Culture

If you’ve ever visited or lived in Japan, you know that convenience stores (konbini) play an essential role in the daily life of Japanese people. We all know their names – 7-Eleven, Lawson, Family Mart, Ministop, and more.

Unlike the West, in Japan, Christmas is not a religious event. Rather, just like Halloween and Valentines Day, Christmas season is simply party time. So then, what kind of Japanese Christmas food do people have to get their winter holiday parties started? Let’s find out!

It’s coming up to spooky season and that can mean only one thing – lots of Japanese snacks filled with the spirit of Halloween. Enjoying tasty Japanese chocolate, sweets and treatst are what this season is all about. Monthly Japanese snack and candy box TokyoTreat is no stranger to sharing spook-tacular snacks with the TokyoTreat…

Ramen is a much-loved dish in Japan, and you’ll find ramen shops serving tasty bowls in a variety of forms and flavors across the country. But if you can’t get to Japan anytime soon, there is thankfully an endless list of cup ramen brands producing instant ramen in a range of delicious flavor combinations. The…

Okinawa is known for quite a few different foods, including Okinawa sweet potato and Shikuwasa citrus. But do you know about Okinawan black sugar? This black sugar, also called kokuto in Japanese, is a deliciously unique experience compared to the regular black sugar you may find in your supermarket. This amazing sugar has a complex,…

When anime was first introduced in the US, TV networks tried to adapt it to a Western audience, sometimes failing spectacularly. In part, these changes were due to the US networks’ overly restrictive regulations on children’s TV shows. But some of these changes were simply ridiculous.  It’s one thing to get rid of guns, but…

Pocky is one of the most well-known Japanese snacks in the world. It’s a biscuit stick snack with a flavor coating on the outside. Produced by Ezaki Glico company, Pocky are chocolate-covered biscuit sticks. In Japan they can typically be found in convenience and grocery stores. Other Pocky flavors include matcha, strawberry, almond and many…

Japan produces all kinds of delicious chocolate sweets from Pocky to Japanese Kit Kats. If you love Japanese chocolate, it’s useful to know how to say the word. So, how do you say chocolate in Japanese? Chocolate in Japanese is pronounced: “chyo-ko-rey-toe”. The word, like most foreign loan words in Japanese, is written using the…

What’s not to love about Valentine’s Day? It’s a day for a special kind of celebration and a day when people bring out all sorts of gifts and sweet gestures towards another person. And when you think about it, this day is basically a good chance for you to prove that you can show appreciation…

White Day is celebrated in Japan every year on March 14. It can be summarized as a day when men give gifts and chocolates to the women in their life, but there’s a whole lot more meaning behind it. To fully understand White Day (also written as ホワイトデー in Japanese), it’s important to take a…

Did you know that although Japanese Kit Kats, most widely known for their unique flavors,  didn’t actually come from Japan – but instead originated from England? Almost 70 years after they were first made in the UK, Japan released the very first non-chocolate flavored Kit Kat and things were never the same again. Now, there’s…

Editor's note: This blog post originally appeared August 28th, 2018 and has since been updated. Summer isn't even over before the first Halloween related items start popping up in stores in Japan! Throughout September and October most stores will sell limited edition Halloween snacks and Japanese candy, costumes, decorations and more! Halloween is also a…