McDonald's Squid and Tomato Italian Risotto Balls (product information)

Image from McDonald's Japan

I have never wanted to put quotes around something as much as the word "Italian" in the title of this post. I'm sure that there is nothing Italian about wrapping risotto infused with either tomato or squid around cheese and deep frying it. This abomination is part of McDonald's way of celebrating one of the world's most popular sports. There is no greater way to tip your hat to feats of athleticism than to eat fried balls of cheese and risotto. 

McDonald's Salt Caramel and Mango Passion Orange McFlurry (product announcement)

When I was growing up, McDonald's had two ice cream options. You could have a shake or a pathetic little sundae made up of vanilla ice cream and some anemic chocolate sauce. Because I am not a fan of any fast food, and less of a fan of the golden arches than most other types of said cuisine, I hadn't really noticed the whole "McFlurry" business. I have a hazy recollection of when they were introduced and that they were either a collaboration with Dairy Queen or a rip-off of their "Blizzard" concept, but that's pretty much it. I've never had one in either Japan or America, but every nerve in my Spidey sense says they are probably pretty sweet.

The specimens above are new McFlurry flavors - salt caramel (252 calories) and a mixture of mango, passion fruit and orange (230 calories). If someone were to force feed me one of these, I'd go for the fruity one, though I have to say that the salt caramel one could be intriguing. The funny thing about these is not the flavors. Though they are somewhat unusual, the whole salty sweets thing has been a big fad for years now (it was in force when I left in March 2012) and passion fruit is the only slightly uncommon element in the fruit one. The bizarre thing is that McDonald's plans to offer these only between 10:30 a.m. and 1:00 p.m. It strikes me as weird that they'd choose such a time period as it makes these seem more like "brunch" options than a sweet treat. Personally, I think offering them from 1:00-4:00 would have been a better choice, but I'm guessing this limit is based on the effort and time it takes to make them than when consumer demand might be highest.

McDonald's Avocado Burgers (product information)

When I was 19 years old, I decided to stop eating beef and pork. That put a whole world of food out of my reach because, back in those days, most people didn't eat chicken unless they were too poor for beef or it came fried in a bucket and turkey as a mainstay of regular eating hadn't yet become a part of the American food culture. I know this because I listened to my 22-year-old self on an ancient tape (1987) tell my future husband (then merely a pen pal) about turkey burgers. He had no experience with those tubes of ground turkey that I was then using as a way of substituting for cheeseburgers. I recall very well that they were not only lower in calories and tastier (at least in my estimation), but also much cheaper. Oh, how things have changed... these days, if it is leaner, healthier, and better for you, it is more expensive. Taste no longer rules the roost when it comes to cost.

The prices of avocados are going up due to drought and I guess random needs to charge more for sources of healthy fat and highly nutritious food. I don't know if avocados were cheap 27 years ago, but I'm betting they weren't nearly as popular nor as valued. All I know is that they are now $2 each when they were a dollar each or less two years ago. In light of this, it seems odd that McDonald's is offering avocado burgers. Of course, I believe those generous chunks of avocado as seen on the picture above are a big, fat lie, but they'll have to make it noticeable if they're going to live up to the name.

There are three choices of burger: beef with bacon, onion, cheddar and wasabi; fried chicken with cheddar cheese and what they call a "Cobb salad" sauce which includes coriander, chili and black pepper; a fried shrimp patty with the same Cobb salad sauce (no cheese). Each burger comes on a ciabatta roll which I'm sure will be as fresh and tasty as if it had come from an Italian bakery. 

McDonald's Happy Set Toys (product information)

I occasionally read advice columns to see what sort of problems people feel they need third-party assistance with. Often, it's something along the lines of someone has been invited to a wedding that includes a shake-down for cash rather than allowing them to just buy a gift and do they have the Agony Auntie's permission to not pony up some dough. Of course, all of them say "there, there, you don't have to capitulate to this emotional blackmail for money."

At any rate, one of the more interesting letters was from a woman who ran a playgroup and had a nanny who was stopping a little boy from playing with the "girl's" toys like dolls, plastic ponies and unicorns, and, er... tampons, or whatever little girls play with these days. I wasn't a girly girl when I grew up so I'm not sure what they tend to pay attention to. At any rate, the playgroup's organizer wanted to tell the nanny to stop being so gender-biases and let the little boy play with whatever he wanted to fondle. When I saw these two starkly different sets of toys, I was thinking this is exactly the sort of thing that would get those two women fighting.

The gender lines for these sets is pretty clear. Boys are supposed to be drawn the Ultraman set on the left and girls to the Aikatsu goods on the right. The colors alone tell the story of what little boys and girls should choose, but the dainty, frilly accessories also indicate clearly that the Aikatsu junk is for the set which will one day be sashaying around an office trying to attract a suitable breadwinner for her family. After all, what is all that plastic jewelry for if not to draw attention to oneself?

