The Ninniku Garlic the One-Pounder is a burger so pungent they garlic-named it twice.
It’s often said that the most popular day on which to start a diet is “tomorrow,” and I suppose we could stretch that concept out to say that “next year” is an appealing choice of timing as well. So if you’ve given yourself a pass to eat whatever you want in the remaining days of 2025, Burger King Japan has an offer for you: all-you-can-eat one-pound burgers.
The chain has announced the third round of its One Pounder Challenge 2025 promotion, which gives participants 45 minutes to eat as many of its four-patty jumbo burgers as you want. Unlimited refills of soft drinks and French fries are also included, in case you want to keep your meal well-balanced (by fast food burger joint criteria) even as it becomes gigantic.
For this event, the specific burger that participants will be dining on is the Ninniku Garlic the One Pounder.
Ninniku is already the Japanese word for “garlic,” so you could argue that the Ninniku Garlic the One-Pounder’s name is redundant. However, the counterargument to that is that simply mentioning the marque ingredient once isn’t sufficient to fully convey how much garlic is in this thing, as the four all-beef patties are accompanied by fried garlic chips, garlic powder, garlic paste, and a “Special Garlic Sauce” accented with black pepper and chili pepper. You also get four slices of melty cheddar cheese, pickles, ketchup, and mustard.
The all-you-can-eat deal is being offered at 60 branches of Burger King Japan daily between December 12 and 18, with seatings at 2:30, 4, 5:30, and 7 p.m. With tickets costing 3,900 yen and the à la carte Ninniku Garlic the One-Pounder ordinarily priced at 2,290 yen, the break-even point is eating 1.7 burgers, or 6.8 patties. However, in addition to unlimited burgers within the time limit, all participants also receive a T-shirt and two stickers.
▼ Though really, you probably won’t need to present these to anyone as proof that you just did an all-you-can-eat challenge for burgers with four kinds of garlic, cheese, and pickles, as the aroma you’ll radiate afterwards will probably be just as effective at telling your story.
Each seating has a limited number of slots available, with reservations currently being taken through the Burger King Japan website here.
Oh.
It looks like there are a lot of people who’re eager to take on this challenge, and just one day after reservations opened, they’ve all been snatched up. However, Burger King Japan says that if anyone cancels their reservation between now and its date, tickets will be offered once again, so keep your eyes on the reservation site and your stomach ready.
Source: PR Times
Top image: Burger King
Insert images: Burger King, PR Times, Burger King (2)
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Studio Ghibli-themed bakery puts a tasty spin on Japan’s Christmas cake tradition.
With December here, it’s time to not only get serious about Christmas shopping, but also Christmas cakes. In Japan, the typical Christmas Eve/party dessert is a strawberry shortcake, but if you want something that keeps that tradition going while still feeling a little more special than the ultra-orthodox versions, a Totoro Christmas cake might be just what you need this holiday season.
Pictured above is this year’s Christmas Strawberry Shortcake from Shiro Hige’s Cream Puff Factory, a two-branch Tokyo bakery. Shiro Hige, as we’ll call it for short, is run by relatives of Studio Ghibli co-founder Hayao Miyazaki, and so it regularly bakes up sweet treats themed after the studio’s anime films, with Totoro-shaped cream puffs being their most popular creation. So yes, while their Strawberry Shortcake would be a beautifully prepared dessert even without the forest spirit’s presence, the fact that it’s topped with a Totoro cream puff makes it even more visually, and gastronomically, appealing.
Ah, but what if you’re of the very sensible mindset that all the best cakes should include chocolate? If so, Shiro Hige also has a Chocolate Banana Shortcake in this year’s Christmas lineup.
From the outside, this might look like a simple swapping of chocolate cream for plain whipped cream in the Strawberry Shortcake recipe, since you still do get strawberries on top. However, inside, between the layers of sponge cake are ones of chocolate cream with banana slices, as shown in the charming cross-section illustration.
Want even more chocolate? Then how about the Totoro Buche de Noel, a Yule log/Swiss roll cake that also creates a scene of a pair of Totoros frolicking in the forest.
The tree’s “bark” is actually almond-flavored butter cream, and inside are two swirling layers each of soft chocolate sponge cake and chocolate cream with almond and hazelnut accents.
