In fact I remember seeing these “Big America” burgers when we were in Japan filming last winter, though none of us tried them. The idea is that each region/state/city gets their own America burger. Of course, not all states are represented, not even by a long shot. Most Japanese, let alone Americans, don’t know what a North Dakota is, after all, and Ohio is just how you say “good morning.” Basically, they’re picking and choosing famous spots from around the US, figuring out a stereotyped feature of that place (missing completely, sometimes), and then putting it in a burger.

Let’s take a look at these “Big America” burgers while we wait for McDonald’s line of “Small Japan Burgers” to be released.

Texas Burger & Texas Burger 2

This burger’s first run was so popular that it got itself a sequel! The Texas Burger 2 comes back with a “wilder” taste (not sure what to think of that), and has chili beans, bacon, onions, a slice of American cheese, old-fashioned mustard relish, and a quarter-pound of beef. I think the creators of this burger watched one too many cowboy movies.

Yeehaw!

Grand Canyon Burger

Sadly, they don’t cut the Grand Canyon Burger in half when serving it to you, nor does it contain donkey meat, but it does have an egg McMuffin-like round egg disc, cheddar AND mozzarella cheese, crispy bits of onion, steak sauce, and Big Mac-esque bun and beef layout. Not sure how this has anything to do with the Grand Canyon, but maybe they were going for some kind of Arizona vibe? Even that doesn’t make much sense to me. Maybe if we watch the commercial it will all come together?

No, I’m way more confused now.

Las Vegas Burger

Once again, I feel like McDonalds failed to capture the essence of the location this burger was named after. They should have a system where they fill one in a million burger containers with money, then at least there’d be some gambling involved. But no, they had to go with LV staples like sauteed sliced beef and onions, lettuce, and cream cheese? That cream cheese is so money, baby.

Broadway Burger

Broaaadway!! ♬ Nothing sings “Broadway” like mozzarella, bacon cured pastrami-style, mixed vegetables, and a mustard and cream cheese sauce. Okay, I take that back. Many things sing “Broadway” more than the featured Broadway Burger items listed above.

California Burger

California is a big place, but this burger tries to capture it all, from the sands of Los Angeles to the redwoods of the north. Can you guess what makes this burger “California?” I would have guessed avocado, but came away pleasantly surprised. Between two “artisan” buns there’s a quarter-pound of beef, spicy cheese, bacon strips, tomato slices, and lettuce. This isn’t all that “California,” though, so they up the ante and top it with a special sauce made from red wine that’s actually produced in California! Gotta give this one an “A” for effort, at the very least.

Beverly Hills Burger

Unlike the “improvement sequels” that we see with the Texas and New York burgers, the Beverly Hills Burger is something unique and different from its geological predecessor, the California burger. This burger’s unique features are: guacamole, cheese, Cesar salad dressing, an egg, and the meat of abandoned chihuahuas. For some reason I don’t see the people of Beverly Hills ever buying or associating themselves with a burger like this.

Idaho Burger

As if you didn’t see this one coming. The Idaho burger’s special feature? Potatoes. Like, a whole breakfast hashbrown worth of taters, but more circle-shaped. In addition to this is bacon, onions, a quarter-pound of beef, cheese, a peppery sauce, grainy mustard, and an onion bun, because Idaho makes a lot of onions too.

What kind folk you have out there in Idaho!

Miami Burger

The Miami Burger simultaneously concludes that “all Hispanic people eat at Taco Bell!” and that “Florida is filled with these homogenous Hispanic peoples.” The purpose of this burger is to evoke the feeling of “tacos” and in order to do that they insert tortilla chips, shredded cheese (because that’s so tacos!), a “spicy tomato chili sauce” (sounds like an unholy matrimony of salsa and ketchup), a quarter-pound beef patty, and something that looks like it might be taco meat, but I’m not totally sure. For all I know it’s meat made from a leg that washed up on Miami beach.

Personally, if I were McDonalds, I would have taken the “Florida is filled with retirees” approach and blended the burger into a smoothie and added vitamins to it, but I suppose that would be too much work.

