Introducing Fugu, the JapanTown Healthy Food & Green Festival Mascot!

This year's Healthy Food and Green Festival's mascot is Fugu the Pufferfish. Fugu's slogan is "メタボ?" ("Metabo?"), which essentially means "are you healthy?" Metabo is also short for metabolic syndrome, a term for a group of medical complications that together increase the risk of heart disease and diabetes. One of the risk factors of metabolic syndrome is obesity, which is what Fugu has. Fugu's job is to remind everyone to eat healthy to avoid health-related illnesses.

A Gyoza That's Both Healthy & Green

Here's another product that perfectly fits our theme of Healthy Food & Green: Ajinomoto's Edamame Vegetable Gyoza, featuring a green vegetable wrapper stuffed with edamame, green beans, yellow carrots and red bell peppers. Steamed, boiled, or pan fried, these gyoza (dumplings), make a healthy meal and even an colorful party appetizer. Edamame Vegetable Gyoza can be found in the frozen food section in supermarkets. Look out for this new product at the JapanTown Healthy Foods & Green Festival. We hope you'll stop by to try them out!

And the Winner of the JapanTown Cool Japan Fashion Contest is...

Now for the moment you have all been waiting for: the winner of the JapanTown Cool Japan Fashion Contest is...Paloma L.! She will receive a round trip ticket to Japan through American Airlines. Congrats, Paloma!

The winner, Paloma L., is dressed in Decora-kei style

Official press release! Our next festival, the Healthy Food & Green Festival, invigorates Midtown New York on August 22nd! Come and discover the tasty good-for-you Japanese eats you probably never had before. This festival features unique Japanese foods that promote your health, organic ingredients, and sustainable products. You'll some interesting foods you'll find are hiyashi chuuka (a Japanese cold noodle dish), kukicha (tea stem tea), and Ryokko Aojiru (a health drink). There will also be demonstrations on how to use select Japanese ingredients in your everyday life. Some sponsors who specialize in healthy products have also joined this festival, such as Marukome, Asahi Ryokuken, Kikkoman, and Ito En. Stay tuned to find out more about the world of unique Japanese foods, our sponsors, vendors and their delicious healthy products!

Drink to Your Health with Ryokko Aojiru

Asahi Ryokuken Co. is a Japanese company that specializes in the famous Ryokko Aojiru health drink made primarily from powdered young organic barley grass. Aojiru, a drink that has been around in Japan for ages, is a commonly prescribed nutritional supplement in Japan.

Ryokko Aojiru is good for you for several reasons. First, its unique combination of vitamins and nutrients helps prevent the absorption of cholesterol. It also includes lactic bacteria to improve digestion. Ryokko Aojiru's powder can be added to any beverage, or even food (they recommend adding it to yogurt, or even pancakes for kids!) It is also a safe, easy way to maintain a nutrient-rich diet during pregnancy.

Since 1997, Ryokko Aojiru has been developed in a complex, state-of-the-art method; it's extremely thorough quality

control process makes sure you bring home a safe, high-quality drink. Check out the link for pictures and videos of the entire process. It looks like they are working in a space station! You can also order one free sample to try out or taste the evolved form of an age-old recipe at JapanTown's Healthy Food and Green Festival!

Souen, a Macrobiotic Oasis

I have a confession to make. When I was tasked to review Souen and I heard that it's all about macrobiotic food, I imagined that I would probably deep-fry some sausages in beer batter and drink hot sauce as compensation afterward, because I live on highly processed eats laced with chemicals.

I exaggerate. I'm generally a healthy eater, but I'm just not into any faddish health movements. Once we stepped through Souen's doors and into its intimate, calming, spa-like restaurant, however, all thoughts of seeking a tasty heart attack fled my mind.

Squid Hunt Fiasco

Many apologies to the contestants of the recent scandalous Squid Hunt. This is David (the L), who's running this contest. My view for the JapanTown FB wall is by default set to the "JapanTown Festival" filter. We didn't specify where exactly to post the galleries, which resulted in posts all over the page. After looking at the page hundreds of times, the other filters simply melt into the background, which resulted in me accidentally ignoring the "Just Others" link. We didn't expect it to be so complicated on Facebook! (Yikes!) We sincerely apologize for any inconvenience and all bad feelings associated with this fiasco and I hope everyone understands that this is an honest mistake. I promise that any future events will have a much simpler system. Congrats to Vicky, the true winner of the Squid Hunt!

Squid Hunt

The winner for the Cool Japan Festival Squid Hunt is...Jesus Huero! Congrats for getting it up first on our Facebook page. Jesus wins a $50 gift certificate to Kinokuniya.  It was a close competition, with only a two-minute difference between the first and second entries. Thanks to everyone who participated! It wouldn't have been fun without you all.

