Pokémon Cafe’s new Mega Charizard curry plate is a work of art in more ways than one

Pokémon Cafes in Tokyo and Osaka welcome Mega Evolutions back as main dishes, desserts, and drinks in the buildup to Pokémon Legends: Z-A.

The next major Pokémon video game release on the horizon, Pokémon Legends: Z-A, is bringing back the Mega Evolution gameplay mechanic, which was first seen in Z-A’s predecessor, Pokémon X and Y. But while Z-A isn’t coming out until October, Mega Evolution Pokémon will be showing up in just a few weeks’ time at Japan’s Pokémon Cafe.

The themed restaurants in Tokyo and Osaka will be adding a Mega Evolution Charizard Flamethrower Curry Plate to the menu, which is both a fiery meal and, in multiple ways, a work of art. The first artistic medium is the food itself, with Charizard sculpted out of seasoned rice and breathing a blast of curry, bringing to mind the Pokémon’s Flamethrower attack. Each plate also comes with either a Charizardite X or Charizardite Y Mega Stone, which can be seen at the top right corner of the dish in these preview shots.

You will, of course, want to whip out your phone and take some photos of your food before you start eating, and while you’ve got it out, you’ll also want to scan the code on the back of the Mega Charizard X and Mega Charizard Y card your server will bring you.

Once you’ve done that, swing your camera’s lens back towards your plate of Charizard curry, and some cool AR effects will fire up, the cafe mysteriously promises.

For those looking for a more serene way to include Mega Evolution elements in their meal, the Pokémon Cafe chefs will also be whipping up a Mega Ampharos Sparkling Caramel Cream Cake.

The dessert is sort of like a Japanese purin/custard pudding in cake form, with layers of custard cream, sponge cake, caramel sauce, and whipped cream, plus a sparkly motif befitting the Light Pokémon.

Eight Mega Evolutions are also being added to the Pokémon Cafe’s latte art roster, with both Mega Charizards and the Mega Ampharos joined by Mega versions of Kangaskhan, Ampharos, Gardevoir, Altaria, Lucario, and Absol.

All of these are available to grace caffe lattes, caffe mochas, and hot caramel drinks. What’s especially cool is that while latte art is random at most themed cafes in Japan, the Pokémon Cafe lets you pick which Mega Evolution you want.

▼ The Mega Evolutions also appear on coasters (one given at random for each drink order) and dual-layer stickers (one at random for every set of entree and dessert).

The lattes are priced at 935 yen (US$6.45), the Mega Ampharos cake at 2,640 yen, and the Charizard curry at 3,640 yen. They’ll all be available starting June 14 at both the Tokyo and Osaka Pokémon Cafes, reservations for which can be made here.

Source, images: Pokémon Cafe
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7-Eleven Japan releases new must-try sweets that are a hit with customers

Convenience store chain has frozen surprises waiting for you this summer.

For the past year or so, a lot of 7-Eleven stores in Japan have been expanding their frozen food sections, rolling out new own-brand products that include frozen sweets, two of which have quickly become hot favourites with customers since their spring debut.

▼ Part of the company’s “Premium” line, the two hot products are Mille Crepe Rolls…

▼…and Matcha Cream-Filled Pancakes.

So what makes these two sweets so popular? Let’s start by taking a closer look at the Mille Crepe Rolls, which come in a pack of three for 430 yen (US$2.95).

▼ Each rolled crepe is a good size, at around 10 centimetres (3.9 inches) in length.

The only thing you need to do to prepare these crepes is let them thaw naturally, at room temperature (around 25 degrees Celsius) for about 5–10 minutes.

▼ Depending on how you like your sweets, though, you could probably eat these straight out of the freezer.

Cutting them in half to check out the fillings, we found there was no skimping on the cream, with a good amount of it inside.

We’d never seen anything quite like these at a convenience store before so we felt a flutter of excitement as we picked up the chocolate for a taste.

