Tsukimi
Tonight in Japan, it is Tsukimi! This is the moon viewing festival, when people celebrate the harvest, and the moon is considered to be at its most beautiful. Tsukimi takes its origins from the Chinese Mid-Autumn Festival, which is a major event in the Chinese lunar year. Tsukimi and...
A Visit to Nintendo Store Osaka
Last week I finally achieved a goal and made it in to Osaka to visit the Nintendo Osaka store. It opened last November but for a long time it was very, very hard to get into — it was so popular that they limited entry using timed tickets, and...
Super Boil, Nissin’s (failed) Great Innovation
Momofuku Ando, creator of the world’s first instant ramen, founded the company that would go on to be Nissin in 1948. Originally called Chuko Sosha, it sold salt until its founder’s brainwave in 1958 to flash-fry noodles and sell them with chicken-flavoured seasoning. Not long after that, the company...
Cup Noodles Museum
One of Osaka’s many claims to fame is that it was, in 1958, the birthplace of instant ramen. Invented by Momofuku Ando to help provide a steady supply of food to the Japanese population post-WWII, instant ramen — and then, in the 1970s, cup noodles — quickly became popular,...
The Osamu Tezuka Manga Museum
Osamu Tezuka is a name known by anime and manga fans around the world. Known interchangeably as the “father of manga”, the “grandfather of manga” and the “god of manga”, his works are indisputably the beginning of modern anime and manga. His output was prodigious, and he’s known internationally...