Latest news with #Japanophile


Japan Today
15-07-2025
- Business
- Japan Today
Japanese-style strawberry sandwiches win mainstream fans in UK, but aren't quite like the originals
By Casey Baseel, SoraNews24 Japanese food has made some impressive international inroads in recent years. Turning up your nose at sushi because you're uncomfortable with the idea of eating raw fish is now likely to get your foody credentials questioned in most countries around the globe, as is still thinking that ramen is limited to instant-variety noodles. So what's the latest incredible edible wonder from Japan to become a big hit overseas? Fruit sandwiches, which have now reached a major milestone in the UK. Fruit sandwiches, filled with cream and colorful slices of fruit, have been a thing at Japanese sweets shops and convenience stores for many years (the above photo is one we took at a cafe in Japan). It's only in the past few years, though, that they've really started attracting attention from visiting foreign tourists, whose cravings for the treats remain strong after returning to their home countries, and whose social media photos of the fruit sandwiches they ate in Japan have even non-travelers curious to try them too. Seeing the surge in interest, UK retailer Marks & Spencer has made an addition to its M & S Food line, and is now offering its own Japanese-inspired fruit sandwiches, as shown in the video below. The Red Diamond Strawberry and Creme Sandwich went on sale in late June, and the chain says that they've already sold more than 83,000 of them, with individual branches often selling out before the day is done. Priced at 2.9 pounds, which converts to roughly 570 yen, they're a little more expensive than fruit sandwiches have usually been at Japanese convenience stores, but within the realm of what specialty shops in Japan charge for them. Marks & Spencer's fruit sandwiches may not be the first of their type available in the UK, but previous examples have been at Japanese or Asian specialty stores. The Red Diamond Strawberry and Creme Sandwich appears to be the first fruit sandwich offered by a major mainstream retailer with no focus on Asian foodstuffs in particular, showing that the concept is catching on even with shoppers outside the Japanophile and international traveler demographics. However, like we mentioned above, Marks & Spencer's strawberry sandwich is inspired by the ones in Japan, which is to say that it's not exactly the same. For one thing, though it's cut into two triangular pieces, as is the style in Japan, Marks & Spencer leaves the crusts on, instead of slicing them off like stores in Japan do. The Red Diamond Strawberry and Creme Sandwich is made with a sweetened bread, and while it's not as sugary as sponge cake, it's still a departure from the ordinary white sandwich bread used to make fruit sandwiches in Japan. Finally, while more fruit sandwiches in Japan have whipped cream as a filling, Marks & Spencer uses a whipped cream cheese, which would explain why one UK local in the video above says the flavor reminds her of cheesecake. So maybe we could say that the Red Diamond Strawberry and Creme Sandwich is sort of like a dessert analogy for the California Roll or Tempura Crunch Roll, a variation on a Japanese idea that's finding fans overseas, and might have found enough to stick around for a long time. Source: TBS News Dig via Hachima Kiko, BBC Read more stories from SoraNews24. -- Japanese cafe serves up fruit sandwiches like nowhere else -- U.K. Pavilion at Japan World Expo responds to complaints about shabby afternoon tea quality【Videos】 -- Our Japanese language reporter visits a U.K. sushi chain, is blown away by its original 'sushi' External Link © SoraNews24


SoraNews24
09-07-2025
- Business
- SoraNews24
Japanese-style strawberry sandwiches win mainstream fans in U.K., but aren't quite like the originals
Sandwiches are a sell-out hit with a few key differences from how they're made in Japan. Japanese food has made some impressive international inroads in recent years. Turning up your nose at sushi because you're uncomfortable with the idea of eating raw fish is now likely to get your foody credentials questioned in most countries around the globe, as is still thinking that ramen is limited to instant-variety noodles. So what's the latest incredible edible wonder from Japan to become a big hit overseas? Fruit sandwiches, which have now reached a major milestone in the U.K. Fruit sandwiches, filled with cream and colorful slices of fruit, have been a thing at Japanese sweets shops and convenience stores for many years (the above photo is one we took at a cafe in Japan). It's only in the past few years, though, that they've really started attracting attention from visiting foreign tourists, whose cravings for the treats remain strong after returning to their home countries, and whose social media photos of the fruit sandwiches