Anti-branding as a concept isn't new to the Japanese. The successful Muji stores there are based on the idea of "no brand" and in fact Wikipedia says the store's name is "derived from the first part of Mujirushi Ryōhin, translated as "No Brand Quality Goods."
This looks like a pretty cool location and a neat no-branding of a familiar product. It would be even cooler applied to a real hamburger joint serving real quarter-pound hamburgers.
Baker Bounce is a Japanese-run restaurant with two locations in Tokyo featuring American-style burgers and sandwiches. In a feature on Nikkei Net Interactive, owner Takahiro Watanabe says his inspiration came from eating at nearly 100 diners in America and watching American Graffiti in junior high school. Burger toppings range from the basic lettuce, onion, tomato, and pickles (about $9.70 for a 5.5-ounce burger), to bacon, cheese, and fried eggs (about $15.50 for a double-patty, 11-ounce burger). The burgers look promising from these Flickr photos, although I feel like for the price, the burgers should come with more than just four or five potato wedges.
A burger without a wheat-based bun may not be a real burger, but using grilled rice patties instead of bread results in a sandwich that's delicious and safe for gluten-intolerant eaters. Maki Itoh has instructions for how to make rice burgers on her bento ideas blog Just Bento. Form rice into flat, dense patties and fry to a golden crisp. Although rice burgers and sandwiches may not catch on in the U.S., Mos Burger in Japan has a few sandwiches with rice buns on its menu.
Posted by Adam Kuban, February 9, 2008 at 10:00 AM
Back story: McDonald's Japan recently released a four-patty Big Mac, which is surprising—I mean, you'd think McDonald's U.S.A. would have come up with this first. Anyway, bloggers in the Land of the Rising Sun then went out and took pictures of the thing, including Takeshi Fukuda, who imagined its eventual evolution there.
One of my favorite burger bloggers, the Texas Burger Guy, returns from a monthslong absence on his blog with a review of Arnold Burger in Amarillo, Texas. Even if you don't live in the Lone Star State, you've gotta love TBG's site, which has great terminology for describing burgers—the "herd killer" factor, for instance, "measures the sheer size and weight of a burger," while the "ooze factor" measures a sandwich's juiciness. Arnold Burger: 1611 South Washington Street, Amarillo TX 79102; 806-372-1741
The Silicon Valley Burger Guide escaped my notice when it was posted back in 2006, but the people behind the site Food Notebook have been slowly adding noted burgers to their list. The latest is the Alpine Inn in Portola Valley, which rates a "decent."
In the Land Down Under, McDonald's holds the NameIt Burger contest: Give the chain's latest burger its name and the lucky Aussie will win some stuff and get your mug in a commercial. The new burger's components are "homestyle beef" (whatever that is), tatsoi salad mix, steak and onion sauce, tomato, cheese, and grilled onions.
A newspaper in Japan notes a strange footnote in Japanese burger history from the 1970s and '80s—the Worm Burger: "Instead of a beef patty, the Worm Burger used ground worms, cut the onions a little, added wheat flour, a runny egg and blended in milk to make it go down easier.... Despite the best intentions, the Worm Burger ended up as a major flop. Marketers had been targeting women and young people, but appear to have struggled to overcome worms' image as a bizarre food." Hmm, you don't say?
Boing Boing mentioned Flickr user art.reyu's Engrish photo set last week, which prompted me to click through for a look. Lo and behold, I find this gem.
Posted by Matt Jacobs, January 30, 2006 at 12:46 PM
Typically, I like eating burgers that include meat, a bun and some condiments. There are several exceptions though, and most of them involve sugar.
Treehugger.com has unearthed some delicious-looking desserts based on fast food items. We'll skip past the fries made of custard deep-fried in starch powder and focus on their burger options.
"The Mamido burger, for instance, which sells for ¥390 ($3.25 at ¥120 to the dollar), is a highlight of the menu. The "bun" is actually a sponge cake, the "patty" inside is chocolate cream, and the "pickles" are kiwis. The deep-fried fish burger, meanwhile, priced at ¥440 ($3.70), features a banana shaped like a fish fillet in sponge cake. It is topped with "tartar sauce," which is actually fresh cream. And the gratin burger, also at ¥440, is a sandwich with a cream cheese and fruit filling.
I just need to find some burger-ish appetizers and I could have an meal that consists solely of hamburgers. Any good recipes?
What's equally interesting is the reason these were created:
Trends in Japan usually show up here a couple of months or years later; here is one to watch. It appears that men do not like to be seen eating elaborate cakes in public, so a confectioner set up what looks like a typical fast food outlet to sell what look like hamburgers and fries, but that are in fact cake.