The boys, apparently, are supposed to content themselves with superhero torsos on little plastic bases. I think they'd actually have more fun putting on the headbands and singing into the microphone. How can you role play superheros when they don't have a pelvis or legs?

These items became available on April 18 (duh, as you can see by the ad). If you'd like your kids to either embrace or reject gender lines, get out there and buy them some Happy Sets and collect suitable plastic crap.

McDonald's Japan's "Big" (and even bigger) Breakfasts (product information)

It's interesting to see McDonald's Japan offering a "Big Breakfast" (available until 10:30 a.m. where available) because my impression of the sorts of "traditional" Japanese breakfast that I keep reading about on the internet but rarely heard anyone eat is that they are actually pretty "big". If you haven't read about it, we Western folks are told that Japanese people eat rice, fish, and miso soup for breakfat. To us, that's dinner, but there was a time when that was the common deal in Japan. Most of my students told me that ate "bread" (i.e., toast or a bun of some sort) with tea or coffee and sometimes some sort of cup-a-soup (like corn potage).

So, the idea that the breakfast on offer at McDonald's are "big" compared to what we're told Japanese eat is a strange one. It's only big compared to what my former students and I tended to eat because I'm with them in this regard - coffee and some sort of baked item is the norm.

Getting to the point though, I think it's interesting to note what passes for "big" in Japanese marketing. There are actually two versions. The one I'd term "big" is scrambled egg product, a sausage patty, an English muffin with available packets of jam, and a hash brown. To a great extent, this appears to be a deconstructed Egg McMuffin plus a hash brown. The "bigger" version (marketed as "deluxe" in Japan) also includes a couple of pancakes.

The deluxe will provide you with 934 calories of power to start your day being shoved on crowded trains, hiking to the office, and pushing papers around and nodding and saying "hai" ("yes") to everything the boss suggests. This is quite a wallop considering that Denny's grand slam (original) is a punier 770 calories for 3 eggs with cheese, two bits of bacon or sausage, and your choice of hash browns, bread, or grits. 

The big one is a more meager 628 calories. I guess that's the daintier version - perhaps more appropriate for the office lady crowd. My breakfast tends to be between 200-300 calories total, so I have to say that McDonald's does appear to be delivering on bigness, at least in terms of caloric load.

McDonald's Sakura Burger

Recently, I conducted a Skype lesson with one of my former face to face students from Japan. She pointed out to me that my picture for Skype was the McDonald's Sakura burger. I told her that it was an ancient picture that I really should change. The reason I put it up there was that I had the picture on my desktop, likely for this blog (though I think I never used it). My student pointed out that this burger was being re-released, so I checked it out and, it is back (released March 21).

The burger is supposed to have a "faint cherry scent" and you can see that the bun has some pink in it. The meat is a pork patty and it includes teriyaki sauce and an egg (it's called sakura teri tama - cherry teriyaki egg). The sauce is mayonnaise based and also includes ginger. Frankly, it all sounds like a real mess of flavors which probably don't have a good chance of meshing. I wouldn't touch this burger with a ten-foot-pole, but then I wouldn't touch any fast food burger. If you give this a try, let me know if all of the flavors play nice together.

McDonald's American Funky BBQ Beef and Chicken Burgers (product information)

I have to admit that I've resisted posting about this release because it's almost too easy to talk about McDonald's "American Vintage" releases. I'm never sure of what makes them more "American Vintage" than the original Big Mac. I'm thinking that it's the fact that old-fashioned cartoon figures are used to promote them. While Roy Lichtenstein might be impressed, or he would be if he hadn't already gone to the great art studio in the sky in 1997, I think that "vintage" should mean they're cracking open old bottles of barbeque sauce from the 1980's and slathering that on the burgers. Of course, they may actually be doing that since the sauce is "funky".

As you can see by the carefully staged pictures, the beef comes with bacon, two patties, pickles, cheese, and lettuce with cheese. The chicken is a simpler affair with a fried chicken patty, lettuce, and cheese. Of course, both have the "vintage" sauce. People who have sampled these have mentioned that the chicken is very crispy and that the cheddar cheese on the burgers is pretty nice. Most like the barbeque sauce, but a few felt it was too strong or sweet. One even referred to it as "stinky". I'm thinking "caveat emptor". If you've tried one of these, let me know what you thought of it.

This is the sort of thing I wouldn't touch with a ten-foot pole whether I was in Japan or America. In fact, I'm pleased to say I've been McDonald's free for quite a number of years now. That isn't because there is anything wrong with MickeyD's. It's just that I only resort to fast food when I haven't planned my eating well enough for something more nutritious.

