The Two Japan Facts That Reliably Kill a British Audience

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Before heading to Britain, someone went looking for material — something with the reliable comic weight that "British food is terrible" has in the other direction. The advice they got involved Japanese working hours. But the two things that actually worked in the room turned out to be about food: that Japanese people eat KFC at Christmas, and that McDonald's Japan sells a winter-only burger apparently constructed entirely from wheat.

The first one is true, and largely the result of a 1974 marketing campaign that arrived at exactly the right moment. Christmas in Japan is not a religious holiday and came with no inherited menu, so a fried chicken chain was free to supply one. Families now reserve their buckets weeks in advance. Turkey barely enters the conversation.

The second, the Gurakoro, is a McDonald's Japan seasonal fixture: a macaroni-gratin croquette — white sauce, breaded, deep-fried — served in a bun. Carbohydrate wrapped in carbohydrate. Japanese customers are fond of it, and were, judging by the response below, entirely unaware that it does not exist anywhere else. Roughly half of what follows is a legal defense of it.

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The bits that actually killed while I was in the UK were: Japanese people eat KFC at Christmas, and McDonald’s has a seasonal item called the Gurakoro, this deranged burger made of nothing but wheat.

実際イギリスいっててめっちゃウケたネタは・日本人はクリスマスにKFC食ってる・マックの季節限定メニューにグラコロとかいう小麦しか使ってないイカれたバーガーが存在するだったなぁ。

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I asked, is there a bit that lands the way “British food is bad” does? And got back: tell a Brit how little time off Japanese people get. Their eyes light up. Works on primary schoolers.

「イギリスのメシが不味いみたいなウケるネタって何かある？」て聞いたら「日本人の休みが少ない話はイギリス人が目を輝かせて喜ぶよ、小学生までウケる」だそうです

Come to think of it, they said the same thing in America,,,,,,,,,(´ω｀)

そういえばアメリカでも言われてたな,,,,,,,,,(´ω｀)

You eat KFC at Christmas? I have genuinely been asked that by both Canadians and Americans.

クリスマスにKFC食べるの？はまじでカナダ人にもアメリカ人にも聞かれた

“Japanese people eat KFC at Christmas” landed with Americans too. Apparently the custom is a lot more bizarre than we think it is.

「日本人はクリスマスにKFC食ってる」はアメリカ人にもウケたなんか我々が思ってる以上に奇怪な文化らしい

If you say yeah, we do eat KFC at Christmas sometimes, it’s definitely a thing — Americans go NO WAY. SERIOUSLY? I DON’T BELIEVE YOU. They get so hyped. I’m sitting there like, is it that weird? Apparently it’s that weird.

KFCをクリスマスに食べることもあるなー、ないと事はないぞ、って言うと、アメリカ人は、マジかよ！ほんとか！信じられない！ってほんと、盛り上がる。そんなにおかしい？って思うけど、おかしいらしい。

The Christmas KFC bit is the real deal. Brought it up at JapanShrine in VRChat and it destroyed. (JapanShrine is a long-running Japanese-themed hangout world in VRChat where Japanese and overseas users mix.)

クリスマスにKFCネタはガチ。 VチャでもJapanShrineで話したらバカウケした。

It lands hard enough that the BBC has run an entire article on Japanese people eating KFC at Christmas.

BBCの記事で、「日本人はクリスマスにKFCを食べる」という記事が書かれるぐらいにはウケてる

My personal theory is that “KFC as a turkey substitute at Christmas” sounds, to a Japanese ear, roughly as unhinged as “couldn’t get mochi for New Year’s, so we’re having suiton instead of ozoni.” (Ozoni is the New Year soup built around mochi rice cakes; suiton are plain flour dumplings, best known as a wartime stand-in.)

「クリスマスにターキーの代用でKFC」は日本人の感覚に置き換えると「正月に餅が手に入らないから雑煮の代わりにすいとん食べる」くらいの奇っ怪さなのかなと個人的に思ってる

I want to show them the ads that switch straight from “Christmas means Kentucky” to “New Year’s means Kentucky.”