New York Burger

Kind of a boring burger, to be honest, the New York burger has Monterrey Jack Cheese, bacon, tomato, lettuce, and a grainy mustard. Maybe they realized that this burger wasn’t all that great, which is why they made a sequel to the New York burger and zeroed in on Manhattan:

Manhattan Burger

They weren’t happy with the New York burger so they made a follow-up. The Manhattan burger has everything that the New York burger has but adds a slice of pastrami and two servings of sour cream sauce to provide a “modern, airy, refined taste.” Mission accomplished? I’m not so sure.

If that McDonalds car was stuck in the middle of the intersection in real New York people would be dead right now. DEAD. Then who would eat your burgers? Fuggedaboudit.

Hawaiian Burger

Did the Hawaiian burger just blow my mind by not including pineapple in any shape or form? Of all the opportunities that they had to capture the (stereotypical) essence of a geographical location in America, this was their chance! Still, it doesn’t look too bad. The Hawaiian burger features a special gravy, an egg-disc, chopped lettuce, an American cheese slice, bacon, and of course a lot of beef. It looks like they were going for a pseudo loco moco, so I gotta credit them on not going straight for the obvious pineapple cop out.

Now the only thing missing is spam. Lots and lots of delicious spam.

[hr]

There you have it. I summed up the answer to “what is America” via McDonalds hamburgers eaten in Japan based off of American places. If this trend continues, I can only imagine what they’ll come up with next. Maybe a crab/salmon/oil burger from Alaska (that actually sounds good)? Or what about an Oregon burger that’s topped with kale and kombucha? Maybe they could even do a North Dakota burger where you open the box and there’s nothing there. The possibilities are endless!

If McDonalds Japan were to do a burger based off your state/city/region/province/country/landmark, what do you think they would do? Not so much what they should do, but how will your location be stereotyped in burger form? Let me know in the comments.

Bonus: Here’s a papercraft I came across of that weird McDonalds RV that’s in all the “Big America” commercials.

[hr]

Bonus Wallpapers!

[2560x1600] • [1280x800] • [1280x800 Animated] • [700x438 Animated]

We’ve written before about the American man behind the Japanese phrase “Boys, be ambitious,” and the father of the Japanese word for hotchkiss “stapler,” but their contributions to Japan were pretty shallow. It’s definitely cool and interesting that these Westerners made contributions to the Japanese language that are still around today, but it’s not as if they really affected the culture or history.

One Westerner who made a major impact on Japanese history is not only pretty much completely unknown in his native land, but people will probably mistake him for a fast food clown. The man I’m talking about is, of course, Ranald MacDonald.

Before Ray Kroc began serving billions and billions worldwide, there was Ranald MacDonald. Blissfully unaware of how laughable his name would become in centuries to come, MacDonald was a significant figure in opening Japan to the world and bringing the English language to the country.

Lemme back up a bit. MacDonald was born in Tofugu’s home state of Oregon in the early 1800^s during a time when Japan was more or less closed to outsiders. The mystique of the closed country mixed with MacDonald’s supposed Asian ancestry and encounters with Japanese castaways lead him to an intense interest in Japan.

Determined not to let a little thing like the Tokugawa shogunate stop him from visiting Japan, MacDonald eventually found his way over to Japan. Instead of trying to get into Japan through negotiations or official channels, MacDonald did the only logical thing: intentionally shipwreck himself.

Dramatic recreation of MacDonald’s landing

MacDonald joined up with a whaling ship sailing past Japan and more or less just hopped out on his own ship when he was close enough. He landed in Hokkaido and, after being taken in by the Japanese, found his way down to Nagasaki.

Back in the Edo Era, Nagasaki was the one city in Japan where foreigners were allowed, and usually only Dutch traders at that, so MacDonald was a rarity in a big way. Japanese officials, sensing the value of the English language, tasked MacDonald with teaching English to an elite few.

After several months of teaching English to samurai, MacDonald was shipped back to America, where he lived out his life more or less uneventfully. For the rest of his life, he had nothing but good things to say about Japan and, supposedly, his last words were Japanese.

In a lot of ways, MacDonald is the father of the English language in Japan. In a time when only the Dutch were permitted to have anything to do with Japan, English was more or less non-existent in Japan before MacDonald. He unwittingly started the long, beautiful tradition of English teachers coming to Japan and leaving after a year. Maybe they should rename JET?

MacDonald was an ALT before JET was JET

More importantly, MacDonald lay the foundation for the English speaking world to communicate with Japan. Some of MacDonald’s students were directly involved in the negotiations with Commodore Perry when he and his black ships landed on Japan a few years after MacDonald’s visit.

