Always find yourself trudging back from the shops with heavy bags of rice? Forget to buy rice in the first place? We’ve all been there, I’m sure. Well, worry no more – Japancentre.com has launched a new service aimed at taking the stress away from the monthly trip to the shops for UK mainland customers.

The idea is to order a 6-month subscription to a bag of rice, and we’ll take care of the work and send you your rice every month on the same day! Plus, by participating, you’ll save on a whole bag of rice! Couldn’t be better, right? Wrong – if you order now, we’ll throw in FREE SHIPPING as well!

Please pay attention to the Terms and Conditions after the jump.

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Terms and Conditions

• To be eligible for this service, you must be a UK Mainland resident.
• All deliveries will be sent by DPD’s ‘NEXT DAY’ delivery service.
• The usual packing fee (£1.20) applies to each delivery.
• Postage is free (usually £4.99) for customers ordering before 1st July 2013.
• When ordering the Monthly Rice Delivery, please understand that no other items may be added to the same order. If other items are required, please make a separate order and understand that no other items are eligible for a monthly delivery service.
• Payment is taken for the entire 6-month period at once when this service is ordered.
• If cancelled midway, refunds are calculated by subtracting the full price of the individual rice bags already received, postage and packaging from the original total amount. Please also be aware that there is a £0.50 handling fee when refunding.
• It is not possible to combine this service with other items in the same order. As part of this offer rice only will be dispatched.

ジャパンセンターオンラインショップでは、お米を１ヶ月に１回定期的に配達する「お米定期便」サービスを始めました。６か月分のお米（６袋）を一括でご注文いただくことで、６袋のうち１袋分が 無料（￡２０以上もお得！）となる魅力的な価格設定です。自動的にお米が届いて、お米の買い忘れの心配もなく、￡２０以上もお金をセーブするチャンス！しかも２０１３年６月末までにご注文いただいた場合は、送料を全て無料とさせていただきます。是非この機会をお見逃しなく！！

ご利用規約がございますので、必ず下記をご確認の上、ご注文ください。

※お届け先はＵＫメインランドの場合にのみとなります。

※ご注文の際は、お米定期便のみでご注文ください。他の商品とお米定期便を一緒にご注文いただくことはできません。

※配達オプションは「発送後翌日のお届け」オプションとなります。

※発送ごとに梱包料（￡１．２０）がかかります。

※発送ごとの送料（￡４．９９）は２０１３年６月末までにご注文いただいたお客様は無料となります。

※各月の発送日は、基本的にご注文いただいた日にちの１ヵ月後、そのまた１ヵ月後となります（土日、祝日となる場合はその限りではありません）。

※お代金は６か月分の金額を一括で引き落とさせていただきます。

※途中解約の場合、発送済の袋数分の送料、梱包料および、正規のお米の価格をチャージさせていただき、残金を返金させていただきます。不足が発生した場合は、不足金額を課金させていただきます。また手続き料として£0.50いただきます。

※他の商品を定期便のお米と一緒に発送することはできません。お米定期便はお米のみでの発送となります。

Love Japanese food and love a bargain? Who doesn’t?! Exclusively for our Blog, Facebook and Twitter followers around the world order online at Japancentre.com today between 12:00 – 14:00 and get 20% OFF all food orders!

If you’ve always fancied our Beginner Sushi Kit, have a hankering for ramen, or want to unwind with some soothing green tea, now is the perfect time to order; it’s just like shopping in-store but without the hassle of lugging your haul home! Don’t forget, we always offer Free Delivery on all orders over £100 for 12 Noon and Next Day (after dispatch) UK mainland customers!

⇒Shop Now!

Terms and Conditions

• Valid on orders received between 12:00 – 14:00 Friday 17th May 2013 only.
• Code UPWEMS25L2 must be entered at checkout for the offer to be applied to the order.
• No minimum order necessary.
• Offer valid for food items only. Not valid on homeware, books, magazines, chilled items, electrical, vegetable or fresh items.
• Discount is not applied to postage and packaging fees.
• Cannot be used in conjunction with any other offer.
• Japan Centre retains the right to cancel this offer at any time without warning.

Japan Centre is not only located in London, oh no! In 2013 we will be visiting many locations around Europe bringing all the best Japan Centre goodies to you! Keep an eye on our Events Calendar to see where we will be popping up next, you never know if could be in your neighbourhood!

EVENTS 2013

May

MCM Comic Con, London 24th – 26th May

Gardening Scotland, 31st May  - 2nd June

June

JAFF: Hokuriku Food Festival, Japan Centre Regent Street 10th – 30th June

July

Japan Expo, Paris 4th -7th July

MCM Comic Con, Manchester 20th July

Hyper Japan, London 26th – 28th July  *Japan Centre customer discount tickets coming soon!