McDonald's Chicken Egg McMuffin (product information)

Do your remember making lists of desert island objects when you were a kid? That was what you did before you made lists of desert island songs and books as a teenager. In such lists, you'd think about what you'd need to survive and use those ten items to make a nuclear reactor out of a coconut so that you could live in style in exile.

McToast is sad toast. It's what you'd make at home if you were out of bread and had nothing but stale burger buns to work with.

Sometimes it feels like fast food places are working with the same limits. They have a short list of food stuffs and they keep juggling the mix around to create "new" menu items. This breakfast option from McDonald's Japan feels like a dance card shuffled into the wrong place. It is their fried chicken patty added to an Egg McMuffin. I guess that someone at corporate asked, "what do we have that we haven't swapped into the morning menu?" Still, it's less pathetic than the "McToast" option. That's a burger bun flipped around so that the inside is toasted and filled with ham (Canadian bacon) and cheese.

This probably seems less strange in Japan than it would in America. They already have hot dogs on their regular morning menu there and it is a culture which includes fish and rice as part of its traditional breakfast. To me though, fried chicken, even in the form of a patty of pressed meat, is just "wrong" for breakfast. I'm guessing it's pretty good though if you're hungover, as no small number of businessmen are inclined to be.

McDonald's Happy Set Tom & Jerry or Despicable Me Minions (product information)

If I were a collecting type, I think I'd be going pretty gaga over the "Happy Set" prizes that come with McDonald's kid's meals. They really do look well-designed and better crafted than a lot of the cheap junk that kids get. Fortunately, I am not such a collector so I don't have to buy at least 8 "happy set" meals a month to try and collect them all (not to mention possibly having to trade pieces to complete sets).

The Despicable Me minions are a pretty predictable option since they are very popular right now. I keep seeing crafts including cupcakes and other food items shaped like them. The more curious option is the golden oldie of Tom and Jerry. I didn't know when the cartoon was last in production, but I figured that it was awhile ago. I did a little research and discovered that it's being rebooted by the Cartoon Network, but they're only producing two 11-minute shorts. My guess is that these toys are a cooperative effort between McDonald's and the Cartoon Network (which also airs in Japan) to promote the reboot and generate interest in the series.

Incidentally, when I was in Japan and still had cable, I did run across Tom and Jerry cartoons fairly often on the Cartoon Network during channel surfing. In fact, I don't like the cartoon much so I was always disappointed that it seemed to air so often. I don't know if it was popular or if it was just cheaper to air than other cartoons because licensing fees were lower. I have nothing against the characters. I just love cats and hate to see them repeatedly humiliated by mice (or birds, in the case of Sylvester and Tweety). 

McDonald's Precious Quarter Pounders (product information)

McDonald's launched a campaign in which they are offering burgers named after precious gems and metals throughout July. It started with the "gold ring", a burger featuring a ring of pineapple, bacon, Monterey Jack cheese, and barbecue sauce with 10 spices on a kaiser roll. The more recent release was the "black diamond" which features egg yolk, black truffle sauce, Swiss cheese, and grilled onions and mushrooms on brioche-like bread. On July 20, they'll offer the "ruby spark". This one will feature pepper jack cheese, spicy avocado sauce/spread, jalepeno, and chorizo.

While McDonald's doesn't mention why they've decided to release three designer burgers for a week each, my guess is this is to draw attention to their quarter pounder in general, which was recently reissued in Japan as part of their summer fare.

One interesting thing is the FAQ for these burgers. It has questions that reveal something about Japanese food culture and the lack of sophisticated understanding of various types of cheese. In a country that is largely catered to with plastic-wrapped slices of processed cheese, this is no shocker. One of the question is essentially saying, "why are there holes in my cheese?" The answer is that it is Emmental (Swiss) and that is natural. Another is about how the holes are big in their cheese and the consumer is concerned that they're not getting their fair share. The folks at McDonald's mention that the cheese is portioned by weight, so it doesn't matter how big the holes are.

Personally, I think a better answer to the question of why there are holes in the cheese would be that Ronald got confused with his hole punch and just went a little crazy one day. :-)

McDonald's Pork Tatsuta (product information)

Image from McDonald's Japan

I'm not sure how aware people outside of Japan are of the "chicken tatsuta" which is seasonally available in Japan, but it became so familiar to me that I took it for granted that "everyone" would know what it was. This is akin to my assuming everyone knows what Cap'n Crunch cereal is and how it is regarded and will get jokes about it chewing up the roof of your mouth (and being the most awesome of sugar cereals in the universe).

For those who don't know, this is a common, but inconsistent offering at McDonald's Japan that usually includes a formed chicken patty (formed from what sort of chicken parts, I'm not sure) that is cooked with ginger and served with a special sauce and cabbage. Currently, a special version of the chicken tatsuta has a sauce that includes yuzu (Japanese citron) and daikon (Japanese radish), though regular version of this sandwich just includes some less exotically augmented mayonnaise with ginger and soy sauce.

