Japan loves its food. It also loves its food movies. No matter where you go in Japan, you’ll always run into local dishes, special sweets, and famous restaurants and chefs. It really is a food obsessed nation. So obsessed, I’ve found, that there are a plethora of food museums and theme parks scattered around Japan [...]
Mmmm. Delicious bukkake. I’ve loved bukkake for as long as I can remember. What do I like the most about it? Probably the taste of it… and the feeling as it goes down my throat and into my stomach. Maybe on this fine Valentine’s day you and your loved one can share a bowl of [...]
Legendary competitive eater Takeru Kobayashi made headlines once again this weekend when he emerged victorious at the annual Wing Bowl. In front of a screaming crowd of 20,000 fans, winning $20,000, Kobayashi smashed all records when he devoured 337 chicken wings in 30 minutes. At a little over ten wings a minute, Kobayashi can eat [...]
I love food movies (especially when they’re cold food movies) but there is absolutely no (food) movie out there that’s better than the 1985 film Tampopo (タンポポ). Even when we’re rating outside the “food movie” spectrum (is there an Oscars category for that?), I’d still put this movie in my top 10 (and I bet [...]
In this edition of Tofugu’s weekly Saturday Timewaster, I’d like to regale to you a story about a man who’s videotaped the creation of one-thousand four-hundred fifty-two bowls of instant ramen and instant yakisoba. How he’s done the… wait… wait…… seriously? ONE THOUSAND FOUR HUNDRED FIFTY TWO? Obviously the feat of strength here isn’t the [...]
Pulp Fiction was right – the funniest thing about other cultures is the little differences. The radically different customs and traditions in other cultures make sense to us, but our similarities? Now those are weird. Take for example convenience stores. They’re pretty much ubiquitous in both Japan and the United States, but some little differences [...]
Sushi is arguably the most Japanese food out there. Many other Japanese foods are similar to foods from other cultures, but it’s hard to find anything as uniquely Japanese as sushi. A small sushi bar near a train station in Tokyo called Sukiyabashi Jiro, run by sushi chef Jiro Ono is largely considered to be [...]
Ever wonder what makes Japanese food taste the way it does? It absolutely has a very distinct flavor, but how would you describe it? A hundred years ago, the distinct flavor of Japanese food lead to the discovery of a brand new flavor: umami. The Four Basic Tastes Image sources: 1, 2, 3, & 4 [...]
Sushi. That delicious Japanese food that everyone seems to love. Call this post a rant if you want, but everyone is doing it wrong. I believe in sushi purity, where no other sushi is allowed to exist in my extremely racist one-sushi world. But seriously though, Americans ruin all ethnic foods. Taco Bell? Happy Teriyaki? [...]
Japan is no stranger to things that are strange, but Keisuke Yamada has taken art to a pretty goofy place. Bananas. Countless Japanese schoolgirls have made a hobby out of creating creatures out of food for their bento-boxes, but never before has someone taken banana art to such a level as this. Regardless of how [...]