You could argue that MacDonald was the first of what would become many foreign advisors to help Japan through the Meiji Restoration, but unfortunately MacDonald rarely receives that recognition.

At the very least, MacDonald’s legacy isn’t completely tarnished by a fast food clown; at least, not in Japan. The McDonald corporation’s mascot is known as ドナルド マクドナルド, or “Donald McDonald” in Japan, leaving MacDonald’s name untainted.

But if I find out that there’s a Japanese historical figure named “Hamburgler,” I’m just going to give up on everything.

Wallpapers/GIFs

Here are some bonus wallpapers and animated GIFs (that’s “GIF” with a hard G) courtesy of our very talented illustrator, Aya!

Wallpaper (1280×800)
Wallpaper (2560×400)

GIF (700×438)
GIF (1280×800)

I’ve found that in Japan, you can find a lot more unusual and various types of hamburgers, ones that you would never, ever find here in the US.

When a Hamburger is Wild

A hamburger in Japan can be wild. Japanese fast food chain Lotteria recently offered a “wild burger” in honor of comedian Sugi-chan. Sugi-chan is one of the biggest celebrities in Japan right now (for who knows what reason), and his catchphrase ワイルドだろぉ？ (“wild, right?”) was one of the biggest buzzwords in Japan last year.

In Lotteria’s case, a “wild burger” was an oversized shrimp patty on two comically small buns. Wild, right?

More recently, Lotteria is offering a burger with nine patties. In celebration of the release of the newest Evangelion movie on DVD and Blu-Ray, Lotteria is currently offering a $13, nine-patty burger, after the name of the movie (Evangelion 3.33—3 + 3 + 3 = 9). That seems pretty wild.

When a Hamburger is Candy

A hamburger in Japan can be a candy. A popular type of Japanese candy (popular, at least, with people abroad) is a kind of DIY kit. The kit usually provides you with some powders, some molds, and instructions on how to turn it all into the final product.

Japanese YouTuber RRcherrypie is internet famous (the best kind of famous) for creating step-by-step guides on how to assemble these kits, and one of the most popular (and relevant to this post) recently has been a hamburger candy.

I can’t vouch at all for the taste, but it’s definitely a cool process to watch and, presumably, to try yourself.

When a Hamburger is a Billionaire

A hamburger in Japan can be Facebook founder and hoodie enthusiast Mark Zuckerberg. At least, that’s what some Japanese women think. The way that Zuckerberg’s name is transliterated into Japanese (ザッカーバーグ) sounds a lot like the Japanese word for a hamburger steak (ハンバーグ) which, to add to the confusion.

Fortunately, I don’t think that you’ll be set back too much by these two similar words. But if you somehow are served a live, confused Mark Zuckerberg instead of a delicious hamburger, then you’re on your own.

When a Hamburger is Black

A hamburger in Japan can be black, or contain pumpkin. Japanese fast food chains like Lotteria aren’t the only restaurants that serve bizarre hamburgers in Japan. International chains like Burger King or McDonald’s also cater to Japan’s local, sometimes eccentric tastes.

As we wrote about before, last year Burger King rolled special promotional items like an all-you-can-eat meal, a burger with black buns (dyed with bamboo charcoal and squid ink), and Halloween burgers that included a thick slice of kabocha.

It may be surprising to see these items offered by Burger King when the company’s offerings in its home country (the US) are so tame, but foreign companies have to adapt to Japan’s tastes and culture if they have a hope to survive.

Sometimes a Hamburger is Just a Hamburger

A hamburger in Japan isn’t always wild and wacky, or out there. You can always get a pretty normal, regular burger at virtually any Japanese fast food chain (like MOS Burger or Freshness Burger), foreign chains, or local restaurants.

But every time I go to a restaurant in the US that only offers a regular-ol’, everyday hamburger, I wish that it could be something more. Maybe I should start bringing my own squid ink.

This is a 5ish part series covering parodies of well known characters by Japanese artists, which will include Ronald McDonald, Colonel Sanders, Sesame Street, Pooh, Hello Kitty, Thomas the Tank Engine, Mickey Mouse, and more.

When I was looking for an image for my Japanese McDonalds Menu article, I came across a ton Ronald McDonald images just like the one I used (i.e. ridiculous). Therefor, I thought Ronald McDonald would be a great place to start.