McDonald's Japan released a variation on this burger on May 31 with pork kicking the venerable chicken version off the bun. The pork version uses an onion ginger sauce and will set you back 506 calories. That's a bit weightier than the 389 for the regular chicken tatsuta and 417 for the special new limited edition version. Most of that is coming from the whopping 33.4 grams of fat in the piggy version (17.4 grams are in the special chicken version). I'm betting it's plenty juicy and tasty, but not necessarily any healthier than a Big Mac which has 30.7 grams of fat and 557 calories. Still, no one is hitting the golden arches because they think it's health food. Eat, drink, and make merry with your fries, for tomorrow, you can diet.

McDonald's Really Wants to Hold Your Potatoes, or other stuff

All images are from McDonald's Japan.

McDonald's Japan is running a Twitter campaign in which they'd like you to tell/show them all of the ways or situations in which one might use their plastic french fry holder. If you can't think of enough uses for it, they've got models to get your creative juices flowing:

You can use it for plastic utensils as you sit outside having a cup of tea.

You can use it as a pencil holder, because it doesn't look so incredibly unstable on its narrow base that it may tip over or anything.

Or you can use it for your cell phone, but I'd recommend not having used it to hold your fries first. Notice how incredibly happy they all are to be adding this decorative object to their tasteful surroundings. 

A bunch of folks on Twitter are tweeting how they would like to use it to get a chance to win. Most of them echo what you're seeing in the pictures with these models. I'm not sure though if this is a chicken or the egg thing where McDonald's put up the pictures after they got the ideas or the tweets are the result of the pictures. Either way, I'm not sure that a plastic container that looks like a carton of fries is worth the brain power to imagine what one might do with it. Of course, being the horribly demented individual that I am, I can think of a lot of perverse uses for it. The most family friendly of which would be a pooper scooper for a small canine, a soap dish, or a planter. I'm pretty sure that I'd only actually entertain the first option if I had one because I'm not really much of a McDonald's fan. I don't want one of those things in my home.

If you want to see the tweets (they're in Japanese though), you can check under this hashtag: #ポテトホルダー

McDonald's campaign and products (product info.)

All images from McDonald's Japan.

One of the things which I find awesome about living in the U.S. is that you can get a lot of stuff for free. I'm not only talking about free samples, though those are actually extremely easy to come by, but full on free products. Starbucks gave away free "refresher" and blonde roast drinks in the "tall" size. One of the big supermarket chains here has given us a ton of freebies because we have their club card (eggs, soda, coffee, etc.). Since the card gives you discounts anyway, they are already in a position to sell our information. Giving us free food as a part of the deal is a bonus.

One of the things I find frustrating in America is that there are many campaigns which give you free stuff, but only if you buy something else. In many cases, it is a large thing like a pizza or a dozen donuts. I don't need a dozen donuts, let alone two dozen donuts. The whole "buy one, get one free" business has been around since I was a child and seems to be a staple of American marketing.

This particular method of encouraging consumption was one that I rarely ran across in Japan. The Japanese, in general, are not lured by the notion of getting more for their money. They are more interested in getting better quality or novelty for their money. In fact, one of the reasons I was told that Costco held little appeal for my acquaintances was that the sizes were too large. Even if they were getting twice as much for the same price as a smaller size elsewhere, they just didn't want the extra stuff around. Value for them generally did not come from getting "more".

It is for this reason that I was surprised to discover that McDonald's is offering a "buy one, get one free" deal on their fries and nuggets. It's not that people don't like the food, as McDonald's is one of the most popular options for lunch in Japan due to its hyper-palatable food (fat and salt, you can't lose) and low prices. It's more the case that an individual wouldn't be able to scarf down that much food in many cases, though there may be some businessmen who would be game to try. I'm guessing that this is the sort of thing that two people would arrange to share rather than one person would take advantage of. 

The curiosity for me in this is wondering why such a marketing campaign is being pursued at this time. While I'm sure these happen on occasion, I never saw one while I was living in Japan. Then again, I very rarely ate fast food. 

Beyond this, there's an Idaho burger on offer. This is the only weird food option at present, and it isn't even all that strange. You can see it's a burger with a hash brown patty and a glob of sauce with whole grain mustard and bacon. Woohoo?

And, just for fun, I thought I'd share the latest crop of toys that a kid (or a child-like adult) can get with a "happy meal". Currently, toys featuring the Japanese kids' cartoon character "Doraemon" are on offer. From left, there is an "air pistol" toy, a magic door which I believe has a scrolling scene in it, light on a cuff bracelet (I think), a propeller head, a small bag, and a sticker dispenser. I should keep track of these toys to see what sorts of things are offered throughout the year. I should, but I'm probably not going to. 

