The 2019 Michelin Guide will go on sale this week and it again confirms that Tokyo is a foodie’s dream place to be, with the highest number of starred restaurants out of any city in the world.

Tokyo has 230 Michelin starred establishments, 13 of which have the 3 star top rating, reserved for only the finest restaurants, one of these, French restaurant L’Osier in Chuo-ku has been newly promoted this year and joins the others on this elite list.

Michelin stars are awarded for maintaining the highest standards of cooking, creativity and consistency and this is reviewed every year, stars can be taken away if these criteria are not met year on year. Michelin reviewers (commonly called “inspectors”) are anonymous; they do not identify themselves, and their meals and expenses are paid for by Michelin, never by a restaurant being reviewed.

MICHELIN Guide Tokyo 2019 Selection Summary
13 three star restaurants (1 new)
52 two star restaurants (3 new)
165 one star restaurants (29 new)
254 Bib Gourmand restaurants (44 new)
2 Ryokans and 33 hotels (2 new)

This edition also marks a milestone for four establishments that have held three stars in every edition, Kanda (Japanese, in Minato-ku); Quintessence (French cuisine in Shinagawa-ku); Joël Robuchon (French cuisine in Meguro-ku); and Sukiyabashi Jiro Honten (sushi in Chuo-ku).

One of this editions firsts is the inclusion of an onigiri restaurant called Onigiri Asakusa Yadoroku. Onigiri in case you are unaware is white rice formed into triangular or cylindrical shapes, usually with a type of filling and wrapped in nori (seaweed). People often eat onigiri bought from a convenience store or made at home so for this place to reach Michelin star level they must be doing something extra special with the finest ingrediants.

On the restaurants website they say Onigiri Asakusa Yadoroku has been serving onigiri since 1954 when white rice was a luxury item. Our long-time patrons include grandparents who visit with their children and grandchildren. We hope you too will visit Yadoroku and enjoy our special onigiri made from carefully selected ingredients. We are located behind Senso-ji Temple in Asakusa.

We select rice from across Japan best suited for each season. We use only local Edo-mae seaweed, famous for its rich flavour, to wrap our onigiri. Fillings are carefully chosen from all over the country. We also feature seasonal fillings.

Check out their site for yourselves and next time you are in Tokyo maybe pay them a visit, if you can get in, as their popularity will surely rise.

http://www.onigiriyadoroku.com/english.html

Everywhere you go in the hustle and bustle of Tokyo and around Japan you are bound to, at one point of your day be offered a small pack of tissues by a complete stranger near a train station.

During the winter months this can prove to be very handy especially if the cold temperatures have given you the sniffles. So who are these tissue people who save the noses of passers-by every single day?

Well they are not just generous strangers….there is another motive to their actions. If you take a closer look at the tissues they have an advertising insert in the clear packaging, companies like travel agencies, consumer finance companies, fitness clubs, optical chains, banks and drinking spots and restaurants use these tissues as an alternative to distributing leaflets.

Over 4 Billion of these tissues are handed out yearly throughout the country! So why tissues I here you ask?

Well if you think about it the answers pretty clever. If you are handed a leaflet the chances are you might just toss it away without even looking at it. So what is something you are likely to keep in your bag or pocket and look at regularly, tissues!

In Japan, tissue-marketing is a proven and inexpensive way to advertise. For a cost of as little as ¥10 to ¥25 you can get your message directly into the hands of potential customers. What’s more, consumers who accept the tissues are likely to actually read your advertisement every time they open the pack and if you’re lucky, they’ll look it over several times before the tissues are used up. Up to 75% of people are said to accept these free tissues if offered, that’s a huge amount of people.

So many of these tissues are handed out on a daily basis that the market in stores for pocket tissues is virtually non-existent.

So there you go, yet another ingenious idea from Japan. Also very handy for your runny nose!

CAMPFIRE is the biggest crowdfunding platform in Japan.

https://camp-fire.jp/

You can find variety of projects such as art, music, fashion, anime, game, technology, food, sports, business and so on. Just looking through the project pages is fun and exciting.

Over 11,000 projects have been posted so far, the number of patrons (supporters to the project) has reached 440,000 and the total distribution reached 4.4 billion yen since its launch in 2011.

Their mission is to “Democratize financing, and make it easier for anyone anywhere to make their voice heard.”