It had a gentle sweetness and surprisingly, a refined taste. The balance between cream and crepe was perfect, giving it a moreish, delicious flavour. The plain variety was also mildly sweet and easy to gobble up, with the cream oozing out and melting on the tongue in an addictive way that was reminiscent of ice cream.

The ice cream-like texture is so devilishly good it feels like it’s melting your brain, and the strawberry flavour didn’t disappoint either.

▼ They were all so good we couldn’t choose a favourite out of the three.

The next sweet goes by the name “Matcha Cream-Filled Pancakes” in English, but the Japanese on the pack calls them “Imagawa-yaki“, a popular dessert similar to pancakes that’s often found at festivals and street food stalls. Made with a pancake-like batter, these sweets are traditionally baked in a cast-iron mould and filled with sweet red bean paste, but this variety is filled with matcha sourced from Kyoto’s Uji, Japan’s premier matcha-producing region. 

These should be heated up for a short time in the microwave so the filling becomes nice and melty for ultimate deliciousness, and at 140 yen apiece, they’re totally worth the calories, with the chewy exterior contrasting beautifully with the soft and creamy filling.

After trying the sweets, we can understand why customers have been raving about them as they’re some of the best we’ve tried at the chain. So next time you find yourself at 7-Eleven, perhaps shopping for a senbero drinking session, be sure to keep an eye out for them in the freezer section.

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VR found to restore severe short-sightedness in Japanese study

Soon your mom might yell at you to stare at those darn video games more.

It’s been suggested before that use of VR devices can have a positive effect on eyesight, but so far this has largely been from anecdotal evidence. Quite frankly, it does feel like wishful thinking that something fun can actually be good for your physical condition too.

However, a recent study done at Kwansei Gakuin University’s Graduate School of Science and Engineering has shed more light on this subject. Their paper, presented at Interaction 2025, showed that playing a specially designed VR game made significant improvements in vision under certain circumstances.

The researchers had a group of 10 people without any overarching eye diseases play the game over six weeks at different intervals and measured the effect it had on their vision. The game was a simple target shooting one, in which players used their controllers to aim and shoot at circular targets that get pushed further back when hit. This makes players practice looking both up close and far into the distance.

▼ Unfortunately, that time Mr. Sato married an anime dreamboat in VR, the depth perception was very limited and he saw no improvements in vision. But what he did gain was much more precious.

Even with some participants playing as infrequently as once every three days, all of them showed improvement in vision compared to their ability before the study. More interestingly, the test subjects with moderate to severe myopia (short-sightedness) prior to the test saw a more significant improvement in line with their frequency of playing, but those with only mild myopia did not see such impressive results.

The reason for this is not certain but one possible cause is pseudomyopia, which has the same symptoms as short-sightedness but is caused by straining the eyes, often due to staring at screens too long. Pseudomyopia can progress to real myopia if untreated, but is reversible with eye training, like alternating between staring up close and far away or looking at stereoscopic images.

So, it is possible that the subjects who saw the biggest improvements were only having the pseudomyopia components of their bad eyesight reversed, whereas those with only a modest improvement were suffering from the more permanent condition of real myopia. This is also a possibility because of the fact the subjects were all young students taken from the school’s information sciences course and likely spend a lot of time in front of computers.

But even if it is only treating pseudomyopia, which is an increasingly common ailment in this digital age and treating it can still ensure long-term eye health in young people. The fact that VR can have at least that much of an effect on people’s vision generated a fair bit of optimism in online comments.

“What the?! This is amazing! I’ll buy VR if this is released.”
“It does make you see in 3D, so maybe it really can help.”
“A doctor on YouTube said myopia cannot be reversed, so what’s going on?”
“This won’t help people with genetic short-sightedness because their eyes are naturally misaligned.”
“It makes sense since it forces you to focus. They say even the 3DS had benefits.”
“Recovering your eyes through video games feels like a dream.”
“It sounds like people who only recently became short-sighted have a chance.”