Another petite Totoro, and a Soot Sprite too, show up on the Mango Mountain Christmas cake.
This one is a mix of sweet, sour, and rich sensations, starting with a brownie base made with couverture chocolate. Spread atop that is a thin covering of mango and passionfruit gelée, followed by a layer of passionfruit chocolate mousse and another of mango mousse. A sheet of clear gelatin with mango slices completes the stack, and you also get a few more mango pieces on top of that tropical topography.
▼ There’s a lot going on with this cake, but that also means there’s a lot to love if these are among your favorite flavors.
The biggest variety of fruit flavors, though, is found in the Berry Tart. The Totoro cream puff sits in the center of a ring of strawberries, blueberries, raspberries, with whipped cream, custard, and almond cream below.
And last, though certainly not least, if you just want some of Shiro Hige’s Cream Puff Factory cream puffs, those are being offered in special Christmas versions too, for either custard or strawberry cream-filled versions, with little chocolate holly leaves on their heads.
Prices for the cakes range from 2,000 yen (US$13.35) for the Mango Mountain to 4,800 yen for the Buche de Noel, 5,800 yen for the Berry Tart, and 6,500 yen each for the Strawberry and Chocolate Banana Shortcakes. The Totoro cream puffs are 640 yen for custard cream filling or 680 for strawberry.
As Christmas desserts, you’ve probably already guessed that these are limited-time items, but they’re especially limited, as they’ll only be available for purchase on December 20, 21, 22, 24, and 25 (Shiro Hige is closed on December 23). Advance reservations are highly recommended and can be made by contacting the bakery’s Daita branch in Tokyo’s Setagaya Ward, with a cutoff date of 6 p.m. on December 18.
Cafe information
Shirohige’s Cream Puff Factory (Daita branch) / 白髭のシュークリーム工房（代田店）
Address: Tokyo-to, Setagaya-ku, Daita 5-3-1
東京都世田谷区代田５-３-１
Open 10:30 a.m.-6 p.m.
Closed Tuesdays (or Wednesday if Tuesday is a holiday)
Website
Source, images: Shiro Hige’s Cream Puff Factory
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Let’s find out if a cute thing for one woman is still cute for another from a different country.
From Sanrio characters to starry-eyed idol singers, it’s no secret that kawaii (“cute”) culture is huge in Japan. Whole museums and theme parks have been dedicated to the concept of kawaii. Heck, it’s hard to even enter a convenience store without seeing the latest kawaii character to lend a hand at marketing some random product.
Japanese entertainment company FuRyu, known for developing kawaii games, photo booths, and more, recently conducted a survey through its Girls Research Institute to try to get at the core essence of what makes something kawaii. Not only that, however, but the researchers wanted to compare cross-cultural perceptions of kawaii things–so they surveyed 1oo women between the ages of 15-35 in Japan, China, and South Korea each about what and why they consider something cute, their engagement in fandom activities, and their picks for the cutest characters. Let’s take a look at the survey results below.
▼ “In the name of kawaii, I will punish you with my cuteness!”
Question: What impressions do you have of something that you think is cute?
There were 24 multiple-choice responses to choose from, including “none apply.” Survey takers could select more than one response.
While Japanese and Korean women both identified “I want to cherish it” as the most common response, that response didn’t even crack the top ten for Chinese women. However, interestingly, all three countries had the same pick for the second most common response: “I feel a sense of joy.” In general, responses that focused on cuteness being something that raises your spirits were more represented among Chinese women. Meanwhile, Korean women focused more on wanting to physically touch or possess something that’s cute to them, whereas Japanese women wanted to be able to look at it.
Question: How often have you participated in oshi activities within the past year?
Your oshi is your favorite character, idol, singer, etc. that you personally stan. Oshi activities (oshikatsu) are a top way for many women to spend their free time (and paychecks) in Japan.
▼ In the world of Japanese idol singers, someone’s oshi is often associated with “kawaii.”
Question: What is your degree of satisfaction with your oshi activities?
