Twentythree

Are you ready to go on the scariest cruise of your life?

Escape rooms in Japan know no bounds, with people being encouraged to escape from hotels, trains, and haunted manors. Now, the boat is being taken out even further, quite literally, with the opening of a zombie ship from which there’s said to be “no escape”, and it’s been created by a company called Obaken.

A play on the word “obake”, which means ghost, monster, or apparition, the Obaken Zombie Ship is said to be the “ultimate realistic horror experience aboard a vessel out at sea“. Described as a 120-minute entertainment horror cruise where you never know what’s going to happen, this is reportedly the first-ever horror event to take place on a boat in Japan, and it’s a one-day only affair, limited to two departures from Suruga Bay in Shizuoka Prefecture on Sunday, 8 March.

▼ Truly no escape from this zombie ship until you get back to the bay.

Obaken has created immersive horror experiences in a variety of settings, and for this event, they’ll be zombifying the Fujisan Suruga Bay Ferry, or “Fuji” to use its shortened name.

▼ Fuji, looking less terrifying in the light of day, in front of Mt Fuji.

The Zombie Ship is limited to two afternoon departures, at 4 p.m. and 6:30 p.m., with a capacity of 90 people per departure. Boarding procedures take place 20 minutes beforehand, and once you’re on the ship, the horror story begins, with no escape until your return to the bay two hours later.

While the cruise itself is limited to two departures, there are three “courses” to choose from when purchasing tickets.

• Course 1. “Zombie Ship Cruise with Shinkansen” (departing from Tokyo, Shinagawa, or Shin-Yokohama Station) 29,300 yen (US$191.62)

Course contents:
・Boarding the “Obaken Zombie Ship Cruise” (valid only for the 4 p.m. departure)
・Round-trip Shinkansen and limited express train tickets from Tokyo, Shinagawa, or Shin-Yokohama Station to JR Shimizu Station
・All-you-can-eat nigiri sushi dinner (50-minute limit) at S-Pulse Dream Plaza Tairyo Market; shuttle bus to dock available

*Price is the same for adults and children and only junior high school students and older can participate (children under 15 must be accompanied by a parent or guardian)

• Course 2: “Zombie Ship Cruise with Shinkansen” (Tokyo, Shinagawa, Shin-Yokohama Station) 29,300 yen

Course contents:
・Boarding the “Obaken Zombie Ship Cruise” (valid only for the 6:30 p.m. departure)
・Round-trip Shinkansen and limited express train tickets from Tokyo, Shinagawa, or Shin-Yokohama Station to JR Shimizu Station
・All-you-can-eat nigiri sushi dinner (50-minute limit) at S-Pulse Dream Plaza Tairyo Market; shuttle bus to dock available

*Price is the same for adults and children and only junior high school students and older can participate (children under 15 must be accompanied by a parent or guardian)

• Course 3: “Zombie Ship Cruise” (Meet at the venue) 21,300 yen

Course contents:
・Boarding the “Obaken Zombie Ship Cruise” (valid only for the 4 p.m. departure)
・All-you-can-eat nigiri sushi dinner (50-minute limit) at S-Pulse Dream Plaza Tairyo Market; shuttle bus to dock available

*Price is the same for adults and children and only junior high school students and older can participate (children under 15 must be accompanied by a parent or guardian)

With courses including return Shinkansen tickets from major hubs in and near Tokyo, this is a great way to add a daytrip to the sea, and the world of the undead, to your itinerary while in Japan. Although it looks like there won’t be any English support available, you can always bring along a friend or translator who speaks Japanese to enjoy the ride, although judging by the levels of realism that escape games manage to recreate in Japan, you’ll want to be sure they have a high tolerance for horror.

Event information
Obaken Zombie Ship
Port address: Shizuoka-ken, Shizuoka-shi, Shimizu-ku, Shimazakicho 149, Shimizu Port Pier,  Suruga Bay Ferry
駿河湾フェリー 清水港乗り場 静岡県静岡市清水区島崎町149番地
Website (Tickets can be purchased at this link from 12 February)

Source, images: Press release
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Life of crime or live baseball fan? You can only choose one.

