One of Japanese most popular TV personalities is Rola, a fashion model of mixed Bengali, Japanese, and Russian descent. If you live in Japan you’ve undoubtedly seen her on TV or billboard advertisements numerous times. But who knew she was also harboring delicious and easy recipes?

Not only are they stylish looking but Rola’s Apple Fried in Coconut Oil and Avocado Scrambled Egg Toast and surprisingly simple to make…so we did. But can we really trust a model when it comes to delectable home cooking?

■ Apple Fried in Coconut Oil

The Apple Fried in Coconut Oil was first brought up when Rola was a guest on Japan’s premier idol-group-hosted show SMAP X SMAP. After its revelation it became something of a hit around Japan.

Our reporter Meg heard it was easy but still came out surprised by just how easy this dish is to make. All you do is heat a pan up with some coconut oil and then fry some apple slices for about two and a half minutes. After that, add some honey, nuts, and cinnamon on top, and you’re done!

▼ Actually “honey-pickled nuts” were recommended but those might be hard to come by depending on your area.

Meg thought that the combination of apple, coconut, honey, nuts, and cinnamon couldn’t have been better. She had tried similar recipes with olive oil and butter but they didn’t come close to the flavor enhancement of the coconut oil.

She thought it tasted like an exquisite gourmet apple pie like you might find in a fancy restaurant, but it didn’t even take 10 minutes to put together. With the blending of the mellow coconut and acidic apple, Meg was convinced that this was a pinnacle of deliciousness.

■ Avocado Scrambled Egg Toast

After the apples, Meg was already a confirmed disciple of Rola and her cooking, but she still had to try the Avocado Scrambled Egg Toast. Actually she couldn’t find any detailed explanation on how to make it, so she just pieced it together from information on the model’s many social networks.

First she fried some scrambled eggs in coconut oil. Again the coconut oil gave her eggs a flavor boost and let it mingle quite well with the avocado. After laying out the avocado on a piece of toast, she covered it with the coconut fried eggs. Then she topped it all off with some soy mayonnaise and truffle salt.

The resulting taste was deeply rich and felt filling despite its size. It wasn’t quite as amazing as the apples, but Meg was far from disappointed. She felt that if Rola was ever to release a recipe book, she wouldn’t hesitate to buy it.

These recipes might not actually be so easy since many of us probably don’t have coconut oil, soy mayonnaise, and truffle salt all at our immediately disposal. In the end you might have to spend a bit for some of these exotic seasonings but it’s worth it for the simplicity and taste of these items. Besides, healthy eating like this is the foundation of model-caliber good looks.

Just ask Mr. Sato.

Source: Rola Official Blog、Instagram @rolaofficial、Twitter @RolaWorLD
Original article by Meg Sawai

▼ As seen on Rola’s Instagram

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▼ Here’s everything you’ll need

▼ Slice the apple

▼ Heat some coconut oil on a frying pan

▼ Brown the apples (about two and a half minutes)

▼ Add honey, nuts, and cinnamon

▼ Voila!

▼ Avocado Scrambled Egg Toast is also on Rola’s Instagram

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▼ And here’s Meg’s

Onigiri are the perfect Japanese snack food. Portable and (generally speaking) healthy, they consist of a small ball or triangle of rice containing one of a huge variety of fillings, wrapped in seaweed or coated with some kind of seasoning. While most of the onigiri you can buy at convenience stores here in Japan are probably filled and shaped by machine, it’s traditional to roll ’em yourselves by making a squeezing motion with your hands. And now you can combine your love of onigiri with your love of cute idol girls by heading down to “Galmusu”, a new cafe where, for a small fee, a cutie will squeeze your rice balls for you right in front of your eyes!

We sent one of our Japanese reporters to investigate this new form of edible performance art!

Oh, but before you read on, we should probably mention one thing: our reporter usually can’t stand anyone handling his food…

Our intrepid reporter decided to take up the idol rice ball squeezing challenge by heading down to Galmusu, which opened in Akihabara on April 21. The shop’s name is a play on “girl” (or “gal”, if you will) and “musubi” (another name for rice ball) and also potentially a pun on “musume” which means “young girl” (think Morning Musume). The cafe is staffed by idols and would-be models, actresses, and other talento who work as waitresses and generally bring in customers with their wit, charm and vivacity (and excellent rice ball squeezing skills!).

