Hachinohe – SoraNews24 —Japan News— https://soranews24.com Bringing you yesterday's news from Japan and Asia, today. Thu, 26 Jan 2023 17:30:06 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=7.1.4 https://soranews24.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/3/2020/05/en_rocket_1024.png?w=32 Hachinohe – SoraNews24 —Japan News— https://soranews24.com 32 32 176746664 Sickle-wielding attacker safely fended off by victim’s umbrella in Aomori https://soranews24.com/2023/01/27/sickle-wielding-attacker-safely-fended-off-by-victims-umbrella-in-aomori/ https://soranews24.com/2023/01/27/sickle-wielding-attacker-safely-fended-off-by-victims-umbrella-in-aomori/#comments Thu, 26 Jan 2023 17:30:04 +0000 https://soranews24.com/?p=614371 
The umbrella is mightier than the sickle.
Carrying around an umbrella can be a nuisance at times. But when it is needed who hasn’t held one and wondered if it could be used as an impromptu Jackie-Chan-style weapon should the need arise?
▼ I’m pretty sure I could do all this if it came down to it
Luckily, such a need rarely does arise so most of us will never know. But for one man in Hachinohe City, Aomori Prefecture, an umbrella was the only thing preventing him from serious injury or even death.
At about 2:50 p.m. on 12 January, the 58-year-old office worker was walking along a street near his home. Then, a man holding a sickle with a 16-centimeter (six-inch) blade attacked him out of the blue.
It was truly a nightmare situation, but the victim’s quick thinking and reflexes saved the day as he managed to use his umbrella to deflect the attack. In total, the assailant took 10 swings at the man with the tool but each one was deftly blocked by the umbrella and the victim managed to emerge unharmed.
Police arrived on the scene and arrested the 65-year-old attacker who admitted to the charges against him. The two men had no prior relationship and police are currently looking into what motivated him to carry out the attack.
Meanwhile, readers of the news we full of nothing but admiration for the victim who showed that an umbrella really could be used as a defensive weapon.
“He didn’t even get hit once?! He’s a master.”
“This is totally like in Siren.”
“You have to be some kind of martial arts master to escape a sickle attack unharmed with an umbrella.”
“He won by only blocking too. He’s probably really good at Sekiro.”
“Life is becoming an open-world action game.”
“He’s a Kingsman!”
“If he had a clear vinyl umbrella he could have made a beam shield.”
“The samurai spirit is strong in him.”
The victim was never identified and wasn’t interviewed by the media. I’d like to think in true hero fashion he just walked off into the sunset and relaxed by a koi pond while tranquilly playing a bamboo flute. Either that or he went home and played PlayStation to learn some more sick moves with everyday objects.
Source: ATV News, Hachima Kiko
Top image: Pakutaso
● Want to hear about SoraNews24’s latest articles as soon as they’re published? Follow us on Facebook and Twitter!
]]> https://soranews24.com/2023/01/27/sickle-wielding-attacker-safely-fended-off-by-victims-umbrella-in-aomori/feed/ 0 614371 We find Italian Soba at an Aomori fish market that insisted it’s perfect for the beach https://soranews24.com/2022/11/24/we-find-italian-soba-at-an-aomori-fish-market-that-insisted-its-perfect-for-the-beach/ https://soranews24.com/2022/11/24/we-find-italian-soba-at-an-aomori-fish-market-that-insisted-its-perfect-for-the-beach/#comments Thu, 24 Nov 2022 01:00:10 +0000 https://soranews24.com/?p=608372 
Italian-style Japanese? Or Japanese-style Italian? We just couldn’t decide.
Our Japanese-language reporter Mr. Sato recently made a trip to the northern city of Hachinohe in Aomori, which, he learned, is the prefecture with the most soba restaurants in all of Japan. With locally produced brands like Hashikami Wase soba and tons of local dishes that use the noodle, soba has been considered a prefectural food for a long time, which explains why it’s such a popular menu item.
Of course, Mr. Sato, one of our resident foodies, made sure to eat some soba while he was in Aomori. In fact, while exploring Tatehana Harbor, he happened to find a very unexpected soba dish: Italian Soba! Japanese buckwheat noodles with Italian flavors…would that even be good?
Italian Soba (and Udon) was offered at a fish store near Tatehana Harbor called Hama no Supermarket Gyoko Store (“Beach Supermarket Harbor Store”), but though it calls itself a supermarket, the place mainly sells soba and udon omiyage, or food souvenirs.
They also have a little kitchen that sells soba and udon dishes, and that’s where Mr. Sato found the Italian Soba hidden among 26 other kinds of soba and udon dishes.
The menu had several peculiarities. For example, the picture of the “Kids’ Soba/Udon” showed an American flag stuck into the egg, which was mysterious, and the 27th item was simply a clipart picture with the words “Searching for a New Dish”.