Despite the strong pull of oshi activities in Japan, Chinese women, followed by Korean and then Japanese women, were the top participants in terms of oshi activities over the past year among the survey takers. Furthermore, one hundred-percent of Chinese women also responded that they were “very satisfied” with their oshi activities. Also of note is that zero women from any of the three countries responded that they were “completely unsatisfied” with their oshi experiences.
In light of Japanese women’s lower response rate in the first survey question about kawaii impressions and this question about oshi activities, FuRyu suggests that Japanese women may be slightly more passive when it comes to judging what makes something cute and/or participating in activities traditionally correlated with cuteness.
Question: What character do you think is the cutest?
All three East Asian countries represented in the survey have produced characters with common kawaii characteristics, but which ones will come out on top?
▼ Somehow we predict that Hello Kitty is going to crack the list no matter what.
It turns out that women from each country identified both domestic and international characters as among the cutest. Characters originating from Japan such as those from the Chiikawa franchise, blue-robot-cat-from-the-future Doraemon, and Pikachu made it into the rankings in all three countries. Sanrio characters were especially popular among Japanese and South Korean women. In addition, Chinese and South Korean women picked characters known for their mischievousness–Ne Zha and Crayon Shin-chan respectively–as the cutest.
FuRyu hopes to utilize the above results in tandem with its new Kawaii Research Institute to be able to bring a new kind of “cuteness” to the world in terms of creative product development. We’ll look forward to what they eventually come up with, but in the meantime, at least there will be plenty of kawaii to go around.
Source: PR Times
Top image: Pakutaso
Insert images: Pakutaso (1, 2, 3)
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There was no mystery as to whether fans wanted more mystery meat, and Nissin is finally giving it to them.
When you start scarfing down on Cup Noodles, obviously you’re in the mood for ramen. However, there’s something other than the noodles in that cup that also get fans really excited: the mystery meat.
Mystery meat is what Cup Noodle maker Nissin calls those little meaty cubes that you’ll find floating in the broth of Japan’s most popular brand of instant ramen. So strong is the love for mystery meat that in 2018, after Nissin tweeted a photo of a mystery meat-topped rice bowl, the public immediately responded with cries for the company to actually release such a product. To appease the masses, Nissin whipped up a limited-quantity batch of Mystery Meat Bowls for its Cup Meshi instant rice line, which it made available for order through its online store…and the entire stock, all 10,000 units sold out in 1.6 seconds.
▼ Nissin’s mystery meat
Clearly, the people were hungry for more Mystery Meat Bowls, and now Nissin is finally ready to fulfil that desire. This month, not only is mystery meat returning to the Cup Meshi lineup, it’ll no longer be an online-exclusive item, and will instead be sold in supermarkets and convenience stores nationwide.
You prepare the new Cup Noodle Kanzen Meshi Mystery Meat Bowl similarly to how you’d prepare instant ramen. First, you boil some water and pour it into the cup. Give everything a stir, wait five minutes for it to cook, add in the seasoning packet’s contents, and you’re all set. Rather than a dry rice bowl, the result has broth, like a hearty soup, and the flavor of the Kanzen Meshi Mystery Meat Bowl broth is similar to that of Cup Noodle ramen broth, with strong pepper and soy sauce stock notes, plus the extra meatiness that comes from the large portion of mystery meat.
Oh, and if you’re wondering how Japan, a country that prides itself on the high quality of its ingredients, can be so enthusiastic about gobbling up something called “mystery meat,” the true identity of the substance is an open secret, and perfectly palatable, as we confirmed by contacting Nissin and asking.
The Kanzen Meshi Mystery Meat Bowl goes on sale December 8, priced at 398 yen (US$2.65). Nissin hasn’t said anything about limited quantity this time around, but considering that there’s seven years of pent-up demand, individual stores will probably be selling out of stock very quickly.
Source: Nissin
Top image: Nissin
Insert images: Nissin, SoraNews24
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Survey creates map of what different parts of Japan call one of its favorite traditional desserts.
Every region of Japan has its own local foods, either dishes or ingredients, that it’s particularly proud of. There are some things, however, that transcend prefectural and regional borders, things that are loved across Japan, and one of them is the treat seen in these photos.
These discs of pancake like batter, thick and with sweet fillings such as anko (sweet red bean paste), custard, or chocolate cream, can be found at snack stands and supermarkets from one end of Japan to another. They’re something that pretty much every single person in Japan has eaten several times in their lifetime, instantly recognizing and craving them whenever one comes into view.
