Nipponica

The curry bread of Japan's 7-Eleven convenience store chain has been certified by Guinness World Records as the most sold freshly made curry bread in volume in 2023, the chain's operator, Seven-Eleven Japan, said Thursday.

The bread, fried in store, logged 76,987,667 pieces sold.

And someone, somewhere today in Ireland is cashing a very big check.

Grilled eel, a popular summer delicacy in Japan, is behind a department store food poisoning incident that has left more than 140 people sick and one dead, the store’s president said.

Shinji Kaneko of Keikyu Department Store in Yokohama – about an hour from Tokyo – apologised after the customers, who last week bought lunchboxes containing eel, suffered vomiting and diarrhoea.

“The chief reasons behind the record-low inventory is a decline in production last year due to high temperatures combined with water shortages, and the relative cheapness of rice prices compared to prices of other crops such as wheat,” farm ministry official Hiroshi Itakura told Agence France-Presse.

“The increase in demand by foreign tourists has also contributed,” Itakura said, and added that “we are not in a situation of facing shortages of rice”.

This is the headline that would stoke the most outrage in the country. Never mess with the rice.

Those who say you can’t find good Mexican food in Tokyo are mistaken — they just haven’t looked hard enough.

Plumb the depths of the many thousands of eateries that jostle for space in Tokyo’s 23 wards and you will find Mexican cuisine galore. To be fair, it is a bit of a chimeric landscape. There is Tex-Mex, Cal-Mex (California’s take on Mexican food), honest takes on Mexican home cooking, Japanized mashups of chile con carne proportions and sometimes a mix featuring all of the above.

It has been 171 years since ramune's precursor beverage arrived at Japan's shores with the U.S. Navy's "Black Ships" under Commodore Matthew Perry, who had come to force isolated Japan to open to trade. Now, it is Japanese ramune that is crossing oceans, perhaps promising to offset declining domestic demand, though serious challenges remain.

Classico Japan import, reexport strategy.

You are on the small island of Kouri, seated in the plush dining room of 6 Six, a restaurant with a small name but a reputation that is growing fast. The cuisine it serves is usually described as innovative French. It would be closer to the truth to call it one of a kind.

The name, whose French pronunciation sounds like "cease" (rendered in Japanese as "shisu"), apparently refers to the sixth sense — intuition or an elevated sensibility. Certainly, all the standard five senses are given an extended workout over the course of a dinner that can take almost three hours from sitting down to the final coffee and mignardises (petits fours).

According to a Mitsubishi Research Institute survey, 27% of respondents expressed an interest in visiting the Expo as of April this year, almost unchanged from the previous survey conducted in October 2023 and four points lower than in October 2022. The number of pre-ordered tickets sold was approximately 2.8 million as of June 19, or only 20% of the target.

This is unfortunate but not unexpected. As a bit of a World Expo nerd, I am really excited to visit simply because my mid-20th century utopian ideals still haven't been totally purged from my psyche. Events like the 1964 World Expo and places that ape the Expo ethos like 1980s EPCOT Center had an optimistic, global view of the future which is sadly rare nowadays. Expos have always been driven by a commercial drive for pavilion sponsors and business in the host city, but it could be much more than that. Hoping that Osaka can provide a unique experience that will drive people to visit.

“In classical music, you play what’s written on the music sheet. Onigiri is the same,” he says. “You don’t try to do something new.”

A delightful read on one of Japan's core food staples.

It might have felt counterintuitive to shun the bright lights of the capital in favor of a quiet, provincial city better known for its love of gyōza potsticker dumplings. But four decades down the line, Otowa is now the founder-patriarch of one of the best-regarded French restaurants in the country.

Housed in a striking modern, free-standing property a short drive from the city center, Restaurant Otowa is sophisticated and elegant, yet calm and relaxed. Its light-filled dining room is large enough to hold 80 people for special functions, though it usually seats about 50.

Time for a field trip up north.

The restaurant, located in the bustling Akasaka area of Tokyo, offers a unique “Okinawan kaiseki” — a fusion of Ryukyuan court cuisine and the traditional Japanese kaiseki multicourse dinner. It was opened in 1998 by culinary researcher and author Rin Takagi, who came up with a modern interpretation of the Ryukyu dynasty's cooking method, known as a secret to people’s health and longevity in the region.

In more positive Ryukyu news, a lovely survival story about a Michelin star Okinawan restaurant in Tokyo.