Yukitchen - Vegetarian food art by Yuki

Gluten Free! Domo kun Biscotti

Domo kun is underestimated in Japan. You see him everywhere outside of Japan but not so much in his homeland. One of the many reasons why Japanese should travel more is that they can find out how much our culture is affecting a lot of people outside of our country. I was shocked to see how many…

Vegan Ramen With a Global Warming Polar Bear

Finding ramen without meat isn’t really an easy search. But it’s always easy to wonder if you can improvise the taste of ramen using plant-based items. I make a lot of vegan and vegetarian recipes here on Yukitchen, but making the world vegan is not my mission here. That would be supremacy, and no supremacy…

Rilakkuma Inari

In 1967, John Lennon wrote a song called “All you need is love”. He also admitted hitting women, “any women”, he said, and abandoned one of his children. He was a diligent peace activist, and wrote many songs about love and peace. He explained, “This is why I am always about peace, you see. It’s…

Rilakkuma Scrambled Eggs

Most young kids will run after mom if she tries to leave them alone with a stranger. But according to a study, kids who haven’t bonded well with their mothers—psychologists call it “insecurely attached”—will rather stay behind with a security blanket. And in my case, it was always stuffed animals. They say kids with secure…

Pumpkin Smoothie with Soot Sprites

These are “Makkuro-Kurosuke” from My Neighbor Totoro, and also “Susuwatari” from Spirited Away. The translated version of their names often disappoints me, because it’s just “Soot Sprites”. Soot Sprites…. I got the sentiments, but it kills the subtlety of Japanese goodness when I see the word “sprites”, -a supernatural entity in European mythology (i.e. Wikipedia). To us…

Yubaba Miso Soup

This is Yubaba, from the film Spirited Away. She looks so scary to me; her head is bigger than a screen! But what I found scarier than her physical appearance is her magical skill of stealing people’s names, or I should say, stealing their identities. To me, she represents a modern corporation. When you work in…

Chewbacca Hummus

When I first saw Star Wars, I didn’t really understand it. I was around 9, keeping myself busy with learning how to write my name in Kanji, so I figured I was just too little to understand it. A decade later, I watched it again with a grown-up mind, and I remember I loved it,…

Choco-Banana Rilakkuma Toast

This week I purchased a western food called “Nutella” for the first time in my life. I’m aware that Nutella is a wildly common food throughout the US and Europe, but not in Japan. I lived in the states for seven years, yet I promised myself never to lose my Bushido (the way of a samurai)…

Panda Shiratama Anmitsu

“An” means bean paste, “mitsu” means syrup. To me, Anmitsu is an epitome of sugary treats with a side of nostalgia. I remember those summer days in Tokyo where I got in line at a cafe with my mother. Whenver we order an anmitsu together, she would always order hers with ice-cream, and I would always…

Rilakkuma Burger

For the past couple of years, I’ve been on a quest for making the perfect veggie burgers. It’s been a quite mission to create the burgers that have everything that we need. But I think I’m finally comfortable enough to announce to the world that I’ve reached my goal today. My veggie burgers have finally hit my high…