So what are they called? Well, that’s the thing; Japan hasn’t reached a consensus on that.
To be clear, these are not some brand-new, trendy snack riding a wave of fad popularity that’s gotten in front of linguistic development. They’ve been around for generations. It’s just that different names caught on in different parts of the country, and perhaps because they’re a simple pleasure, no big-budget marketing campaign pushing one name or another has been made to unify the nomenclature nationwide.
Instead, different names have gained traction in different parts of Japan, and to get a better understanding of the situation, Nichirei Foods, one of many companies who make this kind of snack, conducted a survey, gathering 14,057 responses from participants aged 20 to 79, asking them what they call these sweets. Then they sorted the responses by prefecture to determine the most common name for it in each of them, and used that to create this color-coded map showing which of six different names is the most prevalent for each prefecture.
Let’s take a look at each.
1. Imagawayaki (shown in red on map)
● Most common name in 19 prefectures: Chiba, Fukui, Fukushima, Gunma, Hiroshima, Ibaraki, Kanagawa, Kyoto, Miyagi, Nagano, Okinawa, Saitama, Shiga, Shizuoka, Tochigi, Tokyo, Toyama, Wakayama, Yamanashi
While far from universal, the top response, both in terms of total responses and number of prefectures where it was the most common, was Imagawayaki. The exact origin of the name is unclear, but one theory is that the sweet became popular in Edo, the old name for Tokyo, at a shop located near the Imagawa Bridge, which was built by a village headman with the family name Imagawa.
Imagawayaki is the most common name for the sweets in Tokyo and the prefectures of Japan’s eastern Kanto region, but the name also stretches up into parts of the Tohoku region and also has a few pockets of support far from the capital, including Kyoto, Hiroshima, and Okinawa. And though its 19 prefectures still give it a minority share of Japan’s total of 47, those 19 prefectures include some of Japan’s most populous cities, leading to 60.5 percent of the survey participants given Imagawayaki as a response.
2. Obanyaki (shown in blue on map)
● Most common name in 15 prefectures: Aichi, Akita, Ehime, Gifu, Ishikawa, Iwate, Kagawa, Kochi, Mie, Niigata. Okayama, Shimane, Tokushima, Tottori, Yamaguchi
Unlike Imagawayaki, the linguistic origin of obanyaki is pretty easy to figure out, since oban literally means “big coin.” Granted, coins in the old days of Japan were more oval shaped than purely circular, but the resemblance is still close enough to warrant tacking a yaki (“grilled”) onto it to get obanyaki.
With Nichirei’s survey apparently allowing for multiple responses, obanyaki was chosen by 52 percent of the respondents, so while it’s not as common as Imagawayaki, you’ve probably still got a pretty good chance of most people in Japan understanding the term if you say it, even if it’s not the top pick for their prefecture. In addition to obanyaki’s pockets of support in the Tokai region and western end of Japan’s main island of Honshu, it also claims the entirety of Shikoku as its domain.
3. Kaitenyaki (shown in green on map)
● Most common name in 9 prefectures: Fukuoka, Kagoshima, Kumamoto, Miyazaki, Nagasaki, Nara, Osaka, Ota, Saga
Chosen by 25.9 percent of respondents, kaitenyaki holds sway over all of Kyushu, as well as Osaka, one of Japan’s most enthusiastic foodie prefectures. In addition to tasty food, Osaka loves a good laugh, so that might have something to do with their fondness for the name kaitenyaki, as kaiten means “revolve,” so it’s a fitting name for a snack that could roll away if you accidentally drop it.
4. Oyaki (shown in yellow on map)
● Most common name in 2 prefectures: Aomori, Hokkaido
Oyaki was the most popular name in Japan’s two northernmost prefectures, but it’s not hard to see why oyaki hasn’t spread very far. It’s just the yaki (“grilled”) we mentioned before with an honorific o- added to the front, so it could sort of refer to anything, which could be especially confusing when you’re trying to talk about something that doesn’t have a unified definitive name in first place.
