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Tokyo Olympics 2020
Japanese people love waiting in queues so much that they found a way to wait even when buying tickets online.
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A tale of an irregular juice package
There is a steady hype about delicacies in Japanese convenient stores. My discovery this week was not a sweet, but a juice in rather peculiar packaging. Meet “tropical straight 100”. Ignoring my initial reaction (that was something along the lines of “are they selling prepackaged blood serum for vampires now?“), this is actually a juice…
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Bontan Candy (ボンタンアメ)
Lately, I came across a strange citrus flavoured candy with an interesting twist, as expected from japanese sweets. Bontan candy is a mochi-chewy style square candy with pomelo and mandarin flavour. The candy comes in a small paper box and each candy piece is covered with transparent wrap. However hard you try to unwrap the…
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紙で結ぶ絆: A letter set for building relationships
NTT is a ginormous company in Japan, with research facilities and factories all around the country. One of their employees gave our laboratory the following gift: a handmade letter set made from Japanese paper (washi or 和紙). This letter set was made with great care at an NTT factory called 塩山 or “salt mountain”, whose purpose…
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The “experience” of casual eating out on a weekday
Tonight we had a craving for tempura soba, so we went to a random tempura restaurant, the first that appeared in our path. The restaurant is called Marugame Seimen, is located in Shibuya (丸亀製麺渋谷道玄坂店) and serves tempura -not soba- udon meals. It’s one of those large, cheap restaurants with high throughput. Still, japanese shop managers…
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This year’s Hanami – Kinuta Park
“Hanami” (花見) stands for the past time activity of “cherry blossom viewing” in Japanese. The main concern of every single person in Japan around the end of March is whether the cherry trees (or sakura) have started bloom and when will the peak blooming take place. After learing about the days of interest from the special…
belleelene 