Gochiso Burger

I read a news article that the Malaysian ministry of health is considering of banning advertisements on fastfood like hamburgers due to its adverse influences to health, and the article also noted that the health minister commented that hamburgers are silent killers. Well, fastfood hamburgers in Japan are also somewhat understood to have bad influences on health and yet they are pretty populat, but increasingly popular these past one or two years are what we call the "gochiso burger" which I guess can be translated to "feast burger".

Gochiso burgers, as compared to McDonald's or even Mos Burger (Mos Burger is a Japanese hamburger chain which serves pretty good hamburgers and fastfood at twice - 2.5 times more or less the price of McDonald's), are first of all large in size (much much thicker), have rich amount of meet, have lots of fresh veggies and sauce, all sandwiched by good buns. Usually they cost about anywhere b/w Y500-Y1,000, aren't wrapped with paper, can't make them to go, but are instead served with chips (fried potatoes / french fries) on a big plate. Perhaps a lot of you reading this, especially if you are an American, might think this is rather normal (maybe except for the price), but because to Japanese people the image of hamburgers are directly and immediately associated with fastfood burgers, these relatively large volume fresh burgers are considered "gochiso burgers", special "feast" burgers.

Before the gochiso burgers had become to be acknowledged as gochiso, burgers served at T.G.I.Friday's or Kua Aina were kind of like the representatives that not so many people knew. But then, someone - or rather some media apparently cast spot light on these big burgers, burgers that are not from McDonald's or Mos or Wendy's or any of those chains soon became part of slow food, luxury food and eventually gochiso burger.
Now there are many restaurants and hamburger shops that serve gochiso burgers scattering around big cities particularly in Tokyo, and going to those places for lunch on a weekend has become a kind of little relaxed luxury for some people.

In Sasebo where there's been a US camp for a long time now, there is this kind of burger called Sasebo Burger. Having said that though, Sasebo Burger isn't a specific kind of burger with specific kind of fillings, but is a generic term for Sasebo style burgers which are made by hand only after the order is made. There are many shops selling different styles of Sasebo Burgers and they are all different (although it's said that the majority use secret mayonaise). Today Sasebo Burgers are very popular and have established themselves as a local specialty of Sasebo City, but I learned recently that until it started to gain immense attention as part of a city promotion campaign of Sasebo hardly anyone cared about it. I guess its social debut is part of the gochiso burger boom.

...And now that I wrote about burgers I am dying to have one.
Oh, and completely unrelated to the topic, this song called "Fake" by J-pop musician Mr.Children has been playing over and over in my head while I write this. It's the main song for the movie Dororo which I've seen, plus their album is coming out tomorrow so I think that's why. Random songs and music play in my mind pretty much all the time while I work and it is very tempting to hum them but I dare not in office. This place needs music...

Japan Mode Update
Cherry Blossom Events in Tokyo (and other cities also)