No Soy Sauce For You!

Olympic training includes more than fitness. Athletes need stamina. Focus. Specialized diets. And, apparently, foreign food survival and utensil adaptation lessons.

Every Wednesday, a special menu based on the food that will be available at the Olympic Village in Beijing, is served at Japan’s National Training Center. A sign at the NTC declares the food is offered so athletes can get used to unfamiliar tastes.

Miso soup and soy sauce is not available on Wednesdays. Athletes can instead enjoy spring rolls and dumplings. Japanese rice is not offered, replaced by rice from India and Thailand. Plastic knives and forks substituted for chopsticks. The Olympic menus will be offered every Wednesday until the end of July.

Name that Plan

This special Olympic menu training needs a name. May we suggest:
Good Eating Rules Instruction (GERI)
Japanese Inedible Nutrients Information (JINI)

Suggest a name!

photos: NTC; JOC; NTC table; NTC table Sponichi; Athlete eats

Bye Buy Butter

Thirty-five years ago, it was toilet paper. Now, consumers and bakeries are hunting butter as Japan is suffering a butter shortage.

Supermarkets are limiting butter to one per customer. At OK Mart, Hokkaido butter brand was available, up 100 yen from it’s previous price of 199 yen. Buyers were allowed only one package of the precious gold.

Manufacturers are apologizing as usual.

Bakeries and restaurants have been having butter troubles since late 2007.

Falling butter production in Japan is due to a variety of factors since 2006, including government efforts to maintain prices for local milk farmers, dairy closures, a decline in milk consumption, excessive import tariffs, and worldwide grain-feed price rises.

French bakery chefs are concerned: “We’ve had to come up with some new items that use less butter, like cookies. But you’re talking about flavor. How can you replace butter?” says a pastry chef at a bakery in Tokyo. la times

Butt Shortage Not First

Japan went into “oil shock” in 1973 when Arab members of OPEC set policies that would quadruple the price of oil. Reports predicted a shortage of goods, including (more…)

The Blue Shield

The one-man shelters that many of Japan’s homeless construct from heavy blue tarpaulins can be found in parks, under bridges, and along river banks.

An April 2007 Japan Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare report shows there are 4,213 homeless in Tokyo’s 23 wards, and about 18,500 homeless nationwide. The country has a population of 127 million people. The average age of homeless in Japan is 57.5 years.

The numbers of homeless living in these locations:

Urban parks: 5,702
River bank: 5,653
Highway: 3,110
Station: 910
Other Facilities: 3,189

The Washington Post details how the homeless can get back into the system, and states that compared to US standards of homelessness, being homeless in Japan is “not a bad gig”.

Sometimes the homeless in Japan lose their sturdy do-it-yourself shelters, due to the cops, or the weather. The stories below reveal how some homeless people have opted for improved conditions. (more…)

The Wine Advisor reads the bar code on the bottle label and offers food recommendations to match the wine. The electronic scanner terminal is installed over wine racks at the 10 newest Peacock supermarkets in Japan.

Newsweek International reports the machine recommended roast beef, Maribo and Samsoe cheese and pain de campagne to go with a Bordeaux. This digital sommelier is also available in Queen’s Isetan.
source: When The Sommelier’s A Machine

Track Your Meat

A computer terminal in many AEON supermarkets offers domestic meat traceability, and tells you the animal’s birthday, where it was born, its birth weight, what it grazed on, and maybe even its favorite TV program.

Too Technical

Let Asimo shop for you.

Stay at hotel after a natural disaster and save!

A merchant association in Toda, Saitama Prefecture, is selling memberships in a kind of disaster getaway package.

Buyers choose an inn or hotel in advance, and, if the Disaster Relief Law goes into effect in the city, members will be provided accommodation up to 300,000 yen in value. The vouchers can be used at lodging in 14 locations around Japan. The annual membership fee costs 10,500 yen for a family of five, and that includes transportation.

And if nothing happens during the one-year membership? You get a free gift! Direct from one of the evacuation area regions. A 3,000 yen value.

Brochure images: blog.kogayabungu.jp

Domino’s Pizza apologizes for price increases with a flier attached to it’s pizza boxes (left). It states that due to the worldwide cost increases of flour, cheese and oil, Dominos suddenly had to raise prices. Except these three pizzas will remain at the old price.

Kentucky Fried Chicken apologizes for a 20-yen per piece increase. Mr. Donut, a 10 to 20-yen per doughnut increase

Maruha kamaboko is up 10 to 15 percent. Snow Brand cheese and butter, a 6 to 11 percent increase.

Ampontan blog lists other price hikes. MOS Burger apologizes for raising prices. (Japanese, pdf), and so does Koiwa Dairy (Japanese)

Price increase banner on Domino’s website.

List of other recent price rises.

Price increase chart (pdf).

KFC price increases.

Made (Better) in Japan ( Forked, Alan Richman, GQ, March 2008)

Also a Newsweek International Special report, The New Food Capital Of The World.

This article mentions the fascination with food on TV in Japan, and the 2007 edition of the Michelin Guide, which “gave a total of 191 stars to Tokyo, leaving Paris a distant second with 97 and New York third with 54″.

Now I understand why there’s often a line outside the local 6-seat ramen counter. [ 2008 Michelin Guide (Japanese) ]