「クリスマスはケンタッキー」から「お正月はケンタッキー」に様変わりする広告を見せたいぜ

It’s a familiar enough joke that even Canadian classical radio has used it, but a long-term Anglo resident of Japan once said something to me like: it’s not about the price or the convenience. People here eat pretty healthily day to day, so that greasy junk hit is what registers as letting loose, and in that sense it makes total sense. So there you have it.

カナダのクラシック音楽ラジオでもネタにされてたお馴染みのネタだけど、以前に駐日歴が長いアングロサクソンから「値段や手間じゃないんだね。普段は健康的な生活を送っているから、あの「羽目を外してる」って思えるジャンク感が理に適ってるんだろうな」のようなことを言われた。そうです。

Hold on, the UK doesn’t have the Gurakoro?!

イギリスにはグラコロ無いんですか！？

Wait, WHAT?! There’s no Gurakoro overseas?! After it’s been standing there this whole time with that “I am a Western dish” face on?!

えっ？！海外にはグラコロないのか？！あんな洋食ですみたいな顔してて？！

A sauce made of flour, coated in flour and then in a powder made of flour, deep-fried, then placed between two things made of flour.

小麦粉でできたソースに小麦粉と小麦粉でできた粉で纏わせ揚げ、それを小麦粉でできた物で挟んだバーガー

Both halves of this thread get their names the same way. Gurakoro is guratan korokke — gratin croquette — clipped down to four beats, which is Japanese’s default setting for shortening a long borrowed phrase. The same rule turns love hotel into rabuho further down the thread, and it is why so much Japanese slang arrives pre-shrunk.

An American AET I worked with called the Gurakoro evil lol (AET stands for Assistant English Teacher — the foreign teachers placed in Japanese public schools.)

アメリカ人AETもグラコロのことevilて言ってたw

Saying the Gurakoro is all flour is a bit of a stretch though. The main ingredient in white sauce is milk.

グラコロが全部小麦粉というのは大袈裟なんですけどね。ホワイトソースの主原料は牛乳なので。

Could everyone dunking on the Gurakoro please explain why nobody ever mentions that there is shrimp in it. I hate shrimp.

グラコロdisる人なんで海老の存在を正体隠匿するのか教えて下さい海老嫌いなのに

There’s a pity-sized amount of cabbage in there, so…

お情けみたいな量のキャベツ入ってるから…

Carb brick though the Gurakoro may be, I’d like to point out that it still beats the toast sandwich.

いくら炭水化物の塊であるグラコロでもトーストサンドイッチよりマシだろと言いたい

Different from doria — gratin on top of rice is delicious, so there’s no way bread is a miss. (Doria is gratin baked over a bed of rice, a Western-style dish that was actually invented in Japan.)

ドリアと違う、グラタンをご飯の上に乗せて食べるのが旨い、パンだってハズレな訳がない

The Gurakoro is NOT deranged 😣 Just think of it as ordering the cream croquette set at a restaurant and asking for bread instead of rice. Perfectly normal 🥹

グラコロはイカれてないやい😣 レストランでクリームコロッケのセットをパンで、と注文すると思えば普通やろ🥹

Do not underestimate the yakisoba set meal. (Fried noodles served as the main dish, with a bowl of rice on the side.)

焼きそば定食をなめるな

Still, the Gurakoro has no unusual flavors going on and nothing in it that’s off-limits for religious reasons, so I’d have assumed it was exactly the kind of thing Westerners would go for 🤔

しかしグラコロは特殊な風味もないし、宗教的に食べちゃダメなものも入ってないし、欧米人ウケしそうな食い物だと思うんだがなぁ🤔

Oh, huh, so there’s no meat in the Gurakoro at all 😳

そういえばグラコロって肉がないのか😳

If you told them about Dom Dom Burger they’d probably just call you crazy. (Japan’s oldest burger chain, now best known for items like a burger with an entire soft-shell crab hanging out of it.)

ドムドムバーガーの話をしたらクレイジーって言われそうですね

Yeah, KFC comes up a lot. “We drink Pocari Sweat” also gets a reaction. (A hugely popular sports drink here; the name reads rather differently in English.)

