“I couldn’t…wipe my own butt” – Hunter x Hunter manga creator discusses medical issues

https://ift.tt/rA25lwI Casey Baseel

The “Yoshihiro Togashi is too lazy to draw new manga” narrative was missing some key facts.

It’s become a running joke among manga/anime fans that Yoshihiro Togashi, creator of Hunter x Hunter and YuYu Hakusho, has a substandard work ethic. That’s not to say anyone has ever called his artwork sloppy, but between Togashi’s outspoken love of video games and idol music, his marriage to Sailor Moon creator Naoko Takeuchi, and set-for-life financial status, it’s not hard to imagine his frequent and extended hiatuses are a result of having already achieved so much success in life that his artistic hunger and burning desire to draw have faded.

So while all the “We can’t get new Hunter x Hunter chapters because Togashi is too lazy to draw them!” wisecracks might be low-hanging fruit, the comedy still has some juiciness of the “it’s funny because it’s (probably) true” sort. However, in a recent message from Togashi himself, the artist explains that crippling, debilitating pain has had a lot to do with his reduced manga output.

Togashi’s message was included in the announcement of Yoshihiro Togashi Exhibition -Puzzle-, an upcoming exhibition of artwork from various stages of his career, and reads:

“I would like to thank everyone for the gift of their warm, loving support while reading my works.

Hmm, that sounded kind of stuffy.

I feel the same way as everyone else. ‘Um, instead of saying ‘thank you,’ go draw new chapters’ is what many of you are probably thinking. For the last two years, I have been unable to sit in a chair. I had to give up on working in the normal way, but have now somehow figured out how to be able to resume drawing.

Everyone, please take care of your lower back. Up until two weeks before writing this message, I couldn’t keep the posture necessary to wipe my own butt, and every time I took a poop, I had to wash it off in the shower. It takes me about three to five times longer than an average person to move around and do things. Your lower back is very important.

So, should you drop something on the ground while attending the exhibition, I strongly recommend to bend at the knees to pick it up, not at the back.

Thank you.”

▼ Promotional artwork for the exhibition

冨樫義博展開催決定︎ pic.twitter.com/2V9jPJqz47

— パルコ (@PARCO4986) June 30, 2022

Though he doesn’t mention his specific condition, Togashi’s message makes it pretty clear that he’s been suffering from intense lower back pain, and the broad “take care of your lower back” suggests a chronic lifestyle-based cause for his ailment. Serialized manga artists put an immense amount of time into their work, often spending hour after hour and day after day at their drawing desks, and it sounds like the combined strain eventually became too much for Togashi’s body to bear.

Thankfully, as Togashi himself makes reference to, he’s recently begun drawing again, sharing teasers of his progress through his recently created Twitter account. That progress isn’t exactly fast-paced, but it’s pretty understandable in light of Togashi’s physical condition, and while fans are waiting patiently they’ll also be able to see over 350 pieces of original manga page artwork, full-color illustrations, and other design elements at the Yoshihiro Togashi Exhibition -Puzzle- event, which will run from October 28 to January 9 at the Mori Arts Center gallery in Tokyo’s Roppongi neighborhood.

Source: Oricon News via Otakomu
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What frozen snack won Seventeen Ice’s “1st Flavor General Election”?

https://ift.tt/nXSqdKi Master Blaster

More importantly, Mr. Sato finds out if it deserved to win.

When Mr. Sato was 17, it was a very good year. It was a very good year for club activities, and sweet ice cream, bought from vending machines. He was on the school’s soft tennis team, when he was 17.

Yes, Japan’s Seventeen Ice brand of ice cream, which is exclusively sold from vending machines in shopping centers and train station platforms, has been around for a long time and is eternally popular with kids and teens in Japan. It’s been around so long that even our grizzled reporter Mr. Sato fondly recalls enjoying them during his younger days.

The world has changed a lot since then, but Seventeen Ice is still as strong as ever, and recently held its “1st Flavor General Election” in which registered fans could vote for their favorites online. Polling took place between 1 May and 30 June and Mr. Sato was able to get the results the very next day.

