Yongfook is a web producer and usability consultant based in Tokyo

Ah the humble nikku-man.

This is the Japanese variant of the Chinese ‘char siew bau”. It is a meat-filled steamed bun snack, and can be yours to own, cherish and consume for a mere 88-yen (less than a packet of potato chips). This price alone is something of a warning sign, being that 100-yen is usually the price threshold below which edible items become quite dubious in quality, and almost as a testament to just how much of a biohazard these things are, nikku-man come wrapped in about 20 layers of packaging.

Eating one of these is an exciting gamble with mortality and the fundamental rule when eating a nikku-man is to never ever look inside it once you have taken a bite. Although nikku means ‘meat’, Im afraid to say that ‘meat’ is merely a glint in the dreamy eye of the chimpanzee who operates the Big Vat Where Things Are Churned Up, at time of manufacture.

I think the eventual goal of a nikku-man filling manufacturing plant is to create something that tastes more or less meat-like and will not cause immediate death and/or projectile vomiting. Crunchy things (bone or vegetables. Most likely bone), chewy things (gristle), and dusty material (the mechanically-retained meat from essentially meatless parts of an animals body, like knuckles or testicles) can all be found in a nikku-man - a pandemonium of anus wrapped in a soft warm bun.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, March 4th, 2003 at 10:22 pm and is filed under General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.