I especially liked the thoughts from one of the comments: "Too embarassed to be seen eating cakes in public, but have no problem reading hentai on the subway. Go figure."
Big in Japan right now—at least in Tokyo—is the Sasebo burger.
Sasebo is a port city that has long been home to a U.S. Navy base. And what's one of the United States' biggest cultural exports? That's right.
It didn't take long before Sasebo's native residents put their own spin on the classic American lunchtime treat, and, recently, the Sasebo-style burger has become a sensation in Tokyo. This, according to the Asahi Shimbun:
It is a few minutes before 10 a.m., and the shopping mall is still empty, yet the crew at Big Man is already at battle stations. The grill has been greased, the bacon sliced and the first load of eggs fried-and just in time too. When the doors to the food court fly open, a swarm of diners makes a beeline for the counter and the delicacies beyond.
Such was the scene one day last week at Tokyo Panya Street, a bread-themed food park recently opened at LaLaport shopping mall in Funabashi, Chiba Prefecture. Elite bakeries from all over Japan have been brought together to create Tokyo Panya Street: One business from Kyoto specializes in curry-filled buns; another from Hokkaido offers melon-flavored ones; but the undisputed star attraction is Big Man, hailing from the naval base town of Sasebo in Nagasaki Prefecture, Kyushu. It isn't actually a bakery at all.
But what is a Sasebo burger, exactly?
[Big Man head honcho Yutaka] Ogura serves up a regulation Sasebo burger, featuring a patty of Japanese beef, a fried egg, cherry wood-cured bacon a la Canadienne and lettuce, onion and tomato-everything locally produced. He and his crew make up to 800 of them a day, yet the owner insists that his burgers aren't fast food.
"This is slow food," says Ogura. "There's time put into it, and it requires patience ... It's a handmade burger."
Three hours might be an infinity by Tokyo standards, but for Sasebo officials, the wait may not be long enough.
"I was slightly concerned to see Mr. Ogura working as fast as he was," says [Sasebo tourism commission representative Mihoko] Oniyama, who showed up in Tokyo to monitor Big Man. "Rushing them may cause the quality to slip-which is worrisome. We want people to come to Sasebo for the flavor, so we don't want to give the wrong impression."
So what does a Tokyoite say about the Sasebo burger? Chorickr, who graciously let us use his beautiful burger photos in this post, says, "It was really good, oishi katta desu, and HUGE! That made me happy. Really."
Lucky Pierrot, a Japanese fast food chain, has put a whale burger on the menu at its ten restaurants, all based on Hokkaido, the country's northern island and one with strong ties to whaling.
"We fry minke whale meat and the burger really tastes like beef," [Lucky Pierrot] manager Miku Oh said.
"We have decided to add a whale burger to our menu due to strong demand from our customers and feel very thankful to the whales for allowing us to make the burgers," she told [Agence French-Presse].
Despite a 19-year-old international ban on whaling, the whale meat comes from whales killed under a special "research" clause. And this small chain is not the only one trying to rekindle a taste for whale meat. Some schools in Japan are, too:
Earlier this year, most schools in Wakayama, Japan's western whaling heartland, resumed whale lunches which had gone off the menu amid global anti-whaling campaigns.
Hoping children will take a liking to whale, the schools have served the meat in burgers and marinated it in sweet and sour sauce.
You may have noticed the little strip of photos in the left-hand column over there. Recently, we recognized the logo of MOS Burger in one of them and clicked through to the photo-sharing site Flickr, from which the feed originates.
MOS Burger is a Japanese chain that cooks up some tasty little sandwiches. Their signature burger, from what I remember when I visited the Land of the Rising Sun a couple years ago, has a special mildly spicy tomato-based MOS sauce liberally slathered on (top). It is delicious.
MOS, which stands for Mountain Ocean Sun, serves its burgers in origami-like waxed wrappers that are more akin to bags or envelopes than the square sheets of paper we're used to here in the States. By the time you're finished with the sandwich, enough of the sauce has usually found its way into the closed-end of the wrapper that it can be used as a piquant dipping sauce for the fries—a trick we learned from our friend Justin, who was living in Japan at the time. It's a tip we now pass on to you, if you happen to live there and are reading this blog, or if you plan to visit sometime.
Last Tuesday, about 15,000 people went to the Osaka opening of 
Typically, I like eating burgers that include meat, a bun and some condiments. There are several exceptions though, and most of them involve sugar.
