Japanese restaurants already have the habit of displaying menus in the form of realistic plastic models to give customers a clear idea of what they're ordering. What's the next step? Tables with LCD touch screens that display 3-D pictures of the food. It's the future....
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Researchers in Japan are working on a new smoke detector/fire alarm that uses the strong odor of wasabi to wake up the deaf. Watch the alarm in action with this video from BBC News....
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Omu-rice and pork cutlet curry. You may not think of fried mashed potato patties or beef stew served with rice when craving Japanese food, but these dishes of Western origins are popular in Japanese cuisine. Mari Kanazawa of Watashi to Tokyo explains the origins of some of these Japanese-Western dishes and where you're most likely to find them in Tokyo....
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Heartstick Ojaru, a co-op of nine women in Chiba, Japan, have been selling these cute heart- and star-shaped cucumbers in grocery stores in Tokyo. Plastic molds affixed to the stem shapes the cucumbers into the shapes when sliced cross-wise. The arrangement possibilities, as you can see, are endless. [via Trends in Japan]...
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One reason I don't like eating street food in New York City is because I either have to eat it while walking or find a place to sit down before digging into my food as it gets progressively cooler. If I lived in Tokyo I could just eat ramen or oden in front of a cart on the side of the street, as seen in PingMag's feature on Tokyo's mobile food bars in which they interview a handful of food cart vendors about how they run their businesses....
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How does a visually impaired person pick out a can of beer from other canned non-beer beverages? By feeling the braille on the top of the can—if you're in Japan, at least. Beer manufacturers in Japan have started stamping braille on the top of cans that spells out "alcohol" or, if made by Kirin Brewery, "Kirin Beer." Whether this will increase the number of drunk blind people on the streets is not yet known. Photograph from preetamrai on Flickr...
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Pretz is a popular Japanese snack in the form of a pretzel-like stick that mostly comes in savory flavors. Like many Japanese snack commercials, the advertising for Pretz is...unique. Sumo wrestlers, geishas, and dancing scientists are just some of the characters used to illustrate the awesomeness of this snack. Watch five examples after the jump....
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Japanese architect Oki Sato has teamed up with patissier Tsujiguchi Hironobu of Mont St. Clair and Le Chocolat de H to create what may be the only dessert to feature something you may find in your office supplies cabinet. Their new chocolate pencils come with an accompanying "pencil shaver" that allows the diner to shave chocolate onto their dessert. [via Cool Hunting]...
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I love this commercial for Pupurun, a candy from Japan-based Meiji, because instead of highlighting the joy the eater gets from the candy, it shows the candy being ecstatically happy to be eaten. Look how freakin' jubilant this candy is to be dissolved by your saliva! It's practically having an orgasm. Watch the cuteness after the jump....
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These subterranean farms look like a conceptual factor from a sci-fi movie (remember that oxygen garden from Danny Boyle's 2007 thriller Sunshine?), but they're actually being cultivated right now in a former bank vault in Tokyo. Pasona O2 covers about a square kilometer, growing vegetables and fruits like tomatoes, lettuce, and strawberries, as well as flowers and herbs—even a rice paddy! Snazzy state-of-the-art technology controls temperature and artificial sunlight levels. Is Japan one step ahead in planning for a sustainable agricultural model for the future? Actually, Pasona O2 is more or less a showcase and serves primarily as a training facility for jobless youth interested in the agriculture field. Still, the merging of advanced technological resources and the food...
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