There are a whole lot of reasons to not make the decision to lead a life of crime. Aside from the moral implications of profiting via harmful or otherwise unscrupulous means, there’s the legal repercussions one faces if caught and convicted.

And even if you aren’t bothered by any of those, choosing to be a gangster in Japan also means you won’t be able to go to any professional baseball games.

This is something that the Tokyo Metropolitan Police recently reminded everyone of, announcing the arrest on February 9 of Nobuo Kusuno, a 62-year-old resident of the city of Funabashi, Chiba Prefecture, which is about 30 minutes east of downtown Tokyo. On the night of September 10, Kusuno, along with three other men, attended a game between the Yomiuri Giants and Hiroshima Carp professional baseball teams at Tokyo Dome, sitting in season ticket seats along the third base-side of the stadium. The game was a tight one, with the two teams locked in a 3-3 tie through the middle innings, but Kusuno and his companions would not get to see the end of it. Part-way through the game they were approached by stadium staff who had seen tattoos of the type associated with yakuza organized crime organizations on at least one of the men. When asked, Kusuno admitted to being a member of a yakuza group, and the four men were then told that they would have to leave the stadium, which they did.

However, leaving didn’t undo the fact that the four men had entered the stadium in the first place, and that means that Kusuno had committed a crime, as it’s illegal for members of organized crime organizations to attend professional baseball games in Japan. This isn’t a new wrinkle that’s just been added to the criminal justice system, either, as since 2003 Nippon Professional Baseball, Japan’s professional baseball league, has barred yakuza members from attending games, and in the case of Tokyo Dome, the ban extends to the entirety of the venue itself. “Those who belong to an organized crime group or any type of antisocial forces, or any individuals associated with those groups” are listed in the section labeled “Those not admitted to enter” on the Tokyo Dome website, and even when the stadium hosted Major League Baseball’s opening games of the 2025 season, the event’s official site included the warning that “Members of organized crime groups or similar antisocial organizations, or individuals closely associated with such groups” would be denied entry. Signs to that effect are also posted at professional baseball stadiums.

▼ The Tokyo Dome rules would ostensibly mean that yakuza members are banned from attending idol concerts that take place at the venue as well.

In addition to Kusuno, his three baseball-watching companions were also arrested. A 53-year-old man, also a resident of Funabashi, admitted to being a yakuza member, while the other two men, aged 51 and 57, are company employees who are accused of being yakuza affiliates, though they are currently denying the accusation. In addition, the season ticket seats that the men were sitting in are registered to a Chiba Prefecture-based industrial waste management business, which may also be in legal trouble if found to have acted as a front in the tickets’ purchase.

Of course, one could argue that, what with modern technology, there’s no need for sports-loving yakuza to go to the ballpark in the first place, as they could just stream the game on their phone…except that it’s illegal for yakuza to make mobile phone contracts too.

Incidentally, the third-base side of baseball stadiums in Japan is customarily where fans cheering for the away team sits, suggesting that the four men were rooting for the Carp, but Hiroshima ended up losing the game 4-3, meaning that nothing went their way that night.

Source: Kyodo via Livedoor News via Hachima Kiko, Yomiuri Shimbun, Asahi Shimbun, Tokyo Dome, MLB, NPB
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Special morning-only ramen is a great way to start your Tokyo day.

They say that you should never put off until tomorrow that which you can do today, and by that same logic, you should never put off until lunch or dinner that which you can eat for breakfast. However, with many ramen restaurants not opening until around noon, starting your day the ramen way isn’t always an option, but we recently stumbled across a fantastic spot for morning ramen with an extremely convenient location for travelers in Tokyo.

We start our morning at Tokyo Station, one of Japan’s busiest rail hubs, with over 800,000 people passing through it every day. From there we head out the Marunouchi Minamiguchi exit, walking south along the elevated tracks towards the Yurakucho neighborhood.

We don’t walk very far, though, because it’s just a very quick stroll to the ramen restaurant pictured above, Magorinsha (孫鈴舎).