Despite having a lifelong fear of eating anything that someone has potentially contaminated with their cootie-ridden hands (and that makes rice balls enemy number one), our reporter decided to be brave and man up for the sake of not looking like a wuss in front of a pretty girl.

Feeling nervous, he entered the cafe and received a brief explanation on the services available. Two rice balls can be ordered for the cost of 800 yen (US$6.60). In comparison, your average conbini rice ball will set you back around 200 yen, ($1.60) but remember that these are special balls, freshly squeezed by beautiful maidens, so there’s a certain degree of markup involved. He was then able to choose which of the girls he’d like to squeeze his rice balls for an extra 200 yen. Altogether, the meal came to 1,000 yen ($8.30).

Like in so many Japanese-style fast food joints, to order at Galmusu you have to first make your selection and pay at a ticket machine. From left to right, the categories are: onigiri (red buttons), miso soup (yellow), and drinks (green). There’s also two more buttons – a blue one for ordering a polaroid of the girl of your choice, and a purple one for a photo of your rice ball-handler complete with her autograph.

▼ The polaroids look like this. Perfect souvenirs of your time at Galmusu!

▼ Cute girls plus rice balls – what’s not to love? (Can’t they open a “Manmusu” cafe, too?)

▼ The atmosphere in the cafe. Did that salaryman bring his little girl? Now that’s a daddy-daughter date idea for you…

Our reporter opted for Riho-chan, a 20-year-old up-and-coming talento who he describes as being “kawaii indeed”. First, Riho asked our man how he’d like his balls stuffed. Upon being offered a choice of plum, seaweed, or fish stuffing, he opted for double fish stuffed balls, since he doesn’t like the other two ingredients. (It’s a wonder he hasn’t starved to death by now from overly picky eating…)

Since the cafe takes hygiene seriously, Riho first covered the rice balls with some plastic wrap before squeezing. In other words, at no point did her bare hands come into contact with the rice. Still, our guy found himself breaking out into a cold sweat at the sight of those pretty hands massaging and squeezing the rice balls he was about to eat. “I don’t even like it when my wife does that,” he explains. Still, he was determined to see things through, since he didn’t want to offend young Riho after all the effort she had put in.

▼ Squeeze, squeeze…

▼ Perfectly shaped and ready to eat!

And how did our reporter feel about his snack? Well…

▼ That’s not the face of a man about to eat a delicious snack prepared with loving care. That is the face of a man who is about to undergo double root canal surgery performed by a demented badger with no license to practice dentistry.

Bravely, he took a bite of his first ball. Since he was in the grip of facing down a deep-seated psychological phobia, he was apparently unable to taste the rice ball at all. What’s more, he only managed a paltry two bites of his fishy rice snack before throwing in the towel early and admitting defeat in front of poor Riho.

▼ “I think I can, I think I can…”

▼ “NOPE.”

▼ Aaah, mottainai.

Of course, samurai spirit dictates that disrespecting a lady’s culinary skills calls for an apology of the most sincere sort, to wit: dogeza!

Dogeza is the lowest form of apologetic bow, and involves getting down on your hands and knees and headbutting the floor in order to prostrate oneself as low as possible before the person they have wronged.

Still, our reporter was, surprisingly, quite pleased with himself for overcoming his food phobia enough to take two whole bites of onigiri, which he also managed to hold down long enough for digestion to occur. Good for you, sir!

While we doubt he’ll ever be showing his face around Galmusu again, our reporter states that the service was top-notch and there was something soothing about having a smiling, up-and-coming idol prepare a snack for you. If you’re interested, you can follow Galmusu on their Twitter account (if for no other reason than that they post adorable twitpics like this one…).

And, of course, if you happen to find yourself in Akihabara and require a tasty snack hand-squeezed with care, be sure to drop in!

Girls Omusubi Cafe
Tokyo-to, Chiyoda-ku, Sotokanda 3-15-7 Dai-ni Marushin Building 7F
Open: Mon-Thurs 17:00 – 22:00, Sat-Sun 11:00 – 22:00
Closed: Fri

All images © RocketNews24

Don’t miss: We visit otaku cooking school, Kitchen a la Mode, find out it isn’t just for nerds 

Since Hayao Miyazaki of Studio Ghibli fame announced his retirement in September 2013, many fans worldwide were left wondering what the prolific director – known to be a notoriously hard-worker – would be doing with all his free time. If you’re one of those people, listen up, because we’ve got some good news and bad news.