So, without further ado, here are the Top 5 Seventeen Ice flavors in Japan:

5 – Crispy Strawberry Choco Mille-Feuille
4 – Custard Purin
3 – Muscat
2 – Colorful Choco (Milk)
1 – Raisin Butter Crunch

Our reporter was surprised by the results, mostly because he had never heard of some of these flavors before. It had been a while since he ate a Seventeen Ice and the scene had changed quite a bit. He used to eat Strawberry Shortcake back in the day, but Crispy Strawberry Choco Mille-Feuille was a whole other ballgame. Clearly kids these days are a lot more sophisticated than he used to be.

However, this seemed like the perfect opportunity to rekindle his love affair with vending machine ice cream, so Mr. Sato sought out Japan’s favorite flavor of Seventeen Ice.

The Raisin Butter Crunch cost 180 yen (US$1.33) and was based on the rum raisin butter sandwich cookies commonly found in Hokkaido and elsewhere in Japan. The cookies were pictured on the wrapper, making it all look even more inviting.

Checking the ingredients, Mr. Sato found that this ice cream cone actually contains 0.1 percent alcohol, so it really does use rum-soaked raisins. It seems like a rather adult taste for a Seventeen Ice flavor.

▼ アルコール分0.1% = Contains 0.1 percent alcohol

He unwrapped his election-winning cone to find it was held in a waffle cone. Originally, Seventeen Ice was served as a cylinder of ice cream on a plastic stick. Some flavors still are, but waffle cone varieties have been increasingly added to the line-up.

The top was sprinkled with crumbled pieces of butter cookie and had an enticing aroma.

By the way, this isn’t technically “ice cream,” but “ice milk.” Ice cream is defined as having over 15 percent milk solid in which the amount of milkfat is over eight percent. On the other hand, ice milk has a milk solid content of over 10 percent, of which the milk fat is over three percent. Therefore, ice milk tends to be lighter tasting and more refreshing than ice cream.

Mr. Sato thought it had a very smooth texture with a pleasant taste that really allowed the sweetness of the raisins to shine through. He could easily see why it had won the 1st Flavor General Election.

What he couldn’t understand, however, was why he had stayed away from Seventeen Ice for so long. It’s just as good as he remembered from when he was a teen, if not better.

And so, when Mr. Sato was 48, it was a very good year. It was a very good year for a flavor election. The winner was Raisin Butter Crunch, and Mr. Sato loved it a bunch. It was the best ice milk he ever ate, when he was 48.

Related: Seventeen Ice
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Making spicy instant ramen fried rice, Korea’s latest viral food trend【SoraKitchen】

https://ift.tt/OzV23UB Dale Roll

This is a super easy and surprisingly versatile recipe that has us addicted.

Everyone loves instant ramen, but despite the sheer variety out there, there is, unfortunately, such a thing as getting tired of eating it. That’s why we were pretty excited to see a new,viral trend that uses Korean-style spicy ramen, Shin Ramen, in a totally different way.

Videos about “Shin Ramen Fried Rice” sold by Seoul-based supermarket Cora Foods (named because it sells [co]fee and [ra]men) have been blowing up on YouTube lately, so, seeing as previous viral recipes using Shin Ramen didn’t disappoint, we had to try making it ourselves. The recipe seemed pretty simple. All we needed was a cup of Shin Ramen, an egg, one serving of cooked rice, some cooking oil, sesame oil, and sesame seeds.

If you want, you can add other toppings, like Korean seaweed, a second friend egg, green onions, and cheese as desired. We decided to make it just like Cora Foods’ recipe, so we left the extra ingredients out.

Here’s how to make it:

Step 1: Remove the noodles from the cup and place them in a plastic bag.

Step 2: Crush the noodles. If you’re a beast, you can crush it with your bare hands like we did. Otherwise, you can use a tool like a rolling pin or the flat side of a knife.

Step 3: Return the crushed noodles to the container, add the soup powder, and pour only enough boiling water in to cover the noodles. The soup base is the only seasoning required for this recipe, so if you’re not as big a fan of super spicy food or you want to cut out some sodium, you can adjust the amount of soup powder you put in. Cora Foods didn’t hold back, however, so neither did we.

