Little discoveries about Japanese culture and business that even people living in Japan don't know.
In about 5 minutes on your break, pick up one new way of seeing Japan — a guilt-free knowledge snack 🍪 Every episode stands alone, so start anywhere.
A student 🌸 and a professor 👓 decode modern Japan in casual yet deep dialogues — the insider stories you won't find in textbooks.
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1 in 2 Young Japanese Women Skip Cleanser: Shiseido's Gummy
In a Shiseido survey, half of young women skipped morning cleanser. Its answer: a gummy.
▼ About This Episode
Early in the morning, Sakura has overslept and missed breakfast, and she needs something before class. In a drugstore that's open this early, she picks up what looks like gummy candy: a heart, a little lemon. Haru tells her it isn't candy: it's a face cleanser from Shiseido, a Japanese cosmetics company. And when he asks whether she washed her face with cleanser that morning, she admits she just used water.
She's not the only one. In a 2023 Shiseido survey of 650 women aged 15 to 29, half said they didn't use cleanser in the morning, citing no time, too much hassle, and not wanting it to strip their skin's moisture. In Japan, some young people who skip cleanser in the morning and rinse with water have been called the "face-wash cancel" crowd. Shiseido's experts say water alone may not get all the dirt off. The company's response was to make using cleanser easier: hada-gumi, a "skin gummy" you never lather. Wet it and your face, glide it over your skin, and rinse. It went on sale as a limited test run, and the Nikkei reports it sold five times what Shiseido planned. The company also saw parents and kids sharing it, and men using it.
Then Haru points to what hangs by the sink: a hand towel from a Japanese housewares maker that you turn a little after each use, so a dry part comes around and the next swap is pushed back. A gummy you don't lather, a towel you can wait a little longer to change. Which small chore in your day would you hand over to a product first?
▼ Featured Links
hada-gumi — Shiseido's gummy face cleanser: https://www.shiseido.co.jp/hadagumi/
▼ Timestamps (Chapters)
00:00 - Is This the Candy Shelf?
00:38 - Half Skip Morning Cleanser: The Face-Wash Cancel Crowd
01:28 - Shiseido's Response: Cancel the Cancel
01:53 - Hada-gumi: No Lather, Just Glide and Rinse
02:24 - A Limited Test Run, Five Times the Plan
02:48 - A Hand Towel You Turn
03:36 - Weren't You Here for Candy?
▼ Connect with Us
Twitter/X: https://x.com/NarrativeJapan
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/narrativejapan/
▼ The Sources Behind Each Episode
Every episode starts from Japanese-language reporting.
Our free newsletter walks through it in English and links you to every source we used.
One email per episode: https://narrativejapan.substack.com/ (https://narrativejapan.substack.com/)
◆Note
The content of this program is intended solely for informational purposes and reflects the personal views of the creators. Please make any investment or business decisions based on your own judgment and responsibility. This program does not endorse or recommend any specific financial products or investment strategies.
🎵Music by Ivan Ohanezov from Pixabay
#JapanBusiness #JapaneseCulture #NarrativeJapan #JapanPodcast #Shiseido #JapaneseSkincare
5 Oct 2026
Why Japan's Chip Maker Makes Seaweed-Free Nori From Potatoes
In Japan, a chip maker made nori from potato starch, and a nori maker made chips.
▼ About This Episode
On a muddy forestry field trip high in the mountains, Sakura smells the sea. One of the crew has just sat down on a log for his break with a bag of seaweed-and-salt chips, and his family back in Saga, Japan's top nori region, grows the real thing: nori, the dried seaweed pressed into thin black sheets that wrap sushi rolls and rice balls. Three poor harvests in a row, he says. The Nikkei reports the same for nori nationwide, and says the average price of a sheet more than doubled.