The researchers say more work is needed to further verify these results and determine if this is simply remedying pseudomyopia or if benefits to regular myopia are occurring as well. Mark Zuckerberg and Sony really ought to be shoveling money at these researchers, because I’m pretty sure I’d buy a VR device if this turns out to be true as well. After all, the choice between paying a few hundred bucks to play video games and paying a few thousand for someone to use a deli slicer on my eyeballs so they can shoot lasers at them isn’t a choice at all.

Source: Interaction 2025, MoguLive, My Game News Flash
Top image: Pakutaso
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Tokyo’s Hydrangea Mountain is a spot of beauty created by one son’s love for his parents【Photos】

Thousands of flowers bloom in the west Tokyo mountains, but they all started from one man’s kind thoughts.

As we flip the calendar over to June, we’re getting close to the start of hydrangea season in Japan, or ajisai season, to use the flowers’ Japanese name. Many of the best places to see hydrangeas in Japan are temples or gardens that once belonged to local lords whose descendants eventually opened up their lands to the public, but the origin of Minamisawa Ajisaiyama (“Hydrangea Mountain”) in Akiruno, a district in western Tokyo, is different. This beautiful forested area is filled with hydrangeas because of a local resident named Chuichi Minamisawa, seen in the photo below.

Minamisawa’s roots in the area go back generations, and his parents’ grave is nearby, along a path that winds up into the mountains. A little over 50 years ago, he got the idea to beautify the trail, and so he started planting hydrangeas along it. A self-taught cultivator, Minamisawa started with 20 seedlings. As his experience and expertise grew, he added more every year, eventually planting thousands and thousands by himself.

Though he occasionally got some help from friends and relatives, for the most part Ajisaiyama was something Minamisawa tended to by himself, making him a community celebrity. A few years ago, he was approached by members of Do-mo, a local entrepreneurial organization that was hoping to produce a hydrangea tea and hoped Minamisawa could help them with sourcing some of the ingredients. “Sure, I can let you use some of the hydrangeas,” Minamisawa told them. “But I’m getting older, and I don’t have that many years left, and once I’m gone, there’s no one to take care of the flowers.”

Seeing a way they could both help each other, Do-mo then agreed to take over as the hydrangeas’ caretakers, with Minamisawa imparting his knowledge about how to differentiate the different varieties of hydrangeas that grow on the mountain, and when and how to prune and otherwise care for each of them.

▼ Minamisawa with members of Do-mo

Sadly, Minamisawa passed away in July of 2023, shortly after the end of that year’s hydrangea season, at the age of 93. The hydrangeas, now some 15,000 in number, still bloom every June, and this year’s petals are about to unfold.

This year’s hydrangea season peak is expected to be from June 7 to July 6, during which the Minamisawa Ajisaiyama will be open from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., with no admission charged. The hydrangea mountain is 40-minutes on foot from Musashi-Itsukaichi Station on the Itsukaichi Line, but between June 13 and 30 there’s also a shuttle bus that runs from the station to the mountain for 300 yen (US$2.10) roughly twice and hour between 9 a.m. and 4:30 p.m., with the full timetable available on the official website here.

Location information
Minamisawa Ajisaiyama / 南沢あじさい山
Address: Tokyo-to, Akiruno-shi, Fukasawa 368-362
東京都あきる野市深沢368−362
Website

Source: PR Times, Minamisawa Ajisaiyama
Top image: PR Times
Insert images: PR Times (1, 2, 3)
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Is this Hello Kitty hotel room in Tokyo good enough to impress an 8-year-old girl?

Find out what happens when a father books a night here to impress his daughter.

Our reporter P.K. Sanjun loves his daughter Rei, encouraging all her interests which, over her eight years, have ranged from Anpanman to Precure, Pokémon, Conan, Doraemon, and Crayon Shin-chan.