Step 4: Heat some cooking oil in a frying pan, then scramble your egg and pour it in. Once it’s cooked slightly…

Step 5: Add the cooked rice and turn it into egg fried rice.

Step 6: Dump in the noodles, which should have soaked up much of the water by now. Important: don’t throw out the cup!

Step 7: Mix everything together and stir-fry until it’s a nice golden brown color.

Step 8: Add some sesame oil and sesame seeds to the bottom of the noodle cup.

Step 9: Pour your finished fried noodle-rice into the cup.

Step 10: Place a plate over the cup. and hold it tightly as you slowly flip both the plate and the cup.

Step 11: Remove the cup, and voila! You’ve got your very own Shin Ramen Fried Rice.

It looked so good!! It was basically a version of Japanese sobameshi, yakisoba noodles mixed with fried rice, but using Shin Ramen instead of yakisoba.

Sadly, our tower collapsed on our way to the table, but it still looked delicious. And it tasted amazing, too!

It was an exciting way to change up the way we eat one of our favorite types of ramen, a new side to Shin Ramen that we never thought of but makes perfect sense. The addition of the sesame oil at the end really sets it off. It was also a lot lighter than we expected it to be, so we think Korean seaweed and an additional fried egg would make excellent toppings.

It was so good that we wanted to make another plate of it…but eating more carbs on carbs was probably a bad idea, so we refrained. It was a good thing we did, too. About 20 minutes later we felt ridiculously full, as if the noodles and rice swelled up in our stomachs. We never would have thought a meal of mostly carbs would be so filling, but it was!

The fact that this recipe was so effortless and easy made us wonder if there were similar recipes here in Japan, where instant noodles are also a staple of life. We weren’t surprised to find a very similar recipe using Cup Noodles on Nissin’s website. That made us think that you could make instant noodle fried rice with any kind of cup noodle…so now we have a lot more experimenting to do. We bet Curry flavored Cup Noodles would be absolutely divine. Ooh, and don’t forget the instant ramen booster packs!

Guess we know what we’ll be having for lunch for the foreseeable future.

Source: YouTube/The Food Club
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This plastic wrap is supposed to turn supermarket sashimi into great sashimi, but does it work?

https://ift.tt/DdVQAcI SoraNews24

Taste-testing the effects of Pichit sheets.

You can find sashimi for sale at every supermarket in Japan, and the quality is usually pretty good. Not necessarily great, but good.

Great sashimi was exactly what our Japanese-language reporter Miho Kozuki was craving. Luckily, she had a secret weapon: Pichit.

OK, so maybe it’s not really a secret weapon, since the specially treated plastic wrap has been getting a lot of attention on social media recently. But the rumors of Pichit’s flavor-boosting powers had Miho feeling like she had a strong ally on her side as she pulled out a sheet.

According to its packaging, Pichit is supposed to condense the sashimi’s flavor and umami notes, while simultaneously eliminating any odors. It does this in two ways. First, the sheet draws moisture excess moisture out of whatever you’ve wrapped up in it. As we learned talking to a sashimi expert with decades of experience in the restaurant industry, if you have too much water, or worse, ice crystals, in a cut of fish, it’ll dilute the flavor and overly stiffen the texture. Second, Pichit is treated with starch syrup and seaweed extract, simulating the effects of kombujime, a method of preparing sashimi by sandwiching it between kelp leaves.

Using the sheet is a snap. First, Miho patted and wiped down some of her supermarket-bought sashimi with a paper towel.

Then she laid them out on the sheet…

…and folded the sheet over them. The Pichit sheet started drawing out moisture right away, forming a seal around the sashimi pieces as it did so.

Now Miho put the sashimi in her refrigerator while the sheet did its thing, and when she took it back out two and half hours later, it had been transformed!

For the sake of a taste-test comparison, Miho had put half of her sashimi into a Pichit sheet, and left the other half un-Pichit-ified, and they were now looking very different from each other.