▼ The walk from Tokyo Station to Magorinsha. Google says it takes four minutes, but once we were out of the ticket gates, we actually made it there in two.

Magorinsha isn’t a 24-hour ramen restaurant, but they open at 7 a.m., specifically so they can provide for fans who want ramen for breakfast. They even offer a special Morning Ramen (“Asa Raman” in Japanese) which is only available on weekdays between 7 and 10:30 a.m., so that’s what we ordered after putting our 600 yen (US$3.90) into the meal ticket machine.

Soon after that, the staff placed a bowl of very classy-looking ramen in front of us.

This isn’t some half-effort, can’t-be-bothered morning meal, as it boasts a complex cloudy broth that’s a combination tonkotsu (pork stock)/shoyu (soy sauce)/gyokai (fish stock) style. It delivers a solidly impactful flavor, and Magorinsha’s decision to serve it with grated ginger already mixed in, a unique choice for a ramen restaurant in Japan, also gives it a special eye-opening quality for a breakfast ramen.

Magorinsha’s noodles are thin and firm, which gave us a lot of surface area for the broth to soak into. It’s an excellent combination, and if you want even more noodles, you can ask for a kaedama (noodle refill) for just 100 yen more.

And even at the Morning Ramen’s affordable price point, Magorinsha doesn’t skip out on the chashu, as we had a nice slice of roasted pork waiting for us in the bowl.

Considering the ultra-convenient location in a pretty fancy part of town, this is a very impressive breakfast. With many hotels nearby, Magorinsha’s morning ramen is a great spot to hit at the start of your sightseeing day, and the proximity to Tokyo Station, where both the Shinkansen and highway buses come in, makes it a viable choice on the day of your arrival in Tokyo from elsewhere in Japan too.

Restaurant information
Magorinsha / 孫鈴舎
Address: Tokyo-to, Chiyoda-ku, Marunouchi 1-10-9
東京都千代田区丸の内1-10-9
Open 7 a.m.-10 p.m. (weekdays), 11 a.m.-3 p.m. (Saturdays)
Closed Sundays, holidays
Website

Photos ©SoraNews24
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Veteran contractor becomes senior thief.

A lot has been said about the reasons for Japan’s low crime rate. Some people point to Confucian philosophy, while others look for more modern factors such as high-density population centers leading to a strong sense of responsibility to be considerate to one another in all aspects of life, since there’s less physical buffer space between people.

A key factor that often gets overlooked, though, is that part of the reason Japan has relatively few thieves is because it has hardly any thieves who steal stuff just to be jerks. As a result, you’ll often see people leave things like handkerchiefs, pens, notebooks, or jackets unattended as they go to the bathroom while dining alone in a cafe or fast food restaurant. There’s not really much money to be made reselling those things, so why bother taking them?

So it must have seemed odd when the owners of a warehouse in Toyota City, Aichi Prefecture, noticed back in November that a single toilet bowl and water tank had been stolen. Sure, if someone had come in and taken a whole bunch of them, maybe they could sell off the entire set to a construction company for a nice wad of cash, but finding a buyer for a single toilet from a dubious, undocumented source wouldn’t be easy to do, and wouldn’t net the thief much profit from the caper. Also, this isn’t like cases of manholes or copper wire being stolen for their metal content. Porcelain can’t be melted down and repurposed, so there’s no monetary gain to be achieved by stealing a toilet for its material.

But the mystery was solved when the warehouse owners reported the theft to police and security footage showed that a 76-year-old man had let himself into the warehouse through its unlocked shutter and stolen the toilet. Investigators were able to identify the man as Kumi Yotsumoto, a resident of Chiryu, another Aichi town. When questioned about the incident, Yotsumoto admitted to stealing the toilet bowl, and when asked why, he said:

“I have been using the toilet that I stole.”

Yotsumoto’s job history includes working as a daiku, a term that’s often translated into English as “carpenter” but is often closer to “contractor,” in that it’s used for a broad range of roles involved in building construction, especially for houses, apartments, and other residential structures. After stealing the toilet, Yotsumoto took it back to his home, installed it, and had been using it up until when investigators came knocking on his door.

