"japanese" news and stories

They're slippery. They're slimy. And they're alive.

This coming week, Fine Living Network will be airing episodes of our favorite Iron Chef Japan in which creatures of the deep are battled every night at 11/10 Central. Watch as these chefs attack and cook living sea creatures in a way that makes you wonder if you're a bad person for watching. This is an excellent week for anyone who hasn't had enough Halloween, or likes Animal Planet and wishes Japanese chefs could be involved.

Not for the squeamish, these squirmy seafoods do get slaughtered right in front of your very eyes. Mother nature would be proud watching the food chain established so aggressively, but your mother might think you need therapy. You be the judge!

Oh, and click here for the Iron Chef Drinking Game.

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Cooking Japanese I think I'm cooking Japanese like Morimoto!

Sing it with me.

Cooking Japanese I think I'm cooking Japanese like Morimoto!

Fine Living Network is featuring Iron Chef Japan nightly at 11pm and grouping episodes into themed weeks. This week is Attack of the Vegetables Week! Definitely a must-see. Japan has some crazy-cool vegetables to begin with, and watching them get cooked up on Iron Chef is guaranteed to please.

Attack of the Vegetables Week starts Monday, October 20th, and my guess is that this song will still be in your head.

Is that cod roe?

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For your lunchtime pleasure, I'm presenting a series of my favorite bento boxes. Bento are Japanese home-prepared meals served in special boxes, usually eaten for lunch at work or school. The boxes can range from austere lacquered trays to multi-tiered Hello Kitty confections of neon pink plastic. The meals themselves are anything from rice and leftovers to elaborate themed affairs of Pikachu-shaped dumplings with sesame seed eyes and carved radish trees. These days, bento enthusiasts from all over the world share their creations on Flickr.

Today's bento, courtesy of Bhikku, breaks the long-held taboo on panda-eating. The smiley rice panda has nori (seaweed) details and wears what appears to be a carrot flower collar (any Japanese speakers wanna help me out?). He's surrounded by various yummy noshes - mini-sausages, a cutlet of some type, rolled omelet, a maraschino cherry and an unidentified pink object with a nori face.

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Umeboshi are pickled ume, sour Japanese fruits somewhere between plums and apricots. Umeboshi are often eaten for breakfast, or as a pickle-like side-dish with boxed lunches. They're a common filling for onigiri (rice balls), a lunch staple. Umeboshi can be grated and mixed with soy sauce for dressing chicken or salad. They are considered highly medicinal, used for hangovers, digestive ailments and to "purify" the blood. Many older Japanese people eat one every morning, for energy, the same way samuris did hundreds of years ago.

You can pick up umeboshi, or umeboshi paste, at most Asian markets.

It's not as cool a it sounds. They won't be brewing the beer in space, or even using ingredients grown on space. Sapporo brewers are going to use barley grown (on earth) from seeds that spent time on the International Space Station.

The Japanese beer company said they expect to get about 100 bottles from this batch, but they won't sell it. I say, why even advertise that? Why get our hopes up in the first place? Even if it wasn't brewed in space, it's still pretty neat. Maybe this will lead to bigger batches, though, that Sapporo actually will sell. All I know is that I want space beer.

[Via RealBeer]