Variety Friday: The McDonald's 60-second campaign

There are a lot of characteristics which, in general, define the Japanese psyche. One of them is their appreciation and value of aesthetics. Often, it is the case that how something looks plays a major role in whether or not it will be purchased. I even complained about how sweets in Japan often look great, but taste less appealing because of this experience. This focus on aesthetics is why you get a lot of wrapping on some purchases and clerks will glacially slowly and painstakingly place things in bags and boxes for you.

There's also a certain expectation among the Japanese that they will get what they see. All of that plastic food outside of shops tends to be amazingly accurate representations of what you are served. Granted, McDonald's is not a "restaurant" in any true sense of the word, but even fast food in Japan tends to look similar to what is in pictures. Perhaps it's all a bit flatter and grayer, but it's not a sloppy mess. Things have apparently changed.

Another fairly well known attribute is patience. Japanese people line up and wait in long queues without pushing, shoving, or complaining. It's not that they are never in a hurry, but rather that they understand that sometimes there's no choice but to wait and the overwhelming majority do so with good grace and stoicism, if not gentle good humor.

Given these fairly well known and oft-displayed characteristics, I have to ask, "what was McDonald's Japan thinking" when they came up with the 60-second campaign. They even put a timer on the counter to allow customers to track the speed of delivery of their order in order to up the capacity to monitor employees. For those who haven't read about it, as of January 4, the golden arches in Japan promised to make your burger in a minute or less or they'd give you a coupon for a free burger (and everyone gets a free brewed coffee coupon). The internet is abuzz with stories of sloppy results and complaints from customers who would rather have things right than fast. 

Before anyone thinks this is a transference of American-style shoddy service to Japan, I'd like to point out that the Japanese run their own show in this regard. One of the reasons why it has been so successful despite offering Western-style cuisine is that the head honchos tend to do a pretty good job when it comes to tapering menu choices and marketing toward Japanese people. They retool the shakes so they are less sweet but fattier. They offer limited edition seasonal menu items that fit the ebb and flow of tastes in Japan (like sakura shakes in spring). The people in charge are not dumb. They know their market and generally make good choices. So, what is this all about?

Though I cannot know, I have some suspicions and they are based on the growth strategies that McDonald's Japan is emphasizing. One of their goals for the coming year is to create a "gold standard" for drive-through service and to optimize profits by focusing on larger operations. While I cannot know for certain, it's not too great of a leap in logic to believe that faster service is a part of both of these plans. McDonald's has been and plans to continue to strategically close smaller places and focus on larger ones. If you were going into such a big fast food joint and saw a long line, wouldn't you be more inclined to wait during your limited lunch hour if you had confidence that each customer could be served in a minute? You could literally count how long you'd have to wait. The same goes for the drive-through service. 

I think this campaign was about two things, and I'm pretty sure it isn't going to succeed on either front. One was training staff to push themselves to the limit on speed during peak service hours (note that the campaign operates between 11:00 am and 2:00 pm, prime lunch hour range for most people). The other possible goal would be to create confidence in consumers that they would get served promptly and well during rush hours even if they were at a location that was somewhat swamped with customers. 

Besides focusing on the drive-through business and eliminating small stores in favor of larger ones, McDonald's plans on acquiring prime real estate in areas with a high commercial promise. It makes sense to assume that they hope to buy a good chunk of land in an area which has a high potential for massive numbers of customers and to erect large shops there. This makes fiscal sense because small places serving under-patronized areas can't be nearly as profitable. However, we all know that the little places tend to give better service, both in terms of quality and speed, because employees aren't harried and swamped. Once again, one can speculate that this campaign could work as a warm up for service at very large new locations. 

It's also possible that this is as stupid and ill-advised as it looks. Perhaps this is just a PR campaign which someone concocted for some quick attention without regard to the Japanese market's concerns or the insane pressure it would put on employees. It's also possible that the management bigwigs at McDonald's Japan are just too clever for the rest of this and they  have an ace up their sleeve that will pull all of this together into a happy ending. I guess time will tell. 

BK's Black Burger and McDonald's KitKat Strawberry Flurry (Product Info.)

There are two things to mention today. One is that, on Friday, September 28, Burger King is offering a limited edition burger with a black bun. This has been mentioned in a lot of other news outlets that are far bigger than my blog so I don't want that to be the only focus of this post. The burger is to bring attention to the fact that it is Burger King's 5th anniversary in Japan. The thing is, it's not really their 5th anniversary. Burger King was in Japan far earlier, but they failed and disappeared then returned. They opened their first business in 1982 and closed in 2001, so this celebrates the last 5 successful years from 2007-2012. It's a little like Liz Taylor's two marriages to Richard Burton and pretending the first time never happened.

Image taken from Burger King Japan's press release on their web site.