From May 1st our half price deal at SHORYU POP-UP has to sadly end, but we know you all love a bargain so for the complete pop-up season at 3 Denman Street, Soho we’re offering 10% off the whole menu from 1st May - 31st July! Simply print off, fill in and bring along this 10% OFF POP-UP VOUCHER and benefit from money off your final bill.

IT’S IN OUR BONES

A hugely successful ramen bar in central London, SHORYU RAMEN specialises in Hakata tonkotsu ramen from Kyushu. Made with a thick, rich pork soup, our tonkotsu ramen originates from the Hakata district of Fukuoka city in Kyushu, southern Japan. Shoryu’s recipes have been specially created by our Executive Chef, born and raised in Hakata, to provide highly crafted, genuine tonkotsu rarely found outside Japan.

SHORYU POP-UP

Open until July SHORYU POP-UP will serve Shoryu favourites as well as dishes unique to the site, if you like your ramen informal, intimate and in the thick of it, head to our second location in London’s Soho. Our second ramen bar SHORYU SOHO will open fully next door to the same site later this summer! Use our 10% OFF POP-UP VOUCHER to get money off your final bill by printing it out and bringing along when you dine.

Terms & Conditions: For use at Shoryu Pop-Up 3 Denman Street Soho only. Valid 1st May – 31st July 2013. One voucher per person, cannot be used in conjunction with any other offer.

If you’re setting up shop or opening a new eatery and are in need of wholesale quantity items, not only do Japan Centre have catering supplies available to purchase via our online shopping site, but we are also now able to offer bulk wholesale ordering from our warehouse for quantities over 1 pallet.

Please contact our wholesale team directly on wholesale@japancentre.com or 020 3405 1151 to discuss the details of your request. Alternatively please visit us at the Japan Centre Warehouse, Unit 15 – 18 Victoria Industrial Estate, Victoria Road W3 6UU.

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Love Japanese food and love a bargain? Who doesn’t?! Exclusively for our Blog, Facebook and Twitter followers order online at Japancentre.com today between 12:00 – 14:00 and get 10% OFF all food orders!

If you’ve always fancied our Beginner Sushi Kit, have a hankering for ramen, or want to unwind with some soothing green tea, now is the perfect time to order; it’s just like shopping in-store but without the hassle of lugging your haul home! Don’t forget, we always offer Free Delivery on all orders over £100 for 12 Noon and Next Day (after dispatch) UK mainland customers!

⇒Shop Now!

Terms and Conditions

• Valid on orders received between 12:00 – 14:00 Friday 15th March 2013 only.
• Code D40J436CQ9 must be entered at checkout for the offer to be applied to the order.
• No minimum order necessary.
• Offer valid for food items only. Not valid on homeware, books, magazines, chilled items, electrical, vegetable or fresh items.
• Discount is not applied to postage and packaging fees.
• Cannot be used in conjunction with any other offer.
• Japan Centre retains the right to cancel this offer at any time without warning.

Partly thanks to fierce competition between companies and partly thanks to Japan’s love of seasonal, regional or otherwise unusual food there are probably more weirdly flavoured Japanese snacks than it’s possible to eat in a lifetime.

Of course most of these are just fun unusual flavours, cheesecake flavoured KitKats, watermelon flavoured Pepsi or even savoury sour plum flavoured pretzels. The kind of thing that brightens your day while you’re doing the shopping. Some however, some just make you stare. You take a moment, look at the snack again, but nope someone really did decide to make Sapporo Beer Flavoured Caramel.

Join us on a trip down the Top 5: Strange Japanese Snack Flavours, climbing the heights of Japan’s oddest, weirdest… and even most delicious confectionery and treats.

5: Melon Pan

Okay, so we’re going to start off with a sort of opposite. Melon pan isn’t really strange for what it tastes of, but more what it doesn’t…. namely melon. Yes, that’s right not only does melon pan not contain any melons, it also doesn’t actually taste of melon either. It tastes delicious, just not of melon. So what’s up? Well, it’s actually the resemblance of the crispy, sticky cookie coating on melon pan to a rock melon or cantaloupe that gives it the famous name. Having said that, melon fans’ disappointment at the lack of melon flavour means you can now find melon flavoured melon pan as well these days. We’re not sure if this is called melon melon pan or just melon pan though. It is frankly, a melon too far for us.

4: Curry Ramune

There are a lot of novelty ramune flavours. As well as the standard and oddly compelling kinda-lemon sort-of-lime flavour, there are also popular regional variations like mango, melon or yuzu. A few years ago there was a TV show where the losers had to drink oddly flavoured ramune as a punishment. It is to this latter category that curry ramune sadly belongs, proving once and for all that combining a delicious thing and a delicious thing can still make a kind of ‘ugh’ thing. Really, all that’s left is for them to make it massive. For those of you that enjoy crossing the streams (we don’t recommend this) you can even enjoy a ramune flavoured KitKat while you drink your chocolate flavoured ramune.