One of the good systems is “STARted” – online apparel factory that anyone can launch original apparel brand with its database of sewing factories, patterners, and processing factories same as well-known brands.  You need only uploading rough sketches and answering questions on the internet, then can create and sell original items. The lot starts from one to tens of thousands.

https://started.jp/

Juju Noda grabbed a racing car handle at 3, and now she is the world’s first primary school student to drive an FIA-sanctioned Formula 4 race car at race speed. And she broke lap records.

She is the youngest racing driver in Japan to have signed a professional racer contract with a sponsor MIKI HOUSE, long-established child apparel brand.

Her father is ex-F1 and ex-Indycar racer, Hideki Noda who runs NODA RACING ACADEMY HIGH SCHOOL in Okayama prefecture. He teaches her a few times a week in Okayama international circuit, watching her driving in the control tower.

She drives for a big dream that she becomes the first ever woman F1 racer and wins.

Created by designer Nobuhiko Kitamura in 1984, Hysteric Glamour is a Japanese fashion brand based on American casual style and American pop culture from the 1960s to 80s. From rock music, comics, art, pornography to mass products. Kitamura was one of the forerunners to introduce collections that integrated rock music and fashion.

His love of rock and his talent has brought him close to stars such as Sonic Youth, Primal Scream, Patti Smith, and Courtney Love. His artistic sensibility and attraction to vintage pornography and contemporary art is expressed through Hysteric Glamour t-shirts, which have become the forerunner of the brand.

Hysteric glamour make everything from denim, workwear, t-shirts, outdoor wear as well as every accessory imaginable. There are ranges for men, women and children.

They base their designs on vintage pieces and use research and modern craftsmanship to bring the designs to the modern era.

One of the main focus points of the label is its branding, including bold logos and graphic works which make the brand so unique. They continually collaborate with various musicians, artists and other brands such as Playboy, Sex Pistols and Andy Warhol, to name a few.

There are currently around 50 stores in Japan in areas like Harajuku, Aoyama, Shibuya and Shinjuku. International stores exist in Hong Kong, London and Paris, although there are no stores in the United States.

I personally love the brand but it is not cheap! With t-shirts starting at around $200nz it’s a bit pricey but the items are unique and great quality so defiantly nice to own a few items and browse their website once in a while.

Check out the link below

https://www.hystericglamour.jp/

Like all things in the world nowadays, us as humans like convenience and gadgets so what’s more convenient and futuristic that your sushi being delivered….by a robot!

As we know, Japan loves all things robot and so the geniuses at Tokyo based robotics firm ZMP have put their minds together and come up with the CarriRo Delivery Unit. Standing at one metre tall, the CarriRo Delivery is built to autonomously navigate pedestrian walkways through the use of cameras and laser sensors at a speed of up to 6 KM (3.73 miles) per hour, roughly as fast as a briskly striding human.

It comes armed with headlights for them late night munchies and can carry enough food to feed around 60 hungry people.

ZMP has joined forces with Ride on Express, a multi divisional food delivery service, which includes popular sushi from Gin no Sara, so from next month the fun looking robots could be bringing your lovely sushi direct to you.

Unfortunately……..

Currently, legislation is still hazy on the legality of autonomous robots operating on public sidewalks. So although the CarriRo Delivery can be monitored and controlled remotely by human operators, for the robots initial assignment its use will be limited to private property such as office parks and other non-sidewalk areas. If all goes well, though, ZMP hopes to have its robots moving among pedestrians on regular sidewalks in the near future.

At the end of last year it was announced that Spanish footballing giants Barcelona has struck a deal worth an estimated $60mllion(US) a year with Rakuten to sponsor their Jerseys for the next 4 years.

“This agreement puts us at the forefront of sports club sponsorships, which has always been an objective for the current board of directors,” said the Barcelona president Josep Maria Bartomeu.

He added that negotiations began in 2015 at a dinner in San Francisco organised by defender Gerard Pique, who is a friend of Hiroshi Mikitani, the chairman and chief executive of Rakuten.

Rakuten is Japan’s biggest e-commerce firm and employs more than 13,000 staff in Japan, with a turnover of nearly £15bn in the first nine months of 2016

It already owns the J-League club Vissel Kobe and baseball club Tohoku Rakuten Golden Eagles.

The deal took effect on July 1 but hundreds gathered at the firm’s Rakuten Crimson House headquarters in Tokyo to greet a Barcelona delegation that included five-time world player of the year Lionel Messi and Brazilian superstar Neymar.

“I’m excited to be able to start this partnership and we want to take the two titles — La Liga and the Champions League,” said Rakuten CEO Hiroshi Mikitani. “This is a very special team and a special opportunity.”