they ate in Japan have even non-travelers curious to try them too. Seeing the surge in interest, U.K. retailer Marks & Spencer has made an addition to its M & S Food line, and is now offering its own Japanese-inspired fruit sandwiches, as shown in the video below. The Red Diamond Strawberry and Creme Sandwich went on sale in late June, and the chain says that they've already sold more than 83,000 of them, with individual branches often selling out before the day is done. Priced at 2.9 pounds, which converts to roughly 570 yen, they're a little more expensive than fruit sandwiches have usually been at Japanese convenience stores, but within the realm of what specialty shops in Japan charge for them. Marks & Spencer's fruit sandwiches may not be the first of their type available in the U.K., but previous examples have been at Japanese or Asian specialty stores. The Red Diamond Strawberry and Creme Sandwich appears to be the first fruit sandwich offered by a major mainstream retailer with no focus on Asian foodstuffs in particular, showing that the concept is catching on even with shoppers outside the Japanophile and international traveler demographics. However, like we mentioned above, Marks & Spencer's strawberry sandwich is inspired by the ones in Japan, which is to say that it's not exactly the same. For one thing, though it's cut into two triangular pieces, as is the style in Japan, Marks & Spencer leaves the crusts on, instead of slicing them off like stores in Japan do. The Red Diamond Strawberry and Creme Sandwich is made with a sweetened bread, and while it's not as sugary as sponge cake, it's still a departure from the ordinary white sandwich bread used to make fruit sandwiches in Japan. Finally, while more fruit sandwiches in Japan have whipped cream as a filling, Marks & Spencer uses a whipped cream cheese, which would explain why one U.K. local in the video above says the flavor reminds her of cheesecake. So maybe we could say that the Red Diamond Strawberry and Creme Sandwich is sort of like a dessert analogy for the California Roll or Tempura Crunch Roll, a variation on a Japanese idea that's finding fans overseas, and might have found enough to stick around for a long time. Source: TBS News Dig via Hachima Kiko, BBC Top image ©SoraNews24 ● Want to hear about SoraNews24's latest articles as soon as they're published? Follow us on Facebook and Twitter!

Straits Times
05-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Straits Times
By appointment only in New York: Six hidden shops worth visiting
Sign up now: Get ST's newsletters delivered to your inbox NEW YORK – You did not come to New York to wander fluorescent aisles hunting for someone to unlock the fitting room. You came for the locked-door city – where nothing is labelled, the lift grumbles and whoever buzzes you in has already decided how the afternoon should go. You might leave with a sterling silver carabiner, a fossilised dinosaur foot or a record that makes everything else on your shelf sound flat. Or maybe it was just a book you did not know you were missing until it looked back at you. But do not bother dropping by. These places do not do foot traffic. You e-mail. You call a landline. You wait. Maybe you DM. There is no signage, no small talk, no piped-in jazz. What there is: hand-forged armour, prehistoric bones with six-figure price tags, music that has never been digitised, a jewellery showroom with the logic of a toolbox and – if you are buzzed in – a private library (with all the books for sale) that reads like someone's inner filing system. This is not retail. It is an invitation-only obsession. And if you knock with purpose, that helps. Globus Washitsu, 889 Broadway, Union Square, Manhattan A kimono-styling class at Globus Washitsu near Union Square in New York. This Kyoto-style tatami room has been meticulously built by the investor and long-time Japanophile Stephen Globus. PHOTO: HIROKO MASUIKE/NYTIMES Up a nondescript lift near Union Square, through a quiet hallway and a final sliding door, is something few New Yorkers expect to find above Broadway: a Kyoto-style tatami room meticulously built by investor and long-time Japanophile Stephen Globus. Think shoji screens, hinoki beams, seasonal scrolls – nothing here is an approximation. It is the real deal. Globus Washitsu is not a commercial teahouse. It is a cultural space with two adjoining tatami rooms, carefully designed for a range of intimate, immersive experiences. One of the rooms, KeiSui-An, is a traditional teahouse used for lessons in Japanese tea ceremony ( US$50 or S$64 a person for members, US$60 for non-members) – but the entire space shifts as needed to host calligraphy workshops, rakugo storytelling nights, kimono exhibitions and other quiet arts of Japan: music, dance, ikebana. It also occasionally serves as a ryokan-style guesthouse for visiting artists and scholars. You e-mail for an appointment, remove