▼ It’s about a 30-minute drive from Toyota City to Chiryu, so it’s surprising that he apparently couldn’t find a toilet to steal that was closer to home.

As stolen property, justice would say that Yotsumoto should not be allowed to keep the toilet, but at the same time, it’s highly unlikely that the rightful owners want it back after he’s been using it for three months.

▼ Also, if the toilet is confiscated, do the police clean it, or do they have to leave it as-is, just in case they end up needing DNA evidence?

However, while Yotsumoto has admitted to stealing the toilet, he claims that that was all he took, and that he’s not responsible for the missing water tank. Assuming that investigators’ theory is that he would have stolen the tank to install within the toilet, their next task will likely be to remove the tank and check its serial number, so Yotsumoto may need to look for a replacement toilet while his case is ongoing, and hopefully will source it by more lawful means.

Source: Nitele News via Yahoo! Japan News via Itai News, Tokai TV
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Home economics class pizza had more tsumami than it was supposed to.

Pizza, famously, is hard to screw up, so much so that “_____ is like pizza. Even when it’s bad, it’s still pretty good,” became shorthand for things in which acceptable quality is very easy to find.

Here’s the thing about something that’s hard to screw up, though: When someone does somehow manage to screw it up, it’s probably going to be really, really bad. Case in point, a half-dozen teens in Japan recently sat down for some pizza, then ended up in the hospital from it.

The incident occurred on January 23 in the town of Kitakyushu, Fukuoka Prefecture. On that day, the assignment for the students in a home economics class at Honjo Middle School was to make pizza, and when it was done they got to eat it. After the meal, though, several students said they weren’t feeling well, and six were in bad enough condition that they were sent not just to the nurse’s office, but to the hospital for examination.

The students had used a from-scratch recipe, with the task for some of the students being to make the dough for the pizza crusts. If you’ve never made pizza dough, you might be surprised to learn that salt is a crucial ingredient. Even if you don’t necessarily want your pizza to have a salty flavor, you’ll still need to add salt to the dough to keep the yeast from fermenting too quickly. Don’t add any salt, and the dough will lose its structural integrity during baking, giving you a flimsy crust that tears apart under the weight of the sauce, cheese, and other toppings.

The recipe the students were following called for three tsumami of salt. Tsumami is the noun form of the word tsumamu, which means to close the fingertips around something. In other words, “three tsumami” would mean “three pinches” of salt.

However, according to a statement from the Kitakyushu Board of Education following an investigation, the students in charge of making the dough weren’t familiar with the term tsumami, at least in this cooking context, and used a lot more. It’s unclear exactly how much salt they put into the dough, but they might have gotten confused by tsumami’s connection to tsumamigui, a combination of tsumami and an alternate pronunciation of kui/“eating.” Tsumamigui means to “nibble” on something, but by extension it’s also often used when talking about snacking on finger foods, where the image of using just the fingertips can sometimes get a little less ironclad.

▼ For example, this stock photo of a man eating a steamed meat bun is classified with a tag of “tsumamigui.”

With that in mind, it’s likely that the students in charge of making the dough took the recipe’s “three tsumami of salt” to mean not three pinches, but three handfuls, and so the dough contained an amount of salt several magnitudes larger than it was supposed to. Regardless of the exact nature of the misinterpretation, the six students who were hospitalized after eating the pizza were found by doctors to be suffering from symptoms caused by excessive sodium intake.

While tsumami, much like pinch, is an inexact measurement, it’s one that’s easy for most cooks to visualize, and only tends to be used for recipes in which the amount of that particular ingredient doesn’t need to be so precise. However, taking into account that middle school-aged kids probably have a lot more personal experience with snacking than they do with cooking, a little more guidance from the teacher would probably be a good idea the next time pizza day rolls around, especially since many students might not have been previously aware that pizza dough has any salt at all, and so aren’t likely to have a sense of how much salt is too much to use.

Thankfully, all of the hospitalized students have fully recovered, leaving them with no lasting damage except the possible psychological trauma of having, against all odds, eaten bad pizza that actually was bad.