3: Wasabi KitKats

As you may have gathered Japanese KitKats are a bit different from their continental cousins. The majority of novelty KitKats are exclusive to special locations, focusing on regional dishes or produce. This is fine if you are Kyoto and get the Matcha KitKat as your culinary envoy to the world. If you are Shizuoka on the other hand, you get Wasabi KitKats. Luckily for the international reputation of Shizuoka, it actually works quite well. The wasabi and the white chocolate work together to give a kind of sweet, but fiery taste (think chilli chocolate). On the plus side, if Nestlé continue to release more savoury Kitkats you could probably recreate some kind of meal using KitKats alone. How about KitKat curry rice or KitKat ramen?

2. Natto Cakes

Ahh, natto. Natto got a honourable mention in our previous Top 5: Weirdest Japanese Food! blog and for good reason. Made from fermented soy beans, this extremely healthy (but pongy) food is famous for inspiring a love-hate relationship in all that try it. Usually enjoyed on rice or in other savoury dishes like sushi, recently it’s been making in-roads into the last great bastion of un-healthy food… cake! While it maybe good news for health fans (it is a good alternative protein after all), if you, like me, recoil in horror at anything even slightly natto-esque it will be sad news. Who knows what delicious treats will be harbouring the devil bean! Not just content with interfering with cakes, it’s also been making appearances in jellies, hard candy and with jam on toast.

Okay, we’re approaching our next and final item. If you don’t have a strong stomach, we strongly, strongly suggest you don’t read the last item.

Still here? OK, scroll down.

1: Placenta Drinks

Like many people across the world, Japanese people are very concerned with ways to make themselves look younger or prettier or both. Over the years this has included a lot of food, for example nori seaweed has been believed to help hair grow shiny and strong since the Heian period (700s -1100s)!  With this in mind, enter one of Japan’s strangest trends, placenta drinks! While placenta drinks are not supposed to actually taste of placenta, we’re not sure they’d be our go to drink if we wanted fruit flavoured refreshment. They’re made from all kinds of animals depending on the brand, including pigs and dolphins (but probably not humans). If necking a bottle of placenta drink is not your speed, brave souls can even have placenta injected into them at beauty salons! If you want to try something similar, but like your edible cosmetics a bit more fruity and a bit less terrifying why not give umeshu plum wine with collagen or royal jelly a try?

Phew, that’s all over! Ready for more!?

If you feel like expanding your taste buds in slightly less extreme ways, there are plenty of unusual but delicious snacks to be found at Japan Centre. We recommend the wasabi peas, sushi candy set or curry pretzels as slightly more sedate starts to your snacking odyssey!

Thanks to ryumu at Flickr for the curry ramune image.

Thanks to Ray Larabie at Flickr for the placenta jelly drink image.

Thanks to Yoshizi at Flickr for the kastera cake image.

The Japan Centre website is experiencing technical difficulties at the moment. We’re working to get everything back and running as soon as possible. Thank you for your patience and we apologise for any inconvenience caused.

Love Japanese food and love a bargain? Who doesn’t?! Exclusively for our social media followers spend over £20 at Japancentre.com between 11:00 – 13:00 today and get FREE Next Day Delivery (After Dispatch) on all UK mainland orders!

If you’ve always fancied our Beginner Sushi Kit, have a hankering for ramen, or want to unwind with some soothing green tea, now is the perfect time to order; it’s just like shopping in-store but without the hassle of lugging your haul home! Don’t forget, we always offer Free Delivery on all orders over £100 for 12 Noon and Next Day (after dispatch) UK mainland customers!

⇒Shop Now!

Terms and Conditions

• Valid on orders received between 11:00 – 13:00 Monday 25th February 2013 only.
• Code ROSR6TJ6Z6 must be entered at checkout for the offer to be applied to the order.
• Orders with over £20 of items added to the basket are eligible. Packaging fees are not considered part of this £20 total.
• Offered for 1 box up to 30kg per order. This 30kg is inclusive of packaging weight.
• All free deliveries will be delivered by our standard next day courier service and arrive with you the following working day after dispatch.
• All orders are subject to a £1 (plus VAT if applicable) handling charge.
• This offer is valid for UK mainland delivery addresses only. This excludes the Scottish Highlands, Northern Ireland and the Channel Islands.
• Next Day (After Dispatch) delivery service only, this offer does not cover Royal Mail, 9AM, 10AM 12NOON or Chilled delivery options.
• Japan Centre retains the right to cancel this offer at any time without warning.

本サービスは、合計£20以上の商品をご購入の方に、1箱分の送料を無料（パッケージング代は別途かかります）とさせていただくものです。配送地域、配送オプションなどに制限がございますので、下記ご確認の上ご注文ください。