Umami Mart

There are quite a few breakfast sandwich recipes in Japan that uses natto. The natto & cheese on toast sounded pretty good. Put natto and cheese on bread or an English muffin and toast it, I guess. But it is too straightforward and not my style. I wanted to push natto’s culinary limit. When I […]

My obsession with rice flour continues.  As I mentioned in my last post, I think I can substitute flour with rice flour for any recipe.  It may be too subtle to taste the difference for some, but others are very distinctive, such as MOffins.  Warning: if you don’t like sticky textures, you may not like […]

Happy New Year everyone! This year’s resolution for me is to try to post more since I’ve been pretty lazy for some time now. I went home last month, and found a couple of interesting items that hasn’t been posted by Yoko in Tokyo JUNKtion. 1.) Fanta World, BIG APPLE, Limited Edition. Fanta is widely […]

Remember my post about making a Japanese cheesecake? It’s a simple recipe, but very difficult to retain the fluffiness because of all the egg whites. Although it rises high during baking, but it shrinks down like an old person once you take it out of the oven. It’s like taking Viagra before baking: it performs […]

After trying two Kit Kat flavors available in Japan with gag-inducing colors: light aqua for the Ramune Kit Kat and salmony orange for the Mango Pudding Kit Kat, I was seriously relieved to see that the Caramel Pudding Kit Kat was poo-colored just like the OG chocolate Kit Kat. As I busted open the package, […]

Newest omiyage (gift) in the Akabori household from Japan: green tea Baumkuchen from a patisserie in Dojima, Osaka called Mon Chouchou. From the website, it looks like it is a relatively new shop (2003), that takes its inspiration from the old world of Osaka, calling Dojima the “New York of Japan.” Of course the most […]

Here’s a fun accompaniment to U N I F O R M B E H A V I O R’s flan choux discovery. One morning my mom enthusiastically proclaimed to me, “Kayo, try this now, it’s delicious.” I admit this frightened me a bit, as my mother is never so apparently excited about anything, let […]

I was a little skeptical about this week’s Kit Kat flavor “Mango Pudding” because of its shocking orange color. I am usually not a fan of chocolate doesn’t taste like chocolate, but the Mango Pudding coating was actually quite enjoyable. Imagine having mango pudding with a wafer served on the side and you get the […]

Remember the UM poll back in May when everyone voted for “more boobies”? Well, I am going to fulfill that request for a second time. Here are some shots of Oppai Pudding (Boobie Pudding) available at Le Edo‘s Aqua City in Odaiba, Tokyo. I noticed Thet there were two flavors. For folks who are just […]

Ramune is a traditional Japanese carbonated drink that is in a distinctly shaped bottle with a marble in it. The taste is a pretty generic lemon-lime soda flavor, but it’s something about the glass bottle that makes it taste extra cold and special. Ramune is commonly sold at matsuri (Japanese festivals) where you will see […]