Source: Yomiuri Shimbun
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We go in search of the elusive cheap meal to find out what you can eat for US$3.20 in Tokyo. 

It wasn’t that long ago when spending less than 500 yen (US$3.20) on lunch in Japan was an easy option. These days, though, with rising costs and cash-flush overseas tourists pushing up prices, it’s become much more of a challenge to fill your belly on a so-called “one-coin” lunch, especially in Tokyo, Japan’s capital.

Curious to investigate the extent to which 500 yen lunches have disappeared, our reporter Yuuichiro Wasai set out to find them, and in the process, he committed himself to spending 500 yen or less on lunch every day for a week.

This was a risky challenge that threatened to leave him hungry for seven days, but Yuuichiro was determined to keep cheap meals alive by spending money on them. He also didn’t want to go for any obvious choices like McDonald’s, where you can get a couple of burgers, but no sets for less than 500 yen, and Yoshinoya, where a regular beef bowl costs 498 yen .

The other rule he set for himself was there would be no repeats, because that path leads to boredom, which tempts you into spending more money on food. Thankfully, Yuuichiro works in the heart of Shinjuku, so he’s spoilt for choice when it comes to restaurants nearby, but would they deliver a satisfying lunch in return for a 500-yen coin?

▼ He set out to find out.

Yuuichiro spent some time doing research online before his week of cheap eats, but what he found turned out to be pretty good. So let’s fast forward by taking a look at what he actually ate for the week, before he gives us his final thoughts on the state of the cheap food scene.

▼ Day 1: Small Roast Beef Rice (494 yen [US$3.15]) at Jonathan family restaurant

▼ Day 2: Rich and Delicious Meat Sauce Half (490 yen) at Gusto family restaurant

▼ Day 3: Tsukimi Udon (420 yen) at Shinjuku Kanoya, Main Branch

▼ Day 4: Two pieces of lean bluefin tuna & two pieces of squid (500 yen) at the Himawari Sushi conveyor belt restaurant

▼ Day 5: Lunch Bolognese Meat Sauce Set (500 yen) at Saizeriya

▼ Day 6: Zaru Soba (460 yen) at the Tokyo Metropolitan Government Cafeteria

▼ Day 7: Mori Soba (450 yen) at Sagaya

So what do you think about the size and look of the meals? If you’ve been living in Japan for over a decade, these meals might want to make you cry as they’re nowhere near as substantial as a 500-yen lunch used to be. That’s a sentiment shared by Yuuichiro, who conceded that his belly was growling before dinner most days during this challenge, but he did want to give praise where praise was due, and that praise went to family restaurant chain Saizeriya.

▼ When it comes to meals under 500 yen, the options at most restaurants are mainly limited to small, side-style servings.

▼ At Saizeriya, though, you can get a cheesy, meaty doria for 300 yen.

▼ Even grilled chicken doesn’t break the bank, with a couple of options priced at 500 yen.

▼ What’s even more impressive is that a set meal of salad and a spaghetti is only 500 yen.

▼ If you do want to splurge with an extra 100 yen, Saizeriya’s limited-time lunch menu offers a couple of 600-yen sets.

Even at McDonald’s, many of the value sets will break the 500 yen barrier so it’s as if Saizeriya is existing in a different era. The chain’s commitment to keeping costs low is one that Yuuichiro wholeheartedly appreciates, and another chain that deserves a shoutout is Kanoya.

Here, you can get a bowl of Tsukimi (Moon Viewing) soba or udon, so-called as it contains an egg, which has a round shape that resembles the moon, for just 420 yen.

▼ There are plenty of other udon and soba options that come with tasty additions like tempura and even a croquette, for less than 500 yen.

Outside of these two chains though, things are quite bleak, with 500 yen getting you a serving of noodles with no toppings at Sagaya.

▼ Yuuichiro had to limit his lunch to cold “zaru soba” noodles, which was a very bare-bones meal for him.

Family restaurants may have items under 500 yen, they’re generally small in size. Gusto’s “Rich & savory meat sauce (half portion)“, for example, is only a little larger than a fist.