The burger's bun is black because it has been mixed with squid ink. I'm sure that'll get your mouths watering. There is also something about bamboo charcoal being used to bring out the flavor of the burger and the bun. Some outlets are mistakenly reporting that the buns are black because of the charcoal, but I think that's a mistake as they'd have to be burned to a crisp to be so black due to any sort of cooking. There's also paprika as part of the flavor profile.

If I were still in Japan, I wouldn't touch this with a 10-foot pole because I don't eat beef. My husband probably would have tried it, but I'm guessing even he might have been put off by the notion of squid ink in his food. I'm sure that it's far less disgusting than it sounds, but it sounds fairly gross. Anyway, by the time you read this, the burger will be finished since it'll only be available in limited quantities for one day.

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Image taken from McDonald's web site.

On the side of BK's rival, McDonald's, there is a somewhat more compelling item. They're selling a "MacFlurry" which is blended with strawberry sauce and little bits of KitKat. I don't know if it is a coincidence, but this is being released on the same day as the black burger (September 28). It's available for 230 yen ($3.07) from 10:30 am and can't be had at all shops, but it will be around for longer than a single day.

The image makes it appear that the bits of KitKat are actually pretty tiny. This isn't surprising since too much candy in it would make the result too sweet for Japanese tastes. The big focus is on the strawberry sauce. If anyone in Japan gives this a try, I'd be curious about the sweetness level and the textural aspects. It seems like very little of the wafers would come through with such specks of KitKat as shown here.

McDonald's Japan International Burgers (product info.)

I'm on the fence about how I feel about fast food places incorporating what appear to be higher class ingredients into their offerings. On the one hand, it's kind of nice that they want to mix things up a bit. On the other, they almost always dumb things down in such a way that they're not really all that one might expect. I've read far too many reviews of sauces which are little more than mayonnaise mixed with some core ingredient to simulate an international flavor without straying too far from what a pedestrian palate will tolerate. We want our fast food to be only marginally more interesting than what we're used to because nobody goes to McDonald's for adventurous cuisine, not even the Japanese, who generally will tolerate a wider flavor range than the average American. 

In the case of McDonald's international burger options, they're offering the following:

All images from the McDonald's Japan web site.

Le Grand Tomato:

A beef patty on ciabatta bread (which is Italian, not French, right?) with mozzarella cheese (again, Italian), gravy, butter sauce, lettuce and tomato. This burger seems slightly more on the international side, or at least it suffers from a bit of a nationality identity crisis.

Le Gran Sausage:

A beef patty on ciabatta bread with mozzarella, mustard sauce, and sausage (German?) with the requisite lettuce and tomato.

These sandwiches are currently available and were introduced on July 18. 

Hot Gold Masala:

A bun topped with cornmeal houses a crispy chicken patty with tomato, lettuce, onion, cheese, and a spicy curry sauce.

Mild Gold Masala:

This is the same bun with a mild curry sauce flavored with honey and a mayo chutney. What was that I said about the special sauces just being something mixed with mayo?  However, McDonald's recommends this for chili wusses. (These sandwiches haven't been introduced yet and will be available from August 2.)

Aussie Deli:

Aussie beef pastrami on a bun that has been steamed to plump it up. Yellow mustard, possibly with stone ground seeds, is added to boost the flavor profile.

Cheese Aussie Deli:
The same as the aforementioned sandwich, but, with, you know, a slice of cheese. (These sandwiches haven't been introduced yet and will be available from August 3.)

Chicken nuggets with basil sauce:

Your favorite chicken-like product with mayonnaise mixed with basil. (Introduced on July 18 and currently available.)

Chicken nuggets with curry sauce:

And the same thing mixed with curry. I must admit that I would actually buy this if they served the nuggets on a silver tray as pictured here. (To be introduced in August)

Any time that an international version of any food is introduced, it's a reflection of a foreign country's perception of another country's cuisine as well as their own tastes. In America, anything labeled "French" which is not a fry would be served on a croissant or a baguette. In Japan, I'm guessing ciabatta bread is the closest they can come to something which isn't a regular burger bun which is easy to store and handle (and cheap to produce). The inclusion of sausage and mozzarella cheese on the French sandwich mystifies me, but I am a dumb American with little exposure to true French cuisine. It's all butter, long loaves of crusty goodness, cold potato soup, and pastries to me. For all I know, mozzarella is the national cheese of France (though I would've expected it to be brie) and they are sausage sucking fiends (read into that what you like).

The Australian option reminds me of Arby's, except without the American beef option. As I've mentioned before, the whole mad cow scare was amplified to the point where the dial was definitely at "11" in Japan so the local consumers don't feel comfortable with cows that were born in the U.S.A. The Fukushima situation has them none too thrilled with the idea of native beef, but they have strong confidence in not being somehow poisoned by cows that like to add a "y" to the end of most of their words (choccy, prezzy, grundies, etc.).

