A single tasty doughnut

Where I am from, doughnuts are serious business in all aspects of that meaning. There is an unexplainable glut of doughnut shops in town (though admittedly they are mostly a bizarre cluster of Dunkin Donuts within walking distance of each other). However, there are many other options for doughnuts, mostly of the chain shop variety.

Since being in Japan, doughnuts don't quite have the same level of clout as they do where I am from but, that being said, there are options. The largest by far being Mister Donut, which serves up the standard range of donuts you would expect at any chain doughnut shop. There are others though. There is the wildly popular Krispy Kreme that still manages to constantly have a line despite being open for years now. There is also the overly expensive and far too heavy Donut Plant which tends to be greasy for some reason. There are even Japanese type donuts that are given Japanese flavors like miso or green tea (the actual cake however is essentially castella in a ring shape and not really a donut).

However, I think I have found an unlikely source for a great doughnut. Actually we aren't talking your specialty doughnuts like Boston Creme or whatever, we are just talking about a plain, old fashioned, home made style doughnut that is not greasy and tastes great. The unlikely source of this doughnut? Wendy's.

Yeah, the fast food restaurant Wendy's. They have a doughnut on their 99 yen menu and it's just a plain doughnut (with the option for sugar or cinnamon) that comes incredibly close to home made, non-chain store style donuts (despite their obvious pre-made shape). Here is a pic:

This one is with a cinnamon topping.

It sounds like a weird suggestion for doughnuts but so far, if you want a plain, no frills yet deliciously homemade seeming doughnut in Japan, Wendy's is your best choice.

Personally, I'm a Krispy Kreme fan all the way but occasionally, when the mood for a quality old fashioned doughnut arises, I'm bound to be at Wendy's.

Pig Pork Buns

It seems to be the ultimate goal of any Japanese company to make things as cute as possible. Some companies take the easy way out and just slap a hello kitty on the pink version of their product (I'm looking at you television, microwave and dildo producers!!) while others go to ridiculous lengths to find that just right amount of cuteness that will get people to buy their product.

Of course, food is no exception. There is practically a cottage industry of cute patterns and cookie cutters for bentos. All types of classes and groups for the betterment of bento cuteness and food display. This has even translated over to western food, where my friend La Carmina, who is a million times more popular than me and rightly so, has produced a book about cute foods with a less Japanese flair.

Where is this going? To the convenience store obviously. Wait, that's where I was going when I found this entry into the world of cute food:

This is is Pig Pork Bun. Very meta. It's a pork bun, which, for those who don't already know, is a kind of steamed bread that has a filling of pork and vegetables (although there are other types as well). This one, filled with pork, is decorated as a pig.

Here is a side view so you can get a better idea of it. These are actually mini-buns so they aren't incredibly big. They run for about 80 yen if I am remembering correctly. You can buy them at Sankus convenience stores and I'd guess Circle K as they are the same company.

However, those who know me know that I am not a cute food enthusiast but a horror enthusiast. I am not excited by cute food in the least so I had to make this a little more grotesque. What better way than eating it?


There we go. Pig pork bun, leaking it's porky innards out for the world to see. There is some cute horror for you.

Tokyo Decadance Halloween Special

So, this is a little late but on Saturday, the 24th, there was the annual Tokyo Decadance Halloween party. This year, the event took place at the Christon Cafe in Shinjuku, which is a great place. Great food, great atmosphere and the wait staff are all super cool.

Anyway, the event itself is pretty huge and I am probably the least qualified person to give an overview of what happened because even though I was there from 8pm, a solid two and half hours before the event started, I was busy doing makeup for myself and some other people. And then, when the event started, I was staff in the Haunted house area so I was completely out of the loop for anything that happened until about 3 am.

However, I am able to produce a few pictures taken from friends of my costume and makeup as Tokyo Decadance staff. I'm the monster:

This is probably the best pic of me alone that I have. I think there might be others floating around but I haven't seen them yet.

Another shot with me and a friend.

This one is good for the contrast alone.

Another one with the same friend. I'm pretty much the same, she's slightly different.

The event itself is like a giant club where there are DJs and intermittent shows that occur. The Halloween event is slightly different than a regular Decadance because the shows that happen tend to be musical performances as opposed to the standard type of strange show or dance that normally occurs.

There was some of that though, at one point a giant robot that was probably 12 ft tall was walking around the dance floor. There were live performances, none of which I was able to see because I was either doing something staff related or something makeup related. Rolly, who plays Frank-N-Furter in the Japanese version of the Rocky Horror Picture Show performed. Some other bands as well but I am out of the loop on that.

My main goal was to creep people out or frighten them depending on my mood at the moment. So that's what I did. I was a very successful monster for sure.

In total there must have been over a 1000 people who came to the event. It was jam packed with people and even the high-ceilings of the Christon Cafe couldn't keep the place from heating way up. The event itself is easily the best Halloween event in Japan, but also a fun event whenever it happens.