KFCはよく言われるね。ポカリスエットを飲んでるも受ける。

Christmas cake is another guaranteed one, you know? You say we Japanese eat Christmas cake! and they go, what is that?! Then you draw it out — it’s a chocolate or cream cake with strawberries on it and,,,, — and finish with: and a little chocolate plaque that says Merry Christmas! Huge laugh, every time.

クリスマスケーキも鉄板ですぜ？俺ら日本人はクリスマスケーキを食べるんだ！というとなにそれ！？とか言われる　イチゴなどが乗ったチョコやクリームのケーキで、、、、と溜めてからチョコレートのプレートにメリークリスマスって書いてある！と言うと大爆笑です

I wonder what happens if you tell them lately more people eat salmon at Christmas…σ(^_^;)

「最近は、クリスマスに鮭を食うことが多くなった」と言ったら、どうなるだろう…σ(^_^;)

There are countries that eat carp at Christmas, so salmon would go down fine, I reckon. The punchline is that it isn’t turkey but chicken, and specifically junk-food chicken from KFC.

クリスマスに鯉を食べる国もあるくらいなので、鮭は普通に受け入れられると思いますよ七面鳥じゃなくて鶏、しかもジャンクフードのケンタッキーってのが笑いどころなので

I mean, most Japanese people aren’t Christian in the first place.

まぁそもそも日本人の殆どがキリスト教徒じゃないからなぁ

They told him Japanese trains 🚃 are simply not possible, apparently… according to my eldest.

日本の電車は🚃ありえないっていわれたって言ってたな…長男

Not the UK, but in Australia the existence of the love hotel absolutely killed. “Huh? What is that lmao. It’s ONLY for sex lmao. Where are they lmao. They’re that common lmaooo” — they were on the floor. Unrelated, but the Gurakoro’s kill rate against me personally is far too high…

イギリスじゃないけどオーストラリアで「ラブホ」の存在がめっちゃウケてた。「は？なにそれｗｗｗセックス専用なのｗｗｗどこにあるのｗｗｗｗそんなコモンなのｗｗｗｗ」って爆笑してた。話変わるが、グラコロってワイへの殺傷能力が高すぎる…

I explained it seriously so it wouldn’t turn into a dirty joke — Love Hotels. We call that RABUHO — and they laughed for the rest of the night anyway. Seemed half-convinced right to the end. I got the distinct sense they’d filed me under: this guy has taken some weird local thing and is describing it like it’s all of Japan, and is possibly not right in the head.

「Love Hotels. We call that ‘RABUHO’」って下ネタにならないよう真面目に解説したのに一生笑ってた。最後まで半信半疑そうだった。こいつ身近な特殊例を日本全体みたいに言ってない？ってあたおか判定されてそうな雰囲気だった

The number of KitKat flavors that exist is genuinely unhinged.

キットカットの種類が狂ったように存在する。

Took an uchiwa to a gig in the UK and it went down a treat ( ･ ω ･ )ノ (A flat, rigid paddle fan; at Japanese concerts fans hold them up, usually with the performer’s name printed on them.)

イギリスのライブにうちわ持ってったらめっちゃウケた( ･ ω ･ )ノ

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At the bag check they asked what is this?, so I said Japanese traditional uchiwa and they seemed satisfied with that ( ･ ω ･ )ノ

手荷物検査の時「何これ?」って聞かれたので「Japanese traditional uchiwa」って言ったらなんか納得してた( ･ ω ･ )ノ

KFC landed 100% of the time, no exceptions. Also, when I said I only eat sushi about twice a year, not one person believed me.

KFCまじで100%ウケたあと寿司半年に1回くらいしか食べないって言ったら誰も信じてくれなかった

My take

Running a blog like this one, the Christmas KFC story comes around often enough that you stop noticing it — which is probably the strongest evidence there is that it never stops working on anybody.

#Funny #Culture #Food

Source & translation note

Comments loosely translated for tone. Reactions collected from Togetter and X threads.

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