The most popular dish was No. 10, the Vegetable Tempura Soba/Udon, which looked as delicious in its simplicity as everything else on the menu. But what caught Mr. Sato’s eye was most certainly No. 6: Italian (Style) Soba/Udon. Not only did this item on the menu have nice flashy red, white, and green text over a green box, but it was aggressively advertised on a separate poster in front of the store.
▼ “(Tomato and Garlic) Italian (Style) Soba/Udon for the beach. Perfect for the beach! Healthy. (Italian Soba.) Limited availability. 600 yen (US$4.25).”
Three times was “Perfect for the beach!” written, in three different sizes in three different colors–so apparently they really wanted to drive the point home. And if the giant Italian flag as the background wasn’t enough to tell you this soba is Italian-inspired, then the red, green, and white letters and tiny Italian flags carried by little figures in green and red should tip you off.
In any case, Mr. Sato didn’t hesitate to order the soba version, though he was quite unsure of what to expect. It came on a tray lined with a cloth decorated with tomatoes! How cute.
It looked a lot more Italian than Mr. Sato expected, with a spoonful of very rich-looking tomato sauce plopped right on top.
They’d even added a little bit of what Mr. Sato thought was Genovese sauce, which made this, in Mr. Sato’s eyes, a pretty serious attempt at Italian food. Mr. Sato had imagined it would be more like a pasta dish with copious amounts of sauce and cheese, but it definitely had a much more simplistic Italian feel to it. But would this tomato sauce actually taste good with soba?
Underneath the noodles was a broth that looked very similar to the same type of tsuyu broth you’d get with ordinary Japanese-style soba dishes. That made this dish even more puzzling. It was neither a Japanese-style Italian dish nor an Italian-style Japanese dish, but it somehow managed to combine the two into something completely new.
Mr. Sato gave it a good mix and took a bite. “Oh, it’s good! Simple, but good…No, it’s actually really good!”
Just as the dish seemed unable to make up its mind about what it wanted to be, neither could Mr. Sato decide how delicious it was. The tomatoes and the soba weren’t actually weird together, and Mr. Sato quickly became accustomed to the combination of tsuyu broth with tomatoes. Gradually, it turned from a strange dish into a really tasty one.
He’d heard before that Italian food and Japanese food actually have an affinity with one another, and that you can switch ingredients here or there to make any dish into a tasty fusion dish, but he had never expected it to taste so good. It was like the pasta ramen our other reporter discovered in Croatia. Either way, the acidity of the tomatoes added a nice freshness to the dish, which would be really nice to cool down with in the heat of summer.
Ah…so that’s why they’d suggested it was “Perfect for the beach!”
If you find yourself in Hachinohe, definitely check out Hama no Supermarket Gyoko Store. And don’t forget to check out another one of Aomori’s claims to fame: cracker crusts!
Shop/Restaurant Information
Hama no Super Gyoko Store / 浜のスーパー 漁港ストア
Aomori-ken Hachinohe-shi Shinminato 3-4-20
青森県八戸市新湊3-4-20
Hours: Weekdays: 11 a.m. to 2 p.m., Weekends/Holidays: 10 a.m. to 3 p.m.. Morning market open from 7 a.m. to 3 p.m.
Open every day
Images © SoraNews24
● Want to hear about SoraNews24’s latest articles as soon as they’re published? Follow us on Facebook and Twitter!
]]> https://soranews24.com/2022/11/24/we-find-italian-soba-at-an-aomori-fish-market-that-insisted-its-perfect-for-the-beach/feed/ 0 608372 italian soba1 We go to a 7-Eleven in Aomori and find a surprising “one per family” item on the shelf https://soranews24.com/2022/11/17/we-go-to-a-7-eleven-in-aomori-and-find-a-surprising-one-per-family-item-on-the-shelf/ https://soranews24.com/2022/11/17/we-go-to-a-7-eleven-in-aomori-and-find-a-surprising-one-per-family-item-on-the-shelf/#comments Thu, 17 Nov 2022 01:00:30 +0000 https://soranews24.com/?p=607617 
This is a popular food in the city of Hachinohe, but is it as good as its popularity warrants?
In the age of the pandemic, we’ve all become familiar with a scenario where a normally easy-to-find product has shortages and stores place limits on how many an individual can buy. Whether it’s because of supply and distribution issues, panic buying, scalpers, or some viral social media post or video making more people want it than usual, these days we hardly bat an eye and just hope the craze will be over soon.
What we don’t expect is when something strange has purchase limits on it, like “cracker crusts”. What even is that? Our own Japanese-language reporter Mr. Sato happened to come across them in a 7-Eleven in Aomori that had a “one-per-family” limit. Why? And for what?
On his three-day, two-night trip to Hachinohe City on the northeast coast of Aomori, Mr. Sato, as usual, made a stop at the corner convenience store just outside of his hotel to see if they sold anything unique to Aomori there.
At first, he didn’t really see anything different from the 7-Elevens in his hometown of Tokyo. They had some rice balls and bentos with local ingredients, but that was about it. At least, until he spotted huge bags of large senbei in the refrigerated bento section!