▼ During his week of cheap eats, Saizeriya came out as the clear winner for taste, portion size, and value.

With the help of Saizeriya, there remains a glimmer of hope for the 500-yen lunch in Tokyo. While Japan’s largest denomination of coin will no longer get you the substantial lunch once enjoyed in years past, there are options still out there, so things haven’t gone the way of the overpriced inbound don lunch just yet.

Photos ©SoraNews24
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Matcha mirin nama chocolate sounds, looks, and tastes fancy, but is super-easy to make.

With Valentine’s Day coming up, all of Japan is thinking about chocolate…but here at SoraNews24, we’re thinking about Japanese chocolate flourishes in particular. The most time-tested way to give your desserts a dash of “JAPAN!”-appeal is to add some matcha, so we were going to do that for sure, but we wanted to make this batch of chocolates extra special, and while our sweet ambitions sometimes might outstrip our culinary skills, we found an incredibly easy, and unique, way to do just that.

Today we’re going to be making nama choco, or “raw chocolate,” a kind of chocolate ganache that’s loved in Japan for its invitingly soft texture and rich sweetness. Rather than making it completely from scratch, we’re going to start with a store-bought chocolate bar (any reputable brand will do) and enhancing it into fancy matcha nama chocolate.

In addition to a chocolate bar, cocoa powder, and matcha powder, we’ll need milk. How much of each? Well, that depends on how much nama chocolate you want to make, but ratio-wise for every 150 grams (5.3 ounces) of starting chocolate, this recipe calls for 30 milliliters (1 ounce) of milk. If you’re an experienced home sweets chef and thinking that’s not going to be enough liquid, don’t worry, because we’ve got one more that’s going into the mixture: 40 milliliters (1.35 ounces) of mirin, or sweet cooking sake!

▼ Mirin can be found pretty easily in Japanese and Asian markets overseas.

It’s a surprising choice for a dessert ingredient…or maybe not so surprising, considering that this recipe was shared by Hinode, one of Japan’s biggest mirin makers. Still, if anyone knows how to enhance flavor through mirin, it’s Hinode, so while we were still sort of skeptical, we were also intrigued, and eager to find an excuse to eat sweets (that last one, to be fair, is our default psychological state).

Start by breaking the chocolate up into pieces and placing them in a microwave-safe bowl with the milk and mirin. Pop the bowl in the microwave for 45 seconds at 600 watts, then stir the mixture with a spatula until it’s smooth and shiny. Once that’s done, line a glass dish or other container with a bit of depth to it with plastic wrap, and pour the mixture in.

Put the container in the refrigerator for two hours to cool and harden. After that, using a lightly warmed knife (for a cleaner cut), slice the nama chocolate into bite-sized pieces.

At this point, you’ve actually already got a perfectly serviceable batch of nama chocolate made, but now it’s time for the finishing touch of sprinkling on the matcha and cocoa powder.

The exact amount to use is up to you, and really, you can never have too much matcha or cocoa, can you? Also, while we made our batch using both of them for extra visual and flavor variety, feel free to go all-in with just matcha or just cocoa, if that’s what you’re in the mood for.

▼ Though we have to say, matcha ones, with their two-tone color scheme, do look really nice.

So how do these mirin nama chocolates taste? Incredible! The mirin imparts a unique and sophisticated sweetness, and using milk instead of cream gives each of the contributing flavors space to dance on your taste buds, and brings the flavor profile to a cleaner finish than the oiliness that comes with cream, which in turn sets you up to enjoy another piece.

▼ Hinode’s Instagram post sharing the recipe

View this post on Instagram

Aside from the two hours for the mixture to chill in the fridge, we spent maybe 15 minutes making these treats, which is an amazingly small amount of prep time for something that looks and tastes this special.

Dress them up with a stylish box and wrappers (maybe from Daiso or your other favorite discount shop), and you’ve got something that’ll have friends and romantic partners asking which gourmet chocolatier you found them at.

Related: Hinode
Mirin bottle image: Hinode
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