tokyo food file

If a chef starts yelling, do you a) confront him; b) walk out; or c) button your lip and sit tight

This is a situation we'd never have to deal with in Tokyo. http://nyti.ms/bClKoq

Far-Out Flavors — NPR discovers Japanese Kit Kat

NPR gets all frivolous with a feature on Japan's Kit Kat phenomenon over here...

Why stop at just chocolate and crispy wafers? In Japan, Kit Kats come in many flavors, including ginger ale, soy sauce, green tea and banana. 

The Kit Kats you find in American stores offer a quick fix of chocolate and crispy wafers. But in Japan, Kit Kats go far beyond chocolate, with flavors like ginger ale, soy sauce, creme brulee and banana. NPR's Lynn Neary talks with Tokyo-based reporter Lucy Craft about the unique candy market in Japan.

And to see how those flavors translate to other countries — like the U.S. — we asked NPR staff members to try some samples and tell us what they think.

Kit Kat Taste Test: Notes From A Crunching

With such a wide range of flavors needing to be sampled, we lined up testers from across NPR's divisions. To encourage natural and objective responses, subjects tasted the candy in separate sessions.

 

But they obviously didn't get hold of Framboise...

Nor my current favourite, Uji Matcha -- not for taste but for best package of the lot!! 

what real men read when they want to read about what real men eat

These two magazines — Otoko-meshi (Man Food); and Meshi-Tomo (Food Friend) — are packed with pictures of sizzling yakiniku, steaming yakiton, glistening tonkatsu, horumon nabe (offal hotpots) etc.  Call it B-kyu gurume (street-level gourmet) porn.

gazumped in Kyoto

So I have been planning a Kyoto special feature for the Japan Times since several months ago... The working title — no, the very core concept — is "36 hours in Kyoto".

And just the very day after I file my final copy, what does the NYT come out with? It's a different piece altogether — but Murphy's Law says there's inevitably going to be critical overlap. Bah!

 

Update: And indeed there was overlap, as you can see in the piece as published in the JT here.