5 (tie). “A certain brand name” (shown in pink on map)
● Most common name in Hyogo
Nichirei gets a little cagey with the results for Hyogo, the prefecture that includes the city of Kobe, only saying that “a certain brand name” is the most common way to refer to this snack. A little digging around indicates that it’s most likely Gozasoro, a confectioner maker headquartered in Ehime (also in Hyogo) that specializes in the sweet and has a handful of shops in other parts of Japan that sell it, but is apparently most popular in its home prefecture.
5 (tie). Ajiman (shown in orange on map)
● Most common name in Yamagata
Yamagata’s situation is pretty much exactly the same as Hyogo’s, in that the top response for the prefecture was also the name of a locally based maker of the snack that has modest operations in other parts of Japan. For whatever reason, though, the survey was comfortable revealing what that name is: Ajiman.
Amazingly, the survey turned up even more names than these six, with some respondents saying they called them taiko (“drum”), jiman (“pride”), niju (“two layer”), or enban (“disk”) -yaki.
Ultimately, with so many different possibilities, it’s probably best to be prepared for the possibility that if you’re talking about Imagawayaki/obanyaki/kaitenyaki/etc., the listener might not immediately get the mental picture of what you’re talking about the first time you say it, so you might have to use another of its possible names for things to click. Thankfully, though, these sweets really are delicious, so they’re worth putting in a bit of effort to talk about, though if it all starts to feel like too much hassle, you can always switch gears and talk about desserts with clearly correct names instead, like the Chocobo-yaki.
Source: PR Times, Nihon Keizai Shimbun, Lasisa
Top image: Free Sozai.com
Insert images: Free Sozai.com (1, 2), PR Times, Free Sozai.com (3, 4)
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Who doesn’t want to be a zombie that smokes?
Although Japan doesn’t tend to have quite as prolific a drug culture as other countries, one does exist, and the newest part of it to make headlines has been “zombie cigarettes” (literally “zombie tobacco” in Japanese, but “tobacco” is often used to refer to cigarettes in the language).
That’s the name the Japanese media and authorities tend to use for it, and other names include “zombie juice,” “kpods,” “space oil,” and “laughing gas,” but the true name of the key substance is etomidate. This is an extremely fast-acting anesthetic that can knock patients out in a matter of seconds and is usually used in ER settings as a precursor for regular anesthetics, because etomidate is also very short-lasting, with patients waking back up in a matter of minutes.
It’s also been adopted as a recreational drug, particularly in Southeast Asian areas like Hong Kong and Singapore. However, it’s not a particularly pleasant drug, offering little in the way of euphoric feelings. It’s mostly just knocks people out and can result in a loss of motor control and spasming, hence the “zombie” nicknames. It recently made its way to the southern parts of Japan, especially the islands of Okinawa Prefecture. Last May, the Japanese government classified etomidate as a “shite yakubutsu” or “designated drug,” making it explicitly illegal for recreational use and sale. Since then, there have been 18 arrests for etomidate possession in Japan.
In August, the first-ever arrest for etomidate possession in Tokyo was made when a 28-year-old was found with about 3.1 grams of it in vape liquid inside his parked car in Shibuya. The man admitted that he had been vaping etomidate since April and intended to use the amount that was found on him.
▼ News report on the arrest
Readers of the news online were unsettled by the rapid spread of this drug, while others debated whether “zombie cigarette” was a cool name or not.
“I would like to see a real zombie once in my life.”
“It’s a zombie outbreak.”
“It’s scary to think this will continue to spread.”
“So that’s what zombie cigarettes are. Scary…”
“Like fentanyl, it all comes from you-know-where.”
“Of all the drug names, ‘zombie cigarette’ is by far the lamest.”
“Don’t give it a cool name with foreign words like ‘zombie.’ That’ll just make people want to use it!”
It’s probably safe to say any drug with “cigarette” in the name is inherently uncool, and the media is likely using it for that very reason. From what I read about it, it’s a pretty unappealing drug too, meaning there’s always hope that it will just never really catch on and become a problem of the past all on its own before too long. In the meantime, steer clear of anyone acting like zombies on the streets of Japan.
Source: TBS News Dig, High Times, YouTube/TBS News Dig Powered by Jin, Twitter/ゾンビたばこ
Top image: Pakutaso
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