your shoes at the door and enter a hushed, warm space where calm is not a marketing promise, but a policy. Whether you are there for tea or to simply sit and listen, you leave feeling quieter. And in this city, that is no small thing. Marla Aaron, ninth floor, 37 West 47th Street, Diamond District, Manhattan Marla Aaron's appointment-only showroom in New York. PHOTO: HIROKO MASUIKE/NYTIMES Most people come to the Diamond District for a ring. But here, you will find a sterling silver carabiner with a click so satisfying, it should be studied. Ms Marla Aaron is not your typical jeweller. She is a high-end designer with a locksmith's brain, a sculptor's eye and a deep love of things that open and shut. Her appointment-only showroom feels more like a jeweller's laboratory crossed with a toy chest. Drawers of chains. Trays of tools. Jewellery cases that double as sewing boxes. Her signature locks – platinum and brass, ranging from US$110 to over US$250,000 for one especially extravagant version, made from pink diamonds – are meant to be held, twisted and remixed. They have been sold from vending machines, smuggled into museum shows and handed out by the thousands to single mothers on Mother's Day. In 2024, Ms Aaron won the GEM Award for Jewelry Design given out by the Jewelers of America. She recently opened a mini-store inside Liberty – the iconic department store in London – but the original New York showroom is still where the story clicks into place. Appointments are booked online and virtual appointments are available for out-of-towners – her team walks clients through the collection over Zoom with the same care for detail and touch. 'The showroom is my pride,' she said. Book ahead – and prepare to leave with something you will not want to stop clicking open and closed. WassonArtistry, Ridgewood, Queens A suit of armour at WassonArtistry, an appointment-only shop in Ridgewood, Queens. PHOTO: HIROKO MASUIKE/NYTIMES In Ridgewood, inside a factory building with no signage, Mr Jeffrey Wasson is doing something very few people alive can do: forging mediaeval armour by hand, exactly the way it was done 600 years ago. He studied at the School of Visual Arts, fell in with the Society for Creative Anachronism and got hooked on hammering metal. More than two decades on, he builds custom suits for jousters, re-enactors, museums and films, including Men In Black 3 (2012). His work is also permanently displayed at Discovery Park of America in Tennessee. This is not a shop. It is a working forge, and appointments are required. It smells like scorched steel and something more elemental: a lived-in focus that does not pause for small talk. Clients are measured in person and return for fittings as pieces are roughed, shaped and refined. Mr Jeffrey Wasson works on a breastplate at WassonArtistry. PHOTO: HIROKO MASUIKE/NYTIMES Mr Wasson's Italian-style helms and battle-ready gauntlets are researched down to the rivet spacing. One finished suit rests in the corner, heavy and ready. You can commission a full suit of armour (US$15,000 to US$50,000), take a private dagger-forging class (US$650) or join an occasional New York Adventure Club visit (US$32). No themed music, no cosplay – just iron, fire and a guy who has spent 20 years turning a childhood obsession into serious plate armour. Archivio Records, Unit 401, 247 Water Street, Dumbo, Brooklyn Inside Archivio Records in New York. PHOTO: HIROKO MASUIKE/NYTIMES Archivio is more vinyl bunker than retail space. It is a Dumbo concept store: part record shop, DJ hub, barbershop, tattoo parlour and creative hangout. Co-founded by sound engineer and DJ Pablo Romero (a Queens native who asked for a shout-out to his Colombian background) and DJ Daniel Corral-Webb, this upstairs loft draws an international mix: visiting DJs, stylists, design-world regulars and the curious who have heard whispers. There is an obsessively curated selection of electronic vinyl, from 1980s house to obscure techno subgenres (from US$5 to US$200). Romero is known for matching people to records with eerie precision. A barber and a tattoo artist work on clients at Archivio Records. PHOTO: HIROKO MASUIKE/NYTIMES There is a n appointment-only tattoo set-up and barbershop at the back, where Mr Camo Contreras tattoos in one chair and Mr Christian Restrepo cuts hair in the next. During my visit, a young and hip London DJ was crate-digging up front while someone in the back debated tattoo placement between fades. It is by appointment, not attitude. Archivio does not advertise; it does not need to. People who need it tend to find it, including a few celebrities who either show up on their Instagram – or make sure they do not. High Valley Books, 882 Lorimer Street, Greenpoint, Brooklyn The basement of High Valley Books in New York. PHOTO: SCOTT ROSSI/NYTIMES There is no sign. Just a buzzer and a plain Greenpoint doorway that leads, improbably, to one