You can't out-weird Japanese chips.

Another blast from the past kind of post for people who read my private blog.

Anyway, the idea of this post started after a friend of mine posted a entry on his blog about "Ketchup and fries flavored potato snacks". The conversation on that came around to the obvious meta-ness of a potato snack being flavored as fries but also that Ketchup is kind of an off flavor for fries. However, having lived in Japan for nearly 5 years at this point, I've come across things that were multitudes more horrifying in the chip flavor department, and as an example of that I went to the nearest convenience store and took a picture.

Here is what I came up with:


What is the flavor you ask? Scallops and mayonnaise. No really, scallops and mayonnaise. That seems like an abomination that shouldn't have been unleashed on potato chips or the snack eating population as a whole. Maybe I'm biased due to my hate of seafood though?

It's like eating chips but with the extra worry that you might get seafood related food poisoning! (not that there is raw seafood in them but I wouldn't be able to get away from that worry)

Also note, these are only the weirdest I could find on the fly, I'm sure there are tons more where that came from. Hell, the ones below it are Japanese Curry flavor.

Maybe the weight loss comes through blood loss?

This post is an old one for my personal friends but completely new to a non-private forum.

The other day I went out to the local drug store in order to pick up a few things, mostly soap to wash dishes and a can of blood orange juice and in my walking around the store I stumbled upon this beauty:

What it is, I am not entirely sure. Possibly it is some kind of diet supplement or maybe it is some kind of vitamin supplement. I didn't pay that much attention to the actual item so much as the weirdness of it. It was given a rather large display near the vitamins and supplements though so we can go with that at the moment.

Here is a up close shot of the meaningless text:

Septuple hamburger madness

The weekend was crazy and busy and all types of tiring but despite all of that I did manage to get done a lot of what I wanted to get done so that makes me excited. One of the things I wanted to get done was to get over to Burger King to take part in their ridiculous Windows 7 tie-in promotion.

Here is an ad for it:



The main block of text, the one over the burgers reads:

"This extravagant colossal burger consists of 7 approximately 113g beef patties on a 13cm diameter American size bun"

That means, minus the bun and whopper condiments the thing is starting out at 791g. Altogether and after cooking we're probably looking at a 2 pound burger here. This is the kind of thing you'd only expect to find in America yet strangely enough it showed up in Japan. And as a promotion for Windows 7 of all things. Weird.

Anyway, I ordered the burger and paid the ridiculous cost, which was around $20 including the set I got with it, and trudged upstairs to sit and eat this ridiculous salute to meat and Windows.



As you can see, I am an onion ring guy. Also, if you look closely you can see that the burger is nearly as tall as the drink cup. It was really enormous. Actually, it was too large for me to eat in any normal way. I couldn't pick it up because it literally rained grease, making the bottom bun into an impromptu grease sponge, and I had no silverware because, you know, it's Burger King. What I was left with was eiter tearing it apart until it was an edible size or sectioning it off. I chose to remove 5 of the patties after a few ill advised attempts at eating it whole.

Let me tell you, eating a septuple whopper is not possible for someone like me. I am what Japanese people call 小食, ie. a light eater so the possibility of me finishing this was like the possibility of me fighting dog men on mars with OJ simpson; something that only happens in my dreams. I really tried hard to eat as much as I could though. That was a mistake.

I ate all the onion rings and drank the ginger ale I had with the burger but the burger itself was somewhere around 40% finished before I started feeling like the guy sitting next to me was going to be wearing the Windows 7 whopper if I ate anymore of it. I opted to stop at that point.

Here is a close up shot of the burger itself:



For anyone in Japan who wants to try the burger or attempt to finish it, you have to hurry because the promotion only run until October, 28th, 2009. That doesn't leave you a lot of time to get one so rush out now and buy one. Or, if you live outside of Japan, I guess you could buy 7 whoppers, disassemble 6 of them and add all the meat onto the remaining one to get the same effect*.



asterisk: I am not responsible for any nausea, vomiting, cholesterol level rise, or weight gain involved by taking the above advice. Love, Joe.

And, for all those interested, the newest seasonal Pepsi: Azuki

The newest seasonal Pepsi has come out and this time it's another traditional Japanese style flavor. Last time we had Shiso, this time we have Azuki. I'm not sure anyone knows what azuki is outside of people who like Japanese sweets so I'll explain, it's basically a small red sweet bean. It's the bean the is used to make anko, the red bean paste that is prevalent in Japanese sweets and snacks.

Here is a shot of it:



Here is a second shot that is a close up of the label text:



The text roughly translates as:

"An elegant meeting of Pepsi and Azuki. An exciting and new cola with refined sweetness."

Sorry, that is really rough, but you get the gist anyway.

The taste is kind of Azuki kind of sweet cotton candy or something like that. I guess it's not bad. I probably won't be running out to buy any more bottles of it but I did finish the bottle I bought so that is saying something.