First, the bad news–one of Miyazaki’s first new projects post-retirement, a manga series titled Teppō Samurai (鉄砲侍/”Matchlock Samurai”), is currently stuck in indefinite limbo. But here’s the good news–a plastic figure modeled on the titular character has already been released, even without the manga being completed.

Teppō Samurai tells the story of matchlock gun-wielding cavalry warrior Hiruko Hachirota (蛭子八郎太) on the front lines of a battle between the Hojo andUesugi clans in theKanto area of 1560s feudal Japan. Miyazaki apparently began working on the story’s concept back in 2013, spending a year drafting and illustrating half of the first battle scene before halting its production for reasons that remain unclear. Teppō Samurai was originally scheduled to be serialized in the monthly Japanese magazine Model Graphix, but as a result of its indefinite status, it is currently unknown whether the manga will actually be completed, let alone released, in the near future.

▼ Miyazaki’s illustration for Teppō Samurai

Of course, no one could foresee the manga’s current state of postponement/cancellation. Back in the early stages of planning, plastic model kit producer Model Kasten had already been given the OK to create a figure modeled on Miyazaki’s own original design of the samurai protagonist Hiruko Hachirota. In fact, Miyazaki himself inspected a prototype of the figure, commenting that the chest area was “too thin and weak-looking.”

▼ Miyazaki critiquing the figure

In fact, Model Kasten has since gone ahead and released the final version, describing it as a 1/35 scaled model which comes in the form of a plastic kit that the buyer must assemble and color by hand.

Here are some pictures of the model in various states of completion:

While the figure is now being advertised through Model Kasten’s website for 1,850 yen (US $15.42), event goers to the Shizuoka Hobby Show held on May 16 and 17 in Shizuoka Prefecture got a chance to get their hands on the product ahead of time.

Looks like the rest of us will just have to wait a little bit longer to get our own copies of the samurai, which is the next-best thing to a release of the Teppō Samurai manga itself!

Source: Kai-You
Images: Model Kasten (English and Japanese versions)

Different cultures may have different beauty standards, but one beauty requirement that was thought to be universal in the world of modelling is having a set of long, shapely legs.

But now even that idea is being challenged. Thai-born model Kanya Sesser was born without legs, but she hasn’t let that hold her back. She currently works as a lingerie model, and she’s transforming people’s notions about what it means to be “beautiful” all over the world.

Kanya Sesser was abandoned by her parents shortly after her birth, left outside a Buddhist temple. Despite her traumatic childhood though, she was adopted at age five and taken to the U.S. where she didn’t just survive, she positively thrived.

Now 23 years old, Kanya does pretty much everything you wouldn’t expect her to: she skateboards, surfs, gives motivational speeches, and of course, models sportswear and lingerie.

Here’s some sample photos of her work:

▼ The classic “don’t care about no stairs” look.

https://instagram.com/p/8Oei62jQ3y/

▼ The classic “make your jaw drop” look.

https://instagram.com/p/vfz5tejQ4P/

▼And the classic “something probably symbolic that you can’t quite figure out” look.

When asked about how she feels being a model, Kanya had this to say:

“I love showing people what beauty can look like. I don’t need legs to feel sexy. … I’m different and that is sexy.”

And apparently it’s not just sexy, it’s downright profitable too. Kanya makes over US$1,000 per day modeling lingerie, and her popularity and demand is only going up. Here’s a few more images of her to show why that’s the case:

▼ Yup, I would have a concussion if I attempted that.

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▼ Sometimes you just gotta dress up a bit.

https://instagram.com/p/hfAGEwDQ7x/

▼ That face says: “Oh, you think I’m half-buried in sand? Here, let me show you something….”

▼ Is this how kids skateboard these days?

https://instagram.com/p/6BWjljjQxj/

▼ Just hanging out at the beach.

https://instagram.com/p/4xz8tEDQ-r/

▼ Showing up everyone at the skate park.

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▼ And making everyone really jealous of her cupcake.

https://instagram.com/p/w45rPxjQ7i/

Have you suddenly found yourself to be a fan of Kanya? Then give her a follow on Instagram or Facebook. Her no-nonsense attitude and infectious smile may just be the inspiration you’ve been looking for.

Source: Coconuts Bangkok
Featured/top image: Instagram/kanyasesser (1, 2) (Edited by RocketNews24)