A Geek in Japan

Drinks

Flying Fish Soup Vending Machine

Post author By ageekinjapan
Post date July 12, 2015

Sergio Lorenzi sends me these photos of a vending machine he found in Nagoya with flying fishes inside a bottle. The text say that the flying fishes have been grilled and are ideal to use as a soup (dashi) to give flavour to udon, nabe, oden or any other slow cooked recipe.

Each bottle, in addition to a flying fish, also has some konbu 昆布 algae, one of the essential ingredients to be able to obtain the umami flavor when cooking.

flying fish soup
The ones on the top left side contain only algae and are cheaper than those that include also a flying fish.

flying fish soup

Other posts about vending machines in Japan:

Architecture

Sculpture In Toranomon Hills By Jaume Plensa

Post author By ageekinjapan
Post date July 7, 2015

An sculpture by Jaume Plensa, an artist born in Barcelona, decorates the outside part of Toranomon Hills, one of the most emblematic buildings in Tokyo. The structure is 10 meters high and at night the illumination from within brings a magical touch to the gardens.

jaume plensa in tokyo

Technology

Hebocon – The Crappy Robots Competition

Post author By ageekinjapan
Post date July 4, 2015

I was not aware of the existence of Hebocon, but then just today I found the video shown below. Hebocon is a robot competition in which the important thing is not to have the most sophisticated robot as in the Robocup, what matters is the originality and above all the crappiness of the robots. In fact “Hebo” ヘボ, within the name of the competition “Hebocon”, means “Crappy”.

The rules are so simple that even kids younger than 10 years old participate.

hebocon