Then Haru brings up Calbee, Japan's biggest potato-snack company. When it washes potatoes for chips, starch comes off, and it used to sell that starch as animal feed. Mixed with konjac flour, colored deep green and baked thin, that starch became a substitute nori, with no seaweed in it. It can't wrap a rice ball yet. For now it's a seasoned snack, about a dollar and a quarter a bag, sold at one Calbee shop. On the other side, a nori company founded in 1894 turned nori itself into wavy chips, with a crunch it says sits between a sheet of nori and a potato chip.
The chip company makes nori, and the nori company makes chips. Where you live, which everyday food would someone make without the real thing, if it ran short?
▼ Featured Links
Calbee — the potato-snack company behind the substitute nori: https://www.calbee.co.jp/
▼ Timestamps (Chapters)
00:00 - Smelling the Sea in the Mountains
00:47 - Three Poor Nori Harvests in a Row
01:25 - The Chip Company That Made Nori
02:38 - The Nori Company That Made Chips
03:16 - The Real Thing Gets Another Winter
▼ Connect with Us
Twitter/X: https://x.com/NarrativeJapan
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/narrativejapan/
▼ The Sources Behind Each Episode
Every episode starts from Japanese-language reporting.
Our free newsletter walks through it in English and links you to every source we used.
One email per episode: https://narrativejapan.substack.com/ (https://narrativejapan.substack.com/)
◆Note
The content of this program is intended solely for informational purposes and reflects the personal views of the creators. Please make any investment or business decisions based on your own judgment and responsibility. This program does not endorse or recommend any specific financial products or investment strategies.
🎵Music by Ivan Ohanezov from Pixabay
#JapanBusiness #JapaneseCulture #NarrativeJapan #JapanPodcast #Nori #JapaneseSnacks
28 Sept 2026
Why Japan Buys Bottles of Plain Hot Water
Japan gave plain hot water a name, a bottle, and a red button of its own.
▼ About This Episode
On the first cold morning of the year, the hot row comes back to a campus vending machine. Sakura presses a red button expecting tea and pulls out a bottle that is completely clear. The label reads "sayu" — plain hot water, nothing added.
Haru follows that bottle into a quiet corner of Japanese business. One brand says it has shipped about 73 million bottles of it since launch. A housewares company that wanted to make a mug for sayu went looking for a definition, and says all it found in the dictionary was "water that has been boiled" — no temperature, no method. So the company wrote its own: boil the tap water for ten minutes to drive off the chlorine, then let it cool to fifty-five degrees or a little above. The fifty-five, they say, came from something they had heard about how warm drink makers keep that red row.
Then an electronics maker built a portable kettle with a sayu setting: it boils, and then it keeps boiling for ten more minutes. Not for safety, because the tap water here is already drinkable, but for the smell of the chlorine and the feel of the water in your mouth. Where you live, is the tap water drinkable — and would anyone pay for it warm?
▼ Featured Links
Asahi Oishii Mizu Tennensui Sayu — the bottled hot water in this episode: https://www.asahiinryo.co.jp/products/water/oishiimizu_sayu/
▼ Timestamps (Chapters)
00:00 - A Vending Machine Turns Red
01:02 - 73 Million Bottles of Nothing
01:44 - The Company That Wrote the Definition
03:20 - A Kettle With a Sayu Button
04:10 - Warm Nothing, and What Came From It
▼ Connect with Us
Twitter/X: https://x.com/NarrativeJapan
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/narrativejapan/
▼ The Sources Behind Each Episode
Every episode starts from Japanese-language reporting.
Our free newsletter walks through it in English and links you to every source we used.
One email per episode: https://narrativejapan.substack.com/ (https://narrativejapan.substack.com/)
◆Note
The content of this program is intended solely for informational purposes and reflects the personal views of the creators. Please make any investment or business decisions based on your own judgment and responsibility. This program does not endorse or recommend any specific financial products or investment strategies.
🎵Music by Ivan Ohanezov from Pixabay
#JapanBusiness #JapaneseCulture #NarrativeJapan #JapanPodcast #Sayu #JapaneseDrinks
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