight year of net losses.

One of the causes is said to be a scandal involving falsified best-before dates on bento and rice balls, but despite that, the chain still has its legions of fans who are willing to look past it and hope for Ministop’s survival. You can even find the hashtag #SaveMinistop (#ミニストップを救いたい) on social media, and one supporter of this movement is our very own Mr. Sato.

▼ Ministop was one of the establishments worthy to be a part of his Japan’s Best Home Senbero series.

Convenience stores are magical beings that seem to feed primarily on money in order to survive. So, our writer figured the best way to help Ministop is not only to buy some stuff there, but to encourage others to do the same. And, to accomplish this, Mr. Sato is going to share with us a special combination he discovered that not only tastes addictively divine, but can only be done at Ministop.

What makes Ministop unique for this is a range of items that you can’t find in other chains, made at a surprisingly high quality. The centerpiece of these is their soft-serve ice cream that has become so popular it evolved into a separate spin-off brand, Minisof. It’s a feat even the big three chains haven’t accomplished.

Minisof is a crucial element to Mr. Sato’s secret delight, but since the beginning of April, they changed the main flavor from vanilla to Hokkaido milk for 348 yen (US$2.19). This will be our writer’s first time making the snack with the new flavor, but he has little doubt that it will be fantastic. That day, he also went with his colleague, Go Hatori, who ordered a special chocolate banana Minisof for 500 yen.

For what it’s worth, he described it as very “banana-y,” but that’s not what we’re here to talk about today. Also not relevant to the snack but neat and worth mentioning is that Ministop now offers edible spoons made out of ice cream cone wafer. It’s hard to resist not just eating the spoon right away, though.

The other component to Mr. Sato’s surprise is Ministop’s Hokkaido Wave Potato Happy Butter for 348 yen. As its pleasantly strange name sort of suggests, these are fried crinkle slices of potato. They’re a bit like a cross between potato chips and french fries.

The “Butter” aspect requires you to put them into a separate bag, add the butter-flavored powder seasoning, and shake it all up.

Once the potato is adequately covered, just take one out and dip it into the ice cream. That’s it!

It sounds simple, but the extreme contrasts between sweet and salty as well as hot and cold set Mr. Sato’s taste buds to the Moon each time. There’s also an exquisite marriage of textures between the creamy frozen treat, tender potato, and powdery butter seasoning. It has all the elements of a finely crafted luxury desert.

Of course, these snacks are already great when eaten on their own, but putting them together creates a highly addictive treat that goes beyond the sum of its parts. Mr. Sato especially loves it when he gets a thickly coated potato. It brings out the sweetness of the ice cream even more.

Even though Ministop may not be an alpha-grade convenience store in Japan, it is a very important part of the landscape. It’s unique strengths such as this that made Mr. Sato and its many other fans begin the #SaveMinistop movement. If you too would like to join the cause, you now know what to buy.

Photos ©SoraNews24
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Two hours north of Tokyo is one of Japan’s best post-sakura springtime flower spots.

Sakura season may be pretty much over and done with, but that just means it’s time for Japan’s other varieties of flowering flora to get their moments in the springtime spotlight. For example, mid-April is when the Nemophila, or baby blue-eye, flowers start to bloom.

Hitachi Seaside Park, in the town of Hitachi, Ibaraki Prefecture, is loved by flower fans for its Nemophila hill. The last time we checked in on the place, a few years back, the park’s Miharashi no Oka section boasted four and a half million of the flowers. Five years later, though, that’s no longer the case…because the park now has 5.3 million Nemophila!

▼ One Nemophila

▼ 5.3 million Nemophila

The combined train and bus rides from Tokyo to Hitachi Seaside Park take about two hours total, so the park is close enough to be a very doable day-trip from the capital, but also far away enough that you probably won’t want to just swing by without knowing the flowers’ blossoming status. Thankfully, the park has been keeping potential visitors updated, and aside from the very top photo in this article, which was taken on April 17, all of the others are from April 19 of this year, showing that the Nemophila are currently in full bloom.

According to the park’s estimates, this year’s Nemophila blossoms will be “in full glory” through April 25, and remain very beautiful through the end of the month. Once we get into May they’ll be past their peak, and after May 10 they’re expected to disappear until next spring.

The closest rail stop to Hitachi Seaside Park is Katsuta Station on the Joban Line, which can be reached from Ueno Station in downtown Tokyo in 75 minutes. From the east exit of Katsuta Station, buses depart from the number-two bus stop approximately every 15 minutes for the park, with Kaihin Park the bus stop to get off and the ride taking 15 minutes.

Related: Hitachi Seaside Park official website
Source, images: PR Times
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