Ronald McDonald (i.e. “Donald”)

When it comes to parodying American characters, Ronald McDonald is at the top of the list. Tons of ridiculous videos have been made about him. Here’s one of the most popular ones.

[yframe url='http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nhizo7KrZrw']

You could say that Ronald McDonald has become a huge Internet meme (kind of like LOLcats), which of course gives birth to all kinds of insanity. Oh, and commercials like this don’t help much either:

[yframe url='http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_UKLncvGxQ8']

In Japan, Ronald McDonald is known as only as “Donald,” which is what we’ll refer to him as from now on. There are tons of pictures of him, but these are my favorites, including links to places you can find more Donald pictures.

In a lot of these, it seems like Colonel Sanders and Donald are getting into fights (or at least interacting in some way). McDonalds and KFC are the two really big American fast food chains in Japan, so it only makes sense that there’s some rivalry here.

Here is Donald and Sanders hanging out at Mos Burger (a vastly superior fast food restaurant in Japan). Just goes to show that even these guys know quality.

Looks like the two rivals are getting a little intimate…or something…? I love the guy’s chicken club. Hopefully they don’t use that uh.. in… uh…

Yeah, you punch that frog! You’ll notice that he’s saying “Ran Ran Ruuuu!” This is another one of those big memes. “Ran Ran Ruuuuu, Foo!”

Here’s Donald palling around with a shinigami from Deathnote. Shinigami is saying “Uwaa!? Shinigami.” So, not much there that I can figure out. I just like how happy Donald looks.

“HamBurglar-kun. Let me tell you what they call Donald overseas…”
“It’s RONALD”

I love the purple dude, but I forgot his name and what he does. I’m sure someone can help me with that in the comments.

Last one I think is supposed to be a soccer player, but honestly, I have absolutely no idea. Another one you folks can hopefully help me with.

So there you have it. That wraps up Donald. I’ll be posting up another one pretty soon. I hope to get through them all over the next couple of days. Up next we’ll be doing Mickey Mouse and Hello Kitty.

Want more Donald? Check out these links:

Donald 1

Donald 2

Donald 3

If you want to get updated every time another part to this series comes out, please subscribe to our RSS Feed. Or, if you like e-mails, you can get an e-mail every time we update as well by going here. See you with another “character parody” article soon!

Surprisingly (to us Americans, maybe), McDonalds all over the world has different menus to cater themselves to the locals. Even in Hawaii, you’ll find things like ramen, Portuguese Sausage / Eggs / Rice Plates, and taro pies. Japanese McDonalds, of course has it’s own quirks, not to mention special choices on the menu.

Besides the food, Japanese McDonalds has some other differences as well. Ronald McDonald has a different name: Donald (ドナルド). McDonalds Restaurants are generally a lot cleaner, staff seems to be a little friendlier, and everything is a little more upscale (at least as upscale as McDonalds can be). The drinks and fries are considerably smaller, though the hamburgers are only a little smaller. They have most of the staple McDonald choices on the menu, but I went through and found all the ones you might not see in your country of origin. Let’s start with breakfast!

Breakfast Menu (朝マック)

Feel free to click on the image above to get a closer view, but we’ll be getting into more detail on some of these below. I’ve provided a literal translation to all of them, written right above each picture. A few things strike me as a little odd, though. Why is the Chicken Caesar Wrap and the Fillet-o Fish on the breakfast menu? Japanese love eating weird things (at least by our standards) for breakfast. So if you study abroad, be prepared to eat a lot of lunchy-dinnery things in the morning!

Bacon Lettuce Egg Wrap

This sounds ridiculously good. I thought I loved Sausage and Egg McMuffins, but now I have something new to look forward to. Thank goodness Japan’s time difference might help me wake up early enough to grab one of these, while I’m still in jet lag mode.

The Mega Muffin

I’m not sure if you’ve ever heard about the MegaMac (keep reading), but this is it’s monstrous morning brother, the Mega Muffin. From the looks of it, the Mega Muffin consists of two sausage patties, a slice of cheese, an egg, some bacon, and some ketchup. Seriously? Well, I suppose it won’t stop me from trying one the first chance I get.