All in all, I would not be compelled to buy fast food because of these new options, though if I already had a hankering for something, I might try one of these out. If I were even slightly tempted, I'd want to try the hot gold masala, if only because it sounds like slang for a disgusting sex act. ;-)

Variety Friday: Happy Meals in Japan

The offerings for Happy Meals toys in Japan at this time cater to both cute-o-philes and car lovers. All images pilfered from McDonald's Japan's web site. 

There has been a lot of hand-wringing and teeth-gnashing in the United States over the past decade or so about nutrition. The devil in most cases is luring you beneath the yellow arches and trying to convince you to inflate your belly and clog your arteries with his salty, fatty patties and starchy fried sticks of death. Nowhere is there more concern than when it comes to what is marketed toward children and what their parents purchase for them. Won't somebody please think of the children!

In America, the way in which the children have been thought of has encompassed a variety of changes at McDonald's including offering sliced apples instead of fries and soda being replaced by milk (low-fat, naturally). For reasons that I'm sure are logical to people who actually have children, they also decided that toys had to be taken out of American Happy Meals. Perhaps, they want to be sure that kids aren't nearly as happy as they could be about a Happy Meal and are therefore less likely to want one. Certainly, no one thinks that the toys are making kids fat, do they? Well, maybe they do. Sometimes the logic of some people escapes me and, for all I know, plastic crap made in China may be transmitting contact calories.

I had several discussions with various Japanese people with children about food at McDonald's and the "Happy Meals" in particular. Incidentally, "Happy Meals" are called a "Happy Set" in Japan. By no means are the people i spoke with a representative sample of parents and their opinions of McDonald's food or the inclusion of toys with said sets. However, the fact that the toys were displayed prominently in front of my local Mickey D's for years would seem to be an anecdotal indication that there wasn't a public outcry against using them to market fast food to innocents. 

As for what my conversations seemed to reveal, not one person felt that toys were the proverbial apple leading children out of the gustatory Eden of traditional Japanese cuisine. While they did believe that the toys may make kids want to buy the meals in order to get the toys, they said that it was the parents responsibility to make a choice about what to do. In fact, they said that, if they wanted the toys for the kids, they could simply buy the food to get the toy and throw the food away if they were so worried about the nutritional content of fast food. Indeed, many of the parents felt the kids weren't all that interested in the food in many cases anyway.

Menu options for a "happy set" in Japan. Click to see a larger, more legible version. 

The usual "happy set" in Japan does not offer the same "healthy" options as American "Happy Meals". In fact, it arguably offers less healthy options as you can choose from among a hamburger, cheese burger, chicken nuggets of small ("petit") pancakes as the main part of the meal. I can only imagine the cries of protest if pancakes were to be an option in America. As the side dish, one can choose fries or sweet corn and the drink options are any small beverage including soft drinks, tea, milk, juice, and milkshakes. Of course, you can also choose a toy option. Currently, people can have "Hello Kitty" toys or "Voov" miniature vehicles. The 15-second promotional commercials for these toys are very stereotypical in that only little boys are shown with the cars and mainly little girls are with the kitty-chan toys. You can view these commercials on the lower right hand side of the "Happy Set" page at present (but I'm sure they'll vanish in the future after this promotion ends). 

(Warning: Subjective conclusions and editorial commentary ahead!) One of the things that I concluded about living in Japan is that overall food culture as opposed to specific aspects of that culture is extremely powerful in shaping the health and bodies of the people and that the causes of the lifestyle problems in the U.S. which relate to lifestyle diseases (heart disease, diabetes, etc.) are not the result of the presence of unhealthy or fast food. There is a load of equally unhealthy food in Japan. When Americans try to fix childhood obesity by offering kids apples instead of fries, milk instead of soda, and taking away their toys, they're fixing a broken finger by putting a band-aid on a stubbed toe. Sure, they're both on the body, but one doesn't fix the other. The problem isn't the presence of empty calories being marketed with things kids will nag their parents to get them. The issue is an overall food culture that sees the frequency and volume as such things as being much higher than can support a healthy body. The Japanese, at least for the time being, are still in a place food culture-wise where they don't eat too much of such things too often. Parents don't care about the contents of a Happy Meal/Set because they care about food otherwise. They're not looking at taking their kid's to fast food places often enough for it to be an issue. They're looking at the whole day and entire composition of their children's diet. That's not to say that they never will care, nor that obesity rates aren't increasing in Japan, too (they are). However, for now, the kids can keep their toys, their fries, and even have pancakes if they want them and no one is going to scream "won't somebody please think of the children!"

Random Weekend Picture 17

Posters for these McDonald's glasses are all over the place because of the World Cup. I have no idea if these are unique to Japan (I doubt they are), but glasses nearly identical to these have been given away in promotions in the past. These glasses have a Coke logo on one side and a soccer design on the other. Previous versions were available in similar colors, but with a Coke logo design on both sides. We had a green, pink and blue one at one point, but they were so crappy that they developed cracks from normal use within months.