▼ Left: Pichit sashimi
Right: Non-Pichit sashimi

▼ Pichit

▼ Non-Pichit

Since the package had said the sheets eliminate odors, Miho performed a sniff test first, but she didn’t really notice a difference between the two. Maybe that was because her sashimi was still pretty fresh from the market, and it didn’t really have any smell to it to begin with at this point.

But the flavor? There Miho noticed a big difference, and the Pichit-treated sashimi was far and away the better tasting. Again, that’s not to say the no-treated pieces were bad, but the ones that had spent time wrapped in the sheet were a lot more flavorful and didn’t have even a hint of sogginess to water down the taste. “It feels like they have twice as much umami as the regular pieces.” Miho says.

Prices for Pichit vary by store/seller, but Amazon has 32-sheet rolls for 2,048 yen (US$15.30). The only thing to be careful of is that because it removes moisture, Pichit isn’t such a good match for more succulent, extra-fatty types of sashimi, like otoro (extra-fatty tuna). But for things like maguro (regular tuna) or yellowtail, Miho thinks this is an affordable luxury upgrade that’s well worth it

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Weiner Onigiri: Japanese convenience store rice ball has a surprise in store for Mr Sato

https://ift.tt/Mg96ZXC Oona McGee

Celebration sausage opens our mouth to a new way of eating. 

Just last year, convenience store chain Lawson Store 100 made headlines for its unprecedented Weiner Bento. Unlike most bentos, which contain a variety of ingredients, this new lunchbox stripped things down to just two main ingredients: rice and sausages.

▼ The bento became a runaway hit, spawning similarly unfettered offerings like the fried fish bento, seen below.

To commemorate the first anniversary of the Weiner Bento’s release, Lawson Store 100 is now giving customers another taste of the sausage, with an all-new onigiri rice ball called “Weiner On Chicken Rice“.

▼ Priced at just 108 yen (US$0.79)

Our weiner-loving reporter Mr Sato — who once ate a bento packed with 16 weiners — couldn’t resist the lure of the weiner onigiri, so he was thrilled to find them in stock at the store when he visited.

▼ People have already been raving about these online, so Mr Sato snatched up the last two for a taste test.

The unorthodox “filling” might be simpler than other rice balls, but it was clear that careful thought and attention had been given to its placement.

It was perfectly tucked into the centre of the ball, and from the side, the Weiner didn’t jut out even a millimetre from its bed of rice.

Mr Sato grabbed a pair of chopsticks to examine the Weiner more closely, and when he plucked it out of its resting place, it came loose with a satisfying pop. He was pleased to find that, just as the store had advertised, this was exactly the same type of Weiner used in the popular Weiner Bento from last year.

Mr Sato popped the sausage back into position and delved in for a bite. He immediately sensed the well-rounded balance between rice and Weiner in the first mouthful, giving him an even greater appreciation for its placement.

▼ Designed so that both ingredients combine perfectly with every bite.

This sense of unity in the rice ball gave it a high ranking on Mr Sato’s scale of degree of onigiri perfection, but then he remembered something…what about the chicken rice? 

▼ The sign did proudly say “Wiener on Chicken Rice“, after all.

Mr Sato prides himself on his acute sense of taste, and his taste buds were telling him this was no chicken rice.

So he took a look at the ingredient list on the back of the product and found…

▼ …it says “ketchup-flavoured rice“!!

As Mr Sato had suspected, this Weiner wasn’t tucked into a bed of chicken rice — it was cosying up to a mound of ketchup rice instead. At first glance, it might seem odd that the store would advertise it as chicken rice instead of ketchup rice, but these dishes do look similar so they’re sometimes used interchangeably.

From his experience working at a restaurant, Mr Sato knows both types of rice contain ketchup and are commonly used in omurice (“omelette rice”). However, “chicken rice” contains bits of chicken, and “ketchup rice” has no chicken, so although they look similar, the flavour is slightly different.

That was the only gripe Mr Sato had with these rice balls, though, because they were absolutely delicious. Unusual rice balls like these often sell out, and they’re only around until 12 July, so if you see them on the shelf, be sure to try them. And if you’re feeling creative, you can always try adding some whiskers and an omelette blanket to give them some kawaii flair!

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