Chicken Caesar Wrap

This menu item isn’t strange all on it’s own. The thing that’s strange is that it’s found on the morning menu. Though, I gotta say, I probably wouldn’t mind. This is a good segue to…

The Lunch / Dinner Menu

Not a whole lot that’s terribly interesting here. You’ll notice that many of these items are found on your local McDonalds menu. Here’s the things that are probably unique:

MegaMac

If you live in Hawaii, you may be one of the lucky Americans to come across one of these…uh…things? Just double the amount of meat you would normally find in a Big Mac, close your eyes, tap your ruby shoes together, and you’ll get one of these. When I tried it, I could barely fit it in my mouth, that’s how ridiculous it is. Why Japan would have a hamburger bigger than any of its counterparts in America is beyond me. I suppose it makes up for the generally smaller portions everywhere else.

Shrimp Thousand-Island Wrap

Normally I am a big fan of some Thousand Island salad dressing… but that’s usually just on my salad. I can’t wrap my mind around this one, though I love the shrimp (sounds like a perfect wrap). This is very similar to their Shrimp Burger, which we’ll take a look at right now.

Shrimp Fillet-O

If you’ve never had a shrimp burger, do so as soon as you can. It is (unsurprisingly) one of the best fast-food burgers you’ll ever have. The Japanese Ebi Fillet might even rival an In-n-Out burger, though that might be pushing things a little bit.

Croquette Burger

One of my favorite aspects of Japan is the constant easy access to one of my favorite foods: Croquettes (コロッケ). If you can put them in a hamburger, then more power to ya, I say. Though, I would probably just take them out from the bun and eat them separately. But then again I’m not twelve years old.

McPork

Erin says these exist from time to time in the US, so I won’t talk about them too much. I thought that maybe it was due to the ban of beef imports from a couple years back, but maybe it’s just a plain old normal hamburger :(

Teriyaki McBurger

I’m a sucker when it comes to Teriyaki Burgers, and this is no exception. My mouth is watering.

Shaka Shaka Chicken

These are like little fried chickens in a bag. Then, you get this seasoning mix that you pour into the bag, seal, and shake. Now, all of a sudden you have some seasoned chicken, the McDonalds employees didn’t have to do the seasoning part for you, and now everyone’s happy! Here’s a video of someone doing it.

[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qthR4QyxTk0]

Bacon Potato Pie

I’m not too keen on sweet deserts. I’ve always been one for eating salty things after eating salty foods, you know, to clear the pallet. This piece of work seems to fall within that category, and sounds wonderful. Screw you Apple Pie. Bacon Potato pie is in town.

Now, we’ve only gone over the different food options there were. There’s also some different drinks you can get your hands on, to wash the greasy goodness down.

Available Drinks

You’ll notice all sorts of different things (and a lot of familiar ones). One of my favorite things about Japan is the availability of Ginger Ale. You definitely don’t see it very often in American fast food restaurants, but in Japan, it’s pretty common! Other interesting drinks include tea, Grape Fanta (Fanta is fairly big in Japan), and Qoo (I have no idea how to explain Qoo, except for that their apple juice is amazing).

So What Will You Eat?

There’s all sorts of great / interesting things there, but if you could only choose one, what would it be? I think I would go with the Mega Muffin, just because my current American favorite is the smaller version of that one, and more is always better, right?

In Other News…

Tofugu is in a blog competition: Blogging Idol. Although you will hear more about this in one respect or another, you can support us in this competition by subscribing to our RSS feed (not to mention you get immediate notification as soon as an article is posted!).

[image source, image source]

If you’ve been around a while, you’ll notice that the word “week” is missing from “Japan News week in review.” If you’ve been around a while, you’ll also know that these never come out once a week. So, in order to put a little less pressure on writing these too often (and thus becoming a Japanese news blog, which is something I don’t want to do), I’ll just write them as I gather enough news that I want to write about. That way, they’ll come when they come, and hopefully slightly more often. “Japan News in Review” doesn’t cover all the important news, just the stuff I like. So, here we go! And, down at the bottom is some Tofugu news, even, so if you’re interested in that kind of thing it’ll be down there somewhere.