I'm not a soccer fan, but a lot of my Japanese acquaintances and students are talking about it. Most of them have said that the Japanese team is woefully poor this year. I'll have to take their word for it.

Variety Friday: McDonald's Quarter Pounder "Big Mouth" Campaign

I don't watch much television, and I watch even less Japanese television as a subset of my limited viewing hours. That means I rarely, if ever, see Japanese commercials. I'm sure many people view that as an utterly wasted opportunity since you often see weird Japanese commercials featured on American shows about the "world's funniest commercials". The truth is that most Japanese commercials are painfully boring, just like those in other countries. Only the odd strange one makes it onto American T.V.

I also rarely eat fast food of any stripe, and even more rarely eat at McDonald's. Most of my knowledge of what goes on comes via my husband, who eats out once a week (though not generally at Mickey D's) and occasionally allows himself an indulgence like a Quarter Pounder. After one such dip into the beef-filled fast food pond, he brought home the items pictured at the top of this post and I set about investigating why he was given a pink button featuring a disco ball.

Screenshot taken from McDonald's Quarter Pounder page

This particular campaign relates to a "rose color" T-shirt campaign and commercials featuring "Big Mouth" (an Asian hip hop band, or at least I think that's the group being featured in the ads - I'm not a J-pop aficionado). Currently, the campaign's information can be accessed via their Quarter Pounder page. There is a vast amount of information and a lot of different things going on including commercials, information on the making of those commercials, a rose color T-shirt "shop", and a "wiki" for the Quarter Pounder which features things like how to make a Quarter Pounder out of paper, manners for eating the burger (like not eating it with chopsticks) and ASCII art of a burger. It's all pretty silly stuff and you can see it even if you can't read Japanese by clicking on the "Wiki" in English and just systematically clicking on various hot spots on the image.

Screenshot taken from McDonald's Quarter Pounder page

For the consumers of the Quarter Pounder, you get a plastic packet with a button and a card. The button designs mirror (at least some) of the rose colored T-shirt designs. The card has a scratch-off area. If the card says "hazure"(はずれ), you don't get a T-shirt.

The campaign runs from June 19 to July 21 of this year. I can't say that I'd recommend anyone rush there to get a pink button with a weird picture on it and a chance to win a pink T-shirt, but if you're headed that way anyway, perhaps I've at least helped you understand why you're being given such peculiar and useless items.

Variety Friday: McHotdog Mega Sausage

Image pilfered from McDonald's Japan.

The food that people choose to eat for breakfast has always been more interesting to me than any other meal of the day. We're all willing to be a little adventurous at lunch or supper time, but the type of food that one is willing to shovel into one's face after stumbling out of bed is generally more limited. If people are going to be conservative about their eating habits or eat whatever is considered "traditional" for that meal in their culture, you're going to see that reflected more often in breakfast.

What does all of this talk of breakfast have to do with the McHotdog Mega Sausage? Well, believe it or not, this item is only available for breakfast. If you want to get your over-sized wiener on, you'll have to get to a Mickey D's before 10:30. The ad on the site offers (in English, no less) the following words about this dog: Energy? Fun? Love? Beyond! I'm not sure what the obsession is with putting "love" into product ads where we wouldn't consider inserting such a word, but given the massive size of this sausage, the implications are interesting.

The advertising also says that this dog is 200% tastier for its huge size. I guess if it's bigger than the usual McHotdog, then there's probably more taste, but personally I find that Japanese wieners taste funny. They always have a bit of a strange funky taste. I'm guessing this is simply a reflection of different meat products being used in them, likely more pork. Japanese "hamburger" is laced with ground pork because they favor it over beef.

The interesting thing about this sandwich, and I'm sure that's the inescapable conclusion everyone who has glanced at the picture has reached, is that the bun seems Lilliputian compared to the sausage trying to make a home in it. It looks funky, but it's probably not a bad idea. The bread looks sized mainly to provide a tidy way to hold the hot dog rather than as something to be evenly portioned as you eat it. That means more protein and less carbohydrate which makes for a more energetic morning start. The nutrition information for this sausage fest states that it is 506 calories and 33.5 grams of fat (eep), so eating one may not be so bad on the carb front, but it's not really good for you either.

Personally, I can't see myself scarfing down a big wiener for breakfast so I'm not likely to rouse myself before 10:30 and traipse off to the local McDonald's. I'm generally pretty conservative about breakfast and favor a bit of toast or some other typical American carbohydrate-heavy food. If you're more adventurous, you'll want to get one of these sooner rather than later because the Mega Sausage is going to be around for a limited time.

Oh yes, all the possible double entendres in this piece should be interpreted in the worst possible way.