The Anime Blog – We Go Beyond Anime!

In Japan, if you have a jones for a snack, you’re covered. The huge amount of street food and vendors alike ensure you need not walk four blocks without something to eat in between. Thanks to anime, Westerners are introduced to a wide variety of these intriguing street foods. Okonomiyaki turns up in Tsubasa, takoyaki [...]

When you’re having fun on the go and you’re looking for snackage, food which is as mobile as you is always a good thing. In Japan, country of a thousand festivals, food mobility is an important factor to enjoying the celebrations. Many festival snacks come in ball form (takoyaki), on a stick (yakitori) or both, [...]

Last year, I posted a brief write-up of Valentine’s Day in Japan. To refresh our memories:

On Valentine’s Day in Japan, the women give all the men in their lives chocolate (choco- チョコ). If the recipient is a co-worker, or someone the woman sees casually, she gives him giri choco (obligation chocolate). [...]

It’s not much of a secret that I love Japanese sweets, aka wagashi. In my free time, I go on the .jp and search out new wagashi to research and try. I spend hours pouring over websites and trying my hand at translating katakana.
The only thing that really gets me through the massive [...]

In the West, who would ever believe that anything as common as beans could ever become anything more than kick-ass burritos and tasty tail-gate chili? Beans have gotten a bad rap through the years as being poor man’s food and the “musical fruit”. Derisive songs have been sung mocking the bloating attributes of these tiny [...]

November kicks off the Eating Season with the biggest food-related holiday of the year: Thanksgiving. In honor of that belly busting, buckle-loosening, girth-widening day, I thought we could talk food, Japanese food that is.

Unlike many popular Western foods, traditional Japanese foods are low in fat, high in vegetable content, and sans dairy. This [...]

Thanks to sushi bars, Americans are becoming more familiar with a few Japanese cuisine options and foodstuffs. But there’s more to Japanese food than sushi, tempura and miso, so very much more. Yet, even with sushi as a primer, Japanese food still emits an aura of simplicity and elegance; which simultaneously fascinates [...]

Umebachi is the name of this delectable looking dagashi. To briefly recap what dagashi are: Dagashi are cheap, inexpensive Japanese candy and snacks which are similar to American “penny candy” in price point but not always quality. In fact a few dagashi are of very good quality; however, the majority of dagashi [...]