These were “Nanbu Senbei”, which are large, round wheat crackers popular in the Hachinohe region and in Iwate Prefecture. At this 7-Eleven, they sold “Plain”, “Light Sesame”, “Sesame”…
“Bean”, “Sugar”, and ”Wild Sesame” flavors.
These Nambu Senbei were made by the long-established cracker company Oyamada Senbei-ten, which is based out of the nearby city of Sannohe.
But while these piqued Mr. Sato’s interest, there was something else above them that truly caught his eye: a sign that read, “For the cracker crusts, please limit your purchase to one per family.”
“What?!” Mr. Sato mumbled. “Cracker crusts?! I’ve heard of bread crusts, of course, but do crackers even have crusts?”
Mr. Sato asked a local, and apparently, the crusts are the scraps that result from cutting the Nambu Senbei into circles. Oyamada Senbei-ten’s cracker crusts are highly popular; some people even go all the way to Sannohe just to buy them.
This is what they look like up close. They almost looked like dried sweet potato chips or squid jerky. They cost Mr. Sato 290 yen (US$2.07).
For cracker pieces, they have a surprisingly short shelf life. Mr. Sato bought his on 5 November, but these were listed to expire on 9 November. He’d have to eat them in four days, but that was no tall ask for foodie Mr. Sato.
When Mr. Sato poured them onto a plate, they looked even more like sweet potato chips.
Mr. Sato picked one up to try and took a bite. The texture was like eating very firm mochi. It had a very solid feel in his mouth, and the more he chewed it, the better it tasted. It also had a very faint flavor of salt and sesame, but Mr. Sato wouldn’t say he was blown away by it.
But when he finished one, he immediately reached for another, and when that one was finished, he ate another. Before he could stop himself, he’d fallen into an unending snacking loop!
That must be the secret to the popularity of Oyamada Senbei-ten’s cracker crusts. Once you try them, even just one bite, you become mysteriously addicted. Like dried squid, the more you eat, the more addictive it becomes!
These “cracker crusts” are strange, but Mr. Sato cannot not recommend them after tasting them, even if they aren’t particularly special in flavor. If you happen to find some at a store near you, try them…if you dare to develop a new unbreakable habit.
Images © SoraNews24
● Want to hear about SoraNews24’s latest articles as soon as they’re published? Follow us on Facebook and Twitter!
]]> https://soranews24.com/2022/11/17/we-go-to-a-7-eleven-in-aomori-and-find-a-surprising-one-per-family-item-on-the-shelf/feed/ 0 607617 sembei crusts1 Pokémon manhole covers make their debut in Japan’s Aomori Prefecture https://soranews24.com/2021/03/17/pokemon-manhole-covers-make-their-debut-in-japans-aomori-prefecture/ https://soranews24.com/2021/03/17/pokemon-manhole-covers-make-their-debut-in-japans-aomori-prefecture/#comments Tue, 16 Mar 2021 15:00:11 +0000 https://soranews24.com/?p=536242 
Even more excuses to explore northern Japan? Yes, please.
Pokémon manhole covers, also known as Pokéfuta, seem to be multiplying throughout Japan from big cities like Tokyo to more rural areas like Tottori prefecture. Hunting down these beautifully designed covers makes your travels all about both the journey and the destination.
And now, in memory of the 10th anniversary of the Tohoku disaster, Japan’s northern region of Aomori is getting its first two Pokéfuta installations. You can find one or both of these gorgeous manhole covers in the seaside city of Hachinohe and its neighboring town of Hashikami, both areas that were greatly affected by the 2011 earthquake and tsunami.
▼ The stars of these manhole covers are both on land and in the sky.
If you go to the right place, you’ll find either Kyamome (Wingull) and Ishitsubute (Geodude) in the sky, or you’ll spot the addition of adorable Namakobushi (Pyukumuku) against one of Aomori’s scenic lighthouses.
▼ Hachinohe is actually home to one of Japan’s top 50 most beautiful lighthouses, Samekado Lighthouse.
Of course, these Pokéfuta will also be made into Pokéstops in Pokémon GO; if you’re an avid player, it could be even more incentive to make the trip.
The manhole covers were put into place on March 13, 2021, so you can already see them for yourself if you’re in the area! You can view the official locations here, or you can easily find one of them behind the Hashikami Roadside Station and near Kabushima Shrine in Hachinohe.
Where do you think the next Pokéfuta will be installed? It seems like it won’t be long before you can see all of your favorite Pokémon in all 47 of Japan’s prefectures (yes, even Magikarp)!
Source and images: PR Times
● Want to hear about SoraNews24’s latest articles as soon as they’re published? Follow us on Facebook and Twitter!
]]> https://soranews24.com/2021/03/17/pokemon-manhole-covers-make-their-debut-in-japans-aomori-prefecture/feed/ 0 536242 d26665-270-100716-2