Destination: Japan
Tokyo Foodies to Michelin: ‘You Still do Not Know us or Our Cuisine’
by Michael Yessis | 02.25.08 | 11:47 AM ET
All those stars Michelin awarded Tokyo restaurants are impressing many, but not a core group of prominent Tokyo chefs and critics. “Japanese food was created here, and only Japanese know it,” chef Toshiya Kadowaki told the New York Times. “How can a bunch of foreigners show up and tell us what is good or bad?”
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Yahoo! BuzzTokyo: ‘The Premier City in the World for Food’
by Michael Yessis | 02.15.08 | 2:51 PM ET
Michelin’s first-ever guide to Tokyo gave the city’s restaurants a combined 191 stars, more than Paris (98 stars) and New York City (54 stars) have together. Sure, Tokyo also has far more restaurants (160,000) than Paris (20,000) and New York (23,000), but the news of the quality of the Japanese cuisine—Michelin released the Tokyo ratings last November—has resonated with travelers. According to the Japanese government, seven out of 10 international travelers to the country cite food as the primary reason for visiting.
Pico Iyer: ‘I Was Turning Japanese’
by Jim Benning | 02.13.08 | 10:27 AM ET
The prolific travel writer reflects on life in Japan and his writing career in a recent Washington Post essay: “Perhaps the greatest beauty of the writing life is that it offers you concrete evidence of all your changes; the pages you write are like those charts nurses place at the end of your bed to map your progress. Whatever you need to know about yourself is there, if only you know how to read it.”
Related on World Hum:
* Q&A With Pico Iyer: On Travel and Travel Writing
Photo by kurisuuu via Flickr, (Creative Commons).
Fortune Cookies Exposed: Turns Out, They’re Japanese
by Julia Ross | 01.16.08 | 4:33 PM ET
I’ve always considered fortune cookies to be a prime example of Chinese-American entrepreneurship, developed by early 20th century immigrants to draw Americans into chop suey houses in the San Francisco area. Or so went popular history. Now a fascinating New York Times article has blown the fortune cookie’s cover: A Japanese graduate student has traced the tradition to several family bakeries outside Kyoto, Japan, where they have been tucking paper fortunes into crimped brown wafers since the 1870s.
Pod Hotels: Not Just For Japanese Salarymen Anymore
by Eva Holland | 11.09.07 | 7:57 AM ET
In Japan, pod hotels are old news. The first one, Capsule Inn Osaka, opened in 1977. Writes Karen Burshstein in a National Post story: “With more than a passing resemblance to the drawers in a morgue, it was a weird but nifty addition to Japan’s space-starved cityscapes.” Now, though, the concept has spread, and mini-hotel rooms are popping up in London, New York, Amsterdam, Vancouver and elsewhere. They range from the garish yet economical (the low-cost and bright orange easyHotels,) for instance, to trendy and high-tech (like Dutch company Qbic‘s LCD TV screens and changeable color schemes that match your mood, pictured) and many are available for only a few hours at a time, neatly filling the gap between a red-eye landing and the start of a long day of museum or gallery hopping.
Passengers Flee Burning Plane in Japan
by Jim Benning | 08.20.07 | 12:57 PM ET
Wild scene today on the tarmac of an airport in Okinawa, Japan: A China Airlines Boeing 737-800 skidded to stop and caught fire, prompting passengers to evacuate down emergency slides and the pilot to jump from the cockpit window. The plane then “burst into a fireball,” according to the AP. Amazingly, all 165 people aboard reportedly escaped serious injury. The AP notes that the incident “is a setback to China Airlines, which in recent years appeared to have improved on a troubled safety record among international carrier.”
Take a Vacation. It’s Presidential.
by Ben Keene | 08.16.07 | 10:19 AM ET
Love him or hate him, our commander-in-chief, George W. Bush, can teach Americans at least one lesson: how to vacation. With only a few weeks of summer remaining, President Bush, like many other world leaders, is trading the stress of executive office for some rest and relaxation. And he’s leaving the majority of U.S. citizens in his Texas dust. Actually, if a survey conducted by a global human resources firm is accurate, even the average Finn, Israeli or Lithuanian would have a hard time keeping up with his seven-year vacation-time total. Because whatever President Bush may lack in creativity—he’s taken 65 trips to Crawford, Texas since entering office—he more than makes up for in number. According to the Houston Chronicle, G.W.B. is well on his way to claiming the White House record for time off, rapidly closing in on the 436 days Reagan racked up during two terms.
How to Sing Karaoke in Japan
by Karin Ling | 08.02.07 | 10:15 AM ET
The Land of the Rising Sun gave the world the late-night sing-along. But in its birthplace, there's more to karaoke than butchering anime theme songs in crowded bars. Karin Ling explains.