Japan News August 1 – August 12:

“WhatJapanThinks” of Dinosaurs: WhatJapanThinks translated a survey for us done by the MyVoice internet community. They asked 13,867 of their members via a private questionnaire everything you’d ever want to know about dinosaurs. Questions ranged from simple things, like, “Are you interested in dinosaurs” to more useless information (though, not much less useful, honestly), such as “If you were reborn as a dinosaur, what kind of dinosaur would you like to be” (I would be Earl from the TV show Dinosaurs). Of course, if you head over to WhatJapanThinks, you can find out the answers to all your burning dinosaur questions. [source]

McDonalds Japan Raises Prices Again: You know the economy is having trouble when McDonalds has to raise prices. You know that we’re having trouble with obesity when people actually care. McDonalds cronies say that prices will rise by less than five percent (dollar menu becomes dollar five cent menu?) Apparently, “costs of meat, bread, potatoes, and other ingredients are expected to increase by about 10 billion yen during the current business year.” That’s approximately 90 million dollars of increase for poor McDonalds. Wow. [source]

Japan is Home to the Oldest Women in the World: Maybe this explains why Japan has been getting into old people porn lately (link is safe for work, surprisingly). Japanese ladies born in 2007 are expected, on average, to live until they are 86 years of age. Men on the other hand, are going to be living until they’re 79 (which is third in the world behind Iceland and Hong Kong). People who know what they’re talking about say this is because of good diets and social ties (not sure how that makes a huge difference, but I suppose that’s why they know what they’re talking about). This will only contribute to Japan’s aging problem, where a larger and larger percentage of the Japanese population are old, and nobody’s having babies. Robots for the future win, I say. [source]

Rare Texas Star Fungus Appears in Nara: So now, if you don’t like friendly deer or beautiful temples, Nara has become home to a very rare fungus, only found in Central Texas, as well as two remote areas of Japan. It gets its star shape from when it releases its spores. It starts out like a cigar, then it splits open (and makes an audible hiss, aparently). Think explosive Looney Tunes cigar, Road Runner era (beep beep). If you want to have a chance to find one of these things, they seem to grow on dead oaks near streams. If you want to learn more about these things, check out the [source].

Murasaki Robot Regales the Tale of Genji: Now, I suppose I don’t claim to be the biggest reader of important novels (possibly the first novel ever, actually), but this is a little too much. I had to read this book a while back, and I don’t think having a small robot reading it to me will make it any more enjoyable. The robot is modeled after Lady Murasaki, supposed author of the novel, and will do robotic movements to add emphasis to Genji’s pimpedness. [source]

Takeru Kobayashi FINALLY Beats Joey Chestnut: If you’ve followed Tofugu for a little bit, you’ll know our extreme passion when it comes to Takeru Kobayashi and his lack of winning as of late. This guy broke all the records. He put competitive eating into the public eye. Then, he breaks our heart with multiple losses against Joey Chestnut. In his last contest, Kobayashi actually beat Chestnut by eating 385 sticks of satay, which, according to Wikipedia consists of chunks or slices of dice-sized meat. According to the picture, it’s covered in funky yellow stuff. Good job Kobayashi, you’ve finally got us to write a non-seppuku-worthy story about you. [source]

Tofugu News

New Fan Art Section: We recently got a nice email from a nice artist named Priscilla, who drew us a bit of fan art. Now, we promised ourselves we wouldn’t be so self centered to add a fan art section before getting any fan art, so we patiently waited, and it finally happened! Thank you Priscilla! Go check out our fan art section. You’ll also find images from the (failed) postcard contest from a while back. If you’ve got the inkling to break out some MS Paint and doodle yourself something for this page, we’ll put it up, then we’ll give you some electronic email high fives.

What? Newsletter? Actually Coming? A looonnggg lonnnggg time ago I wrote the first Tofugu newsletter. Now, a lonnng time sine then, another one is coming, and this time, with more regularity…As in, once a month at the most regularity. It finally has a vision. It finally has a purpose. If you’re interested in it, as well as some special Newsletter-only content, then you should go sign up for it before it’s too late. You never know when it will suddenly appear in your inbox! You can sign up for the newsletter here.

Last Chance to Get some Candy, not last chance to Follow us on Twitter: You’ve got around 24 hours to have a chance to win some awesomely tasty Gumi candy from us by following us on Twitter. All you have to do is sign up for Twitter (if you haven’t already) and hit the follow button on our page. You’ll get updates mostly on things relating to Japan, but maybe a few other things as well. Contest ends at the end of August 12, so that leaves you, not too much time left…or no time left, depending on when you read this. Either way, check it out!