In between, Rei has had a soft spot for Sanrio characters like Hello Kitty, so P.K. has travelled to Sanrio Puroland with her, and even bought up stacks of Happy Meals when they came with little Hello Kitty plushies, all to put a smile on her face.

So when he heard about a new Hello Kitty-themed room at Asakusa’s Tobu Hotel in Tokyo, his daughter immediately sprang to mind. However, he hadn’t heard her mention Hello Kitty in a while so he wasn’t sure if that was a phase that had passed, but when he asked her if she wanted to stay there, her eyes widened as she told him, “I want to go! I definitely want to go! I absolutely want to stay there!!”

▼ So off they went.

Though there are a few hotels around Japan with Hello Kitty-themed hotel rooms, this is the only one in Tokyo’s 23 wards, and there are actually two rooms to choose from: the “Sakura Celestial Maiden Room” and the “Wa-Modern Room”.

▼ At his daughter’s request, they stayed in the Sakura Celestial Maiden Room.

Just as the name suggests, Hello Kitty, or “Kitty-chan” as she’s known in Japanese, was dressed as a celestial maiden, welcoming P.K. and Rei to their night’s stay with an array of traditional motifs, and swirls of cherry blossoms in full bloom.

There were two large murals of Kitty-chan on the walls, and although the sweet cat was in costume for this event, Kitty-chan’s signature bow was still evident, appearing on the beds, in the form of pillows…

▼…and as handles on the bedside drawers.

With four beds inside, there wasn’t a lot of room to move around, but there was a beautiful Japanese-style space in the corner, with a low table and chairs, pink tatami mats with Hello Kitty bows on the edges, and a large plushie of Kitty-chan, as celestial maiden, sitting on the floor like a hostess at a traditional Japanese inn.

Rei-chan squealed in delight upon seeing Kitty-chan, giving her a huge hug that showed P.K. just how strong the Sanrio bonds still were in his daughter.

Hello Kitty was like a magnet for Rei, giving her a burst of excited energy that saw her jumping around the room. P.K. was so delighted to see her so hyped that he let her run wild for a little while, figuring she would eventually wear herself out from all the excitement.

However, P.K. didn’t quite realise the extent of his daughter’s love for the cat, and the themed room, because at 10 p.m., after they’d had dinner and their nightly baths, Rei, who would normally be dozing off at this time, was as excited as ever.

▼ In fact, her voltage just kept rising.

With her eyes wide open, Rei didn’t look sleepy at all, and although P.K. couldn’t match her excitement at being inside a pink Hello Kitty-themed room, he was happy to indulge her, allowing her to leap and squeal until she eventually wore herself out, by which time it was past 11:30 p.m.

▼ Rei fell fast asleep as if her battery had run out, hugging Kitty-chan instead of her dad.

They both slept like logs in Hello Kitty’s celestial paradise, and the next day, before checking out, Rei gave Kitty-chan one last hug while whispering, “I’ll definitely come and stay again.”

Although P.K. couldn’t see Kitty-chan respond to Rei’s whispers, he had a feeling his daughter and Hello Kitty were on a different wavelength to him, communicating in secret ways he wasn’t able to understand.

After their night in the themed room, P.K. learned that a girl’s love for Hello Kitty has the power to outlast all other character obsessions, and he also learned that if you stay in this room with a Kitty-obsessed child you may not get a lot of sleep, but you will get a ton of brownie points as a parent.

Hotel information
Asakusa Tobu Hotel /浅草東武ホテル
Address: Tokyo-to, Taito-ku, Asakusa 1-1-15
東京都台東区浅草1-1-15
Website

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Deep-fried mint chocolate croquettes and gnocchi gratin on sale at Tobu Department Store in Tokyo

It’s a breath of fresh fried mint.

We here at SoraNews24 are constantly seeking culinary oddities wherever they may appear, but sometimes we just stumble onto them too. Such a thing happened to our Japanese writer Tasuku Egawa while browsing around the Tobu Department Store in Ikebukuro, Tokyo.

