Comping, Japanese style.

by Di · Published 21/06/2013 · Updated 02/03/2021

Last night was my Japanese themed evening – I like to have those once in a while! You may already know that my best mate, top blogger and Mrs Motivator JoJoEbi, lives in Japan and I am ALWAYS looking for opportunities to return to that crazy place on holiday. Hyper Japan is an annual frenzy of Japanese stuff in London, and this year they’ve teamed up with Yutaka products to give away flights to Japan, plus sushi starter kits in their competition. Naturally, I thought I’d have a bash.

It’s not an easy challenge – you need to attempt to break the world record for transferring edamame (or coffee) beans from a saucer to cup with chopsticks. Email your video – or a link – to recordbreakers@hyperjapan.co.uk showing how many beans you can transfer in a minute, and if you’re in the top 15 bean-movers you could compete in the finals at the Hyper Japan event at the end of July in London. I bet that will be scary!

Here’s my video attempt – 46 beans! I think that’s pretty good going considering I’d necked a bottle of Asahi beforehand…

You can read full details of the competition at www.hyperjapan.co.uk – but be warned, if you’re invited to the heats you’ll have to buy (or win!) your own ticket to the Hyper Japan event. I also have no idea when it closes, but the event is on 28th July 2013.

After snacking on the soy beans (sprinkled with salt for the full izakaya treatment), I rustled up a cucumber, seaweed and prawn salad for the SeeJapan competition. You need to follow their recipe and snap a photo of the finished result. Then post your photo on Facebook, email or tweet to them – the first twenty entries will win a pair of Japan Endless Discover chopsticks, and the best photo overall will win a sushi making class in London with Yuki Gomi, and a copy of her Sushi at Home book. This one closes on 19 July 2013 and all the details are at www.seejapan.co.uk

On the theme of Japanese food, you also have until this Sunday, 23rd June (my birthday!) to take a photo of one of the new dishes on the Wagamama menu and be in with a chance of the £1000 vouchers in their Instagram competition. Terms and conditions say winners are decided by Wagamama, but I’m not sure if that means they’re judged or if they’re drawing at random – no judging criteria are mentioned. The terms also state you should upload your Instagram photo “with the hashtag #newwagamama and a comment on why they like the dish”, but looking at the gallery on Facebook very few entrants have commented!

Here’s my entry – now you understand where I got the edamame/chopstick practice in… it took me about an hour to eat all the beans!

I bought my Japanese supplies and snacks at a cute shop in Nottingham city centre called Fresh Oriental. Whilst in there I spotted a shelf of Lee Kum Kee products, and at the moment they’re running a big anniversary promotion to win a trip to Hong Kong and thousands of other prizes. You can enter this one by buying any of their products and filling out the entry form at www.lkk125.com before 15th August 2013 – you’ll need to tick the box that says ‘Yes, I am a human‘! Keep your receipt and packaging safe incase you win, as you’ll need to post them to the promoter along with photo ID. If you do enter, I hope you manage to get a better receipt than this one I got at Fresh… good grief.