of New York's most extraordinary private bookstores. Founded in 1999, High Valley Books is run out of Mr Bill Hall's living room and basement, and it is where fashion archivists, interior designers and set decorators go when they need the perfect print reference from 1963 or a magazine no one remembers. Appointments are made via landline – +1-347-889-6346 – or Instagram DM. First-timers get a quiet tour. Regulars know to leave time for the basement, where the discoveries get stranger and better. It is part archive dig, part conversation. Mr Hall might pull something you did not know to ask for. Or he might introduce you to someone across the room hunting something adjacent. Some books cost US$40. Some cost as much as a Vespa. Mr Hall knows which is which, and he will explain why – if you ask. Astro Gallery of Gems, 417 Fifth Avenue, Midtown, Manhattan A display case on the appointment-only floor of Astro Gallery of Gems. PHOTO: HIROKO MASUIKE/NYTIMES Astro Gallery of Gems bills itself as the world's largest gem and mineral shop. Upstairs, you can browse the vault-size geodes and sapphires. But the basement – by appointment only – is where things take a turn for the Jurassic. This is where president and chief executive Dennis Tanjeloff stores his backroom full of prehistoric flex: a US$125,000 Odontopteryx tilapia skeleton (since sold), trilobites as big as house cats, meteorite slices and the kind of dino bones that end up in Gulf State palaces or private Colorado libraries. It is a celebrity obsession too – he calls his buyers 'grown-up boys' who never got over the idea that dinosaurs were real. Among the best-known fossil collectors: American actors Brad Pitt, Nicolas Cage and Leonardo DiCaprio. Mr Tanjeloff is part dealer, part historian and wholly unbothered by those who disapprove of his trade – not everyone loves the idea of rare fossils going to private collectors instead of museums. His current selection, which ranges from US$24 for small ammonites to US$95,000 for a Tyrannosaurus rex tibia, comes from old collections, private digs and other dealers. 'You're not hurting a thing,' he says with a shrug. 'They're already extinct.' Book ahead, ask for the fossil room and expect numbers that make you blink. If you do not leave with an ancient jawbone, you will at least understand why some people feel compelled to try. NYTIMES


Time Out
27-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Time Out
From sweet matcha treats to saké: a new Japanese dining wonderland opens in Melbourne's CBD
Japanophile foodies, this one's for you. What would you do if we said you could now get premium Wagyu, artisanal matcha, picture-perfect baked treats and quality saké in Melbourne's CBD – all under the one roof? If the answer is call a friend and jump on the tram for a lunch date asap, then you'll want to keep reading. Cult fave eatery Omi has just opened its flagship destination, Omi 380, a multi-sensory space offering five distinct Japanese dining specialties: Wagyu, bēkarī (bakery), matcha, gelato and saké. Over at Omi 380's Wagyu station, tuck into a mouth-watering meal of your choice – from signature donburi and premium A5 Wagyu cuts to izakaya-style plates and steaming hotpots. This is where your journey begins, but it doesn't stop there. For dessert, you're spoilt for choice at the bakery; think tasty sweet morsels like the mini pan pan, just-baked shokupan and canelés made fresh daily. If a frozen indulgence is more your jam, don't skip a visit to the gelato station, where East-meets-West scoops celebrate inventive and matcha-inspired flavours. Note: there are three levels of intensity to dial up the matcha magic. Since we're on the topic of matcha, trust that true enthusiasts can enjoy the ingredient in drinkable form with traditional matcha lattes and 'grammable new creations like the Matcha Daydream, plus house-made speciality coffees like the Misty Forest. While Omi's much-anticipated saké experience is still yet to be unveiled, we're promised it won't be long before fans of the Japanese liquor are treated to an enticing array of tasting sets, infused cocktails and more.


Axios
20-03-2025
- Entertainment
- Axios
Comedy icons, local cinema and other weekend events
🤣 Laugh along with comedy icons Jerry Seinfeld and Jim Gaffigan at Nationwide Arena. 7:30pm Friday. $55+. 🎵 Hear the mesmerizing "Boléro" and other classical favorites performed by the Columbus Symphony. 7:30pm Friday and Saturday, Ohio Theatre. $38+. 😻 Embrace your inner Japanophile during Anime Night, with cosplay contests and a tribute band. 8pm Friday, Skully's, 1151 N. High St. $25. 🎥 Celebrate local cinema at Picture Lock 2025, featuring films created at or with the help of the Wexner Center for the Arts. Showtimes through Saturday, 1871 N. High St. $5-10 per screening. 🐦🧠 Flaunt your knowledge at a "Birds & Brews" trivia fundraiser benefitting the Grange Insurance Audubon Center.