Smoker’s International Airways: From Germany to Japan in a Carcinogenic Haze
by Michael Yessis | 07.26.07 | 11:47 AM ET
Sounds like hell to me. Or an Onion story. However, German entrepreneur Alexander W. Schoppmann (pictured) says he’s bringing glamour back to air travel with Smoker’s International Airways, aka Smintair, a start-up airline that plans to cater to smokers.
Coming Soon: Japanese Bidet-Toilets at 30,000 Feet
by Terry Ward | 07.13.07 | 11:23 AM ET
My sister, Janet, visited Japan last year and returned with a breathless account of her experience with Japanese toilets, particularly the “washlets”—high-tech bidet models with myriad features such as adjustable hot and cold water sprayers, heated seats, blow dryers and, in some cases, massage settings. “It’s not for someone who just wants to go in, do their business and get out the door,” she concluded. Japan-bound visitors have traditionally had to wait until they arrive to make use of what are perhaps the world’s most luxurious loos. But according to a recent Reuters story, soon passengers on some All Nippon Airways (ANA) flights won’t even have to wait that long. (Yes, the airline that brought the world the Pokemon jet is again breaking new ground.)
Chopsticks Faux Pas and Other Cultural Land Mines in Japan
by Terry Ward | 07.11.07 | 12:47 PM ET
I try to be sensitive to cultural customs while traveling abroad but inevitably find my American-ness shining through. I can only imagine what cultural land mines await me in a traditional country like Japan. An insightful piece in the International Herald Tribune looks at the country’s subtle etiquette code from the viewpoint of a Japanese woman readjusting to her country’s norms after spending many years abroad. From “faux pas chopstick maneuvers” to dealing with her runny nose on a crowded train (in Japan, blowing your nose in public is the epitome of bad manners), Kumiko Makihara often finds herself overcompensating in an attempt to avoid offense.
Japanese to Sumo Recruiters: Yawn
by Jim Benning | 07.03.07 | 4:16 PM ET
For the first time since modern sumo standards were established in 1936, not a single person has applied to become a sumo wrestler in the lead-up to a key recruitment test in Japan. According to The Asahi Shinbum, sumo’s popularity has been on the decline, but the cancellation of the July test seems to be a new low. It prompted the newspaper to crack: “The Nihon Sumo Kyokai (Japan sumo association) is desperately looking for a few fat men.” Adding insult to injury, the BBC notes, “The two reigning grand champions, Asashoryu and Hakuho, are both Mongolian.” The widely reported death of a 17-year-old newly minted professional wrestler last month can’t help matters.
Related on World Hum:
* Japan’s Big Fat Sumo Controversy
* The Hot New Trend in Japanese Cuisine: 500-Year-Old Kaiseki
* R.I.P. Momofuku Ando, Inventor of Instant Ramen Noodles
The Best in ‘Geek’ Travel: From Tokyo to Tatooine
by Michael Yessis | 06.29.07 | 11:43 AM ET
Where does someone who’s, say, willing to spend days in line waiting in line for an iPhone go on his or her travels? Apparently, where there’s a lot of technology and, in one case, nuclear fallout. Among the “geek vacation” spots recommended by Christopher Null in Wired’s July issue: New Zealand (for “The Lord of the Rings” movie locations); the South Pole (“Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station will warm any geek’s heart”); Tokyo’s Akihabara district (the “ultimate red-light district for gadget fetishists”); and Prypyat, Ukraine. Prypyat is “a town whose 47,000 inhabitants had to split within 36 hours of the meltdown” of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant. Sounds better suited for Dark Travelers.
Bambi Roll, Anyone? Inside Japan’s Sushi Crisis.
by Michael Yessis | 06.25.07 | 4:01 PM ET
How about raw horse meat? Japanese chefs are considering both because, given fishing limits and international demand for sushi, the country can’t get enough tuna. Martin Fackler writes in the New York Times that Japan has fallen into a “national panic,” with news programs devoting much airtime to the crisis. In Japanese sushi bars, the search is on for replacements. “At nicer restaurants, sushi chefs began experimenting with substitutes, from cheaper varieties of fish to terrestrial alternatives and even, heaven forbid, American sushi variations like avocado rolls,” Fackler writes.
South Korea Develops ‘Five-Point Kimchi Scale’
by Michael Yessis | 06.21.07 | 11:41 AM ET
Do you like your kimchi mild, slightly hot, moderately hot, very hot or extremely hot? The South Korean Ministry of Agriculture recently announced it has developed a five-point kimchi scale—Foreign Policy’s Blake Hounshell likens the “kimchi alert system” to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s threat advisory system—to help Westerners figure out what type of kimchi best suits their palates. The system will also measure fermentation levels. It’s all part of an ongoing effort to promote kimchi as a global food.