The new shirt has also been released to be worn from this season as Rakutan become only the second ever commercial sponsor to appear on the famous red and blue stripes

NITORI Holdings sales increased by 12% to ¥ 512.9 billion in the fiscal year ended February 2017, and operating income increased by 17% to ¥ 85.7 billion, achieving 30 consecutive terms of higher revenue and earnings. This operating profit margin 20% is more than double of UNIQLO. Now they set up stores in Taiwan rather than in all prefectures in Japan.

In April 15, it opened a department store “Plantan Ginza (now · Maronie gate Ginza)” in Ginza, Tokyo. It is the first time to open a shop in the Ginza area, as NITORI had been recognised as affordable furniture brand. However this opening is welcomed by 20s and 30s who are looking for good quality products with cheap prices in city centre.

NITORI have operated the robot warehouse “Auto Store” at the mail order shipping center of Home Logistics. This introduction is the first in Japan. The work efficiency improved by 3.75 times, and the inventory area was reduced by 40%!

MUJI (Ryohin Keikaku)  also showed double-digit growth, with operating revenues (sales) rising 8% to 33.3 billion yen, and operating income up 11% to 38.3 billion yen.

MUJI, originally founded in Japan in 1980, offers a wide variety of good quality products
including household goods, apparel and food.
Mujirushi Ryohin, MUJI in Japanese, translates as “no-brand quality goods.” The super minimal products have been stably popular since its foundation. They have created over 7000 products so far. Now their challenging and innovative products got many of hit-sellers.

“Sofa that spoil people” (fits your body)

Since 2000 MUJI has produced HOUSE itself too. It’s today’s “Japanese house” that they have examined every little activity in our lives. One of their unique approaches is, in accordance with the growth of children and lifestyle changes, it is possible to change the space freely, easily, and using the partition walls.

For the closest shop from NZ, in Australia, there are 3 MUJI shops. You can feel MUJI there.

http://www.muji.com/au/

Yoshifumi Suzuki is managing director of Finedays International NZ, a company that organizes educational tours for Japanese students who would like to study in New Zealand.

After graduating from a Japanese university in Tokyo, Yoshifumi worked for JTB, a major Japanese travel agent. He had spent a year in New Zealand on working holiday while at university and always meant to come back. After getting married and having his first daughter he had a strong desire to bring up his children in New Zealand and his wife agreed.

After working for JTB New Zealand and then for a company specialized in educational tours to learn about the industry, he set up Finedays Internatioanl NZ.

The company currently deals with groups of intermediate and high school students from mostly private schools in Japan, sometimes organized by local governments. The company works as a coordinator between Japan and New Zealand schools, host families and local coordinators.

Yoshifumi finds it important to balance the expectation of Japanese students and the reality of New Zealand, such as the ethnic diversity of host families. The work needs a lot of preparation and communication with related people. Yoshifumi says, ‘anyone can start this business with no capital but it is hard to continue without human capital.’

Yoshifumi’s goal is not to expand the business but to better the quality of its service with higher satisfaction for both students and host schools and families. Yoshifumi would like to increase the number of Japanese fans of New Zealand by students returning home with good memories. In the future, the company plans to take care of individual students who would like to come back and study long term.

His first daughter who moved to New Zealand when she was six months old is now 14, and his second daughter who was born here is now 7 years old. Yoshifumi appreciates the way they are growing up here, saying “They are free and relaxed.” The bonus, he believes, is that they are very close to their father, as he can spend a lot of time with his family. They often visit free events together. “This country is family-oriented, and that’s exactly what I wanted.”

Last year the Meisho series from Tamashii Nation released the highly successful range of Star Wars Manga Realization figures, featuring unique Feudal Japan interpretations of classic star wars characters that included Samurai Taisho Darth Vader and Ronin Boba Fett.

I personally love these figures and purchased the Darth Vader on my trip to Japan last year. I particularly like the Lightsabre Katana!

Now, released this year, it’s the time for the Marvel universe to get the Japanese makeover, starting with Samurai Spiderman, featuring interchangeable hands, Japanese Katana’s and a Kaginawa web hook.

Next up due for release in Feburary 2017 is Samurai Iron Man featuring a steam punk style jet pack and flintlock rifle-esque cannons instead of hand repulsors.

Final the latest announcement for the Feudal makeover is Captain America, with pretty awesome looking shield and original blue and red coloured Samurai armour and helmet.

I’m sure more will be announced in the coming months and prices should be around 9500Yen. I think Samurai Hulk would be pretty unique!