Japanese department stores often have large food sections on their basement floors that sell high-end cakes and chocolates or gourmet ingredients for meals. When Tasuku headed down there he spotted an interesting sign. It was for a special mint chocolate food campaign called Atsumare! Choco Minto, which is going on now.

Minto is the Japanese pronunciation of “mint,” but for this event the “to” part was written with the kanji used to denote a political party, often preceded by “min” to make “minto” as a shorthand for “Democratic Party,” so this event roughly translates to “Gather ’round! Mint Chococratic Party.” This pun is popular among foodies as an allusion to the very divisive nature of mint chocolate in which Japanese people seem to either love or hate it in such a clear way that it could be compared to political alignments.

▼ I’ve never been so politically motivated before.

Many of the food vendors on the floor had special versions of their products adopting the great taste of mint chocolate. As expected, there was a vast array of cakes, parfaits, and milkshakes.

But as Tasuku perused the menu, something far more daring jumped out at him.

▼ “Mint Chocolate & Nuts Rich Mint Cream Croquette“

In Japanese cuisine, cream croquettes are deep-fried globs of white sauce and some kind of savory meat or vegetable like crab or pumpkin. What Hakko Kitchen Rich Cream Croquette Tokyo seems to have done with this for the Mint Chococratic Party is add mint to the sauce and toss in some bits of chocolate and nuts for texture.

Tasuku headed over to Hakko Kitchen and stared at the croquettes for a while. Sensing his disbelief the staff explained that this item sold out over the previous weekend and a TV crew even came to cover them. Not only that but they sold them at mint chocolate events in the past and there have been people waiting for them to come back.

That was enough to intrigue our writer to try one despite the steep price of 681 yen each (US$4.72). While there he also spotted a Mint Chocolate & Cream Cheese Potato Gnocchi Gratin for 1,080 yen ($7.49) and felt compelled to try that too.

He was reassured because department store food stalls are usually refined establishments that wouldn’t just sell random foods for shock value if they didn’t also taste really good. Hakko Kitchen in particular had been in this location for 60 years, so they probably knew what they were doing.

But after arriving at home and staring his Mint Chocolate & Cream Cheese Potato Gnocchi Gratin in the blue face, he began to have second thoughts about this.

He took a first scoop which had a big potato gnocchi in it and popped it in his mouth. The taste of mint chocolate was front and center while the gnocchi added some salty notes and the cream cheese kept everything grounded as a gratin dish.

Tasuku concluded that it was good for him as a solid but moderate member of the Mint Chococratic Party, but the complexity of its taste might be an issue for hardline mint chocolate fanatics as the purity of the flavor could be described as diminished or corrupted somewhat.

Next was the Mint Chocolate & Nuts Rich Mint Cream Croquette. It looked just as good as any cream croquette on the outside. Tasuku thought about how ice cream is sometimes fried in the USA, so this should work in the same way more or less.

Breaking it open, our writer was greeted with a load of nuts and liberal amount of chocolate chips. His first bite was a full blast of firm mint chocolate flavor. Unlike the complex taste of the previous item, this was the clear taste of mint chocolate through and through.

It’s certainly too bold for anyone who’s not a fan of mint chocolate, but who are we kidding? Anyone not into mint chocolate would have bailed on these croquettes a long time ago. But for those who want a fresh take on an old favorite, the Gather ’round! Mint Chococratic Party food fair will be held until 4 June.

Event information
Gather ’round! Mint Chococratic Party / あつまれ！チョコミン党
Hakko Kitchen Rich Cream Croquette Tokyo (croquettes and gratin only) / 発酵kitchen リッチクリームコロッケ東京
Tobu Department Store / 東武百貨店
Address: Tokyo-to, Toshima-ku, Ikebukuro 1-1-25
東京都豊島区西池袋1-1-25
From 22 May-4 June
Website

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