At the festival, many people and people of all ages were searching for the missing squids; we saw everyone from toddlers to adults taking pictures of them.

This event was unfortunately not without tragedy, as two of the squids got lost at different points during the festival. They were duly recovered, and traumatized with their squishy squid feelings, they sought refuge. One clung nearby one of his Fugu (puffer fish) accomplice friends, and the other decided to latch himself and his "L" onto a JapanTown team member! Additionally, we're aware of some people's confusion in posting, and in our next contests, we will be clearer in our instructions to post. We'd like to thank all of the diligent participants again for their enthusiasm in this activity.

The JapanTown Fashion Contest Photos are Up!

The JapanTown Cool Japan Fashion Contest was a huge success! Thanks to all of the fabulous contestants. About 100 people participated dressed in everything from cosplay to yukata to just plain weird. We got a waiter from Ippudo who showed up in his uniform, a bird, a geisha, and a few who didn't even try. Overall, the turnout was great and it's a hard decision for the judges! Yes, we are still waiting for their verdicts, but while they decide, which ones are your favorites and why? Add your comment in the Flickr set!

Additionally, the JapanTown Fashion Contestants had such great outfits that they caught the interest of the New York Times' Fashion & Style editors! Check out the slideshow here.

Recap of the JapanTown Cool Japan Festival

Yatta! Congratulations and thank you to everyone for a very successful Cool Japan Festival last Saturday! From the International Shinto Foundation's morning blessings of the event, the Cool Japan Festival promised to be a hit. (Apologies for the delay in this post! The JapanTown team had a lot of post-festival things to sort out and several of us had been preparing for a business trip to Japan.)

The International Shinto Foundation's "shine tent" was certainly a fan favorite. There were three shinto priests who taught visitors omairi, the proper ritual involved in visiting a shrine. You actually don't need to be Shinto to visit one. Many people were curious about the ISF's setup; they had a thick suzu (bell) rope hanging in the middle of the tent, a saisen bako (offeratory box), many omikuji (fortune telling paper slips) tied on bamboo, and a beautiful, intricate mikoshi (portable shrine). The actual procedure is a series of bell ringings, clapping, and bowing, which was an interesting cultural experience. Additionally, please note that the ISF is not a religious organization aiming to propagate Shinto. Most people in Japan are either Shinto or Buddhists, and the ISF represented this aspect Japanese culture.

Another favorite was Dr. Robot! If you aren't familiar, Dr. Robot was offering fun-filled robot throwdowns. We were able to snag this video of a duel between to enthusiastic robot wrestlers. Dr. Robot is Kenshiro Oshima, an engineer who has made it his mission to teach kids science and math through hands-on learning by building basic robots. At the festival, he taught kids how they worked and then invited them to pit the robots against each other.

We also got a lot of interest in the Seikou Shodo Group, which translated visitors' names into Japanese and then drew them in traditional Japanese calligraphy. Jassi also taught people how origami for free.

Other highlights of the festival were beautiful accessories from Kiteya, kawaii products and modern handbags from Rikumo, masks and t-shirts, anime merchandise from Anime Castle,

Of course, we must mention Reni Mimura's Cosplay Cafe, one of the main attractions of the Cool Japan Festival. It was impossible to miss her because she was just too bubbly and cute, dressed in a ruffly blue maid outfit and always encircled by an entourage of smiley backup dancers. When she wasn't singing , she personally greeted her fans while her posse danced, creating a show for the crowd and sold pastries in her "cafe."

The Squid Hunt was a bit hit! It was fascinated us to see people of all ages searching for the squids; we saw everyone from toddlers to adults roaming the festival and taking pictures of them. And yes, we finally got a winner and will announce it once we get all our information.

We have to say the one of our favorite parts was overhearing a passerby saying, "Wow, there's a lot of Asians here!" Ha! On a related note, one aspect of the festival that surprised me was the diversity of our guests, represented best by the fashion contest. We will put up a new page of all the fabulous contestants shortly. The judges are making their decision and will have an answer soon, so thanks for your patience!

Since we had already sampled most of the restaurants featured at the Festival, my goal was to taste the dishes I hadn't already tried. We would have to say that our top recommendation is the Black Sesame Ice Cream from Zaiya, an intensely satisfying combination of smoky roasted sesame seeds and sweet vanilla ice cream.

All in all, the Cool Japan Festival turned out to be hugely popular and fun. The whole JapanTown Team agreed that the event was enormously successful. What did you think of it? We'd like to humbly thank all of our sponsors, vendors and attendees for making this possible, and we hope everyone will rejoin us for our Healthy Food & Green Festival. Here's to August 22nd!