| ROUND #1 TEAMS | ||
 Nagaoka Nagano Hiroshi & Okada Jun'ichi |  Morikens Morita Go & Miyake Ken |  Inosaka Gumi Sakamoto Masayuki & Inohara Yoshihiko |
| Crepe Battle Crepe: Thin French pancake-ish thing filled will all sorts of yummy yummy stuff. | |
| Nagaoka Sweet Potato Crepes Ahh... men after my own heart. ^_^ For Nagaoka's crepe creation, they decided to fill them with my favorite food in the world, sweet potatoes. They had about three different combinations of sweet potato crepes (chocolate, green tea, and fruit berry) that just made my mouth water. Despite their attempt at selling "undercover", a little boy recognized Nagano-kun as Ultraman Tiga. The little boy promised to keep Ultraman's secret, which delighted Nagano-kun to no end and kept Okada-kun in a corner of the truck, snickering to himself. |
Morikens Sushi Crepes Normal sushi hand rolls involve rice and raw fish in a cone of seaweed. Morikens decided to replace the seaweed with crepes to form their brand new sushi crepes. I have no idea how rice, wasabi, and soy sauce taste wrapped up in a crepe with tuna, egg, shrimp, or natto, but hopefully it's not fatal. They actually did a fairly good job selling their odd crepes, especially at lunch time, despite the fact that they spent their first hour of sales with their "closed" sign still up... |
| Winner: NAGAOKA | |
| Croquette (Korokke) Battle
Korokke: Croquettes usually involve breaded and fried foods (i.e. Veal Croquettes)... in Japan, Korokke refers just to a breaded and fried clump of mashed potatoes. | |
| Nagaoka Spicy Korokke One of the standard methods of creating new dishes for the Junk Battles seems to be, "when in doubt, make it painfully spicy." Nagaoka created three different levels of spicy: Level 1 was korokke with spicy tarako (fish eggs) mixed in. Level 2 was kim-cheese korokke, with kimchi and cheese inside of a korokke. Mmmm, yum~! Level 3, the absolutely insane level of spicy, was jalapeno-wasabi korokke. It was pure green and looked absolutely horribly spicy. Ugh... |
Inosaka Gumi Sweet Korokke Inosaka Gumi decided to make korokke that would speak to the young high school girl crowd. Therefore, they made sweet desert korokke. You had your choice of banana, apple, or chocolate, wrapped in a korokke. Yum~! The only problem being, of course, that korokke involves mashed potatoes. Um... |
| Winner: NAGAOKA | |
| Ramen Battle Ramen: A hot, simple noodle soup of Chinese origin. | |
| Inosaka Gumi UnaTama Ramen "Una" stands for Unagi (eel); "Tama" stands for Tamago (egg). The basic idea behind Inosaka Gumi's creation is that you cook onions and eel in a pan, add lightly cooked egg, and pour it all over ramen. It looked absolutely delicious. Mmm... |
Morikens Gyuudon Ramen In the second part of Ken-Ken's takeout inspired series, Morikens created gyuudon ramen. Gyuudon is a bowl of onion and tender beef served over rice, sometimes with a raw egg cracked on top. Replace the rice with ramen, and you have gyuudon ramen. Not the most creative of ideas, but looks yummy. |
| Winner: INOSAKA GUMI | |
| Takoyaki Battle Takoyaki: Famous Osakan dish that involves small spheres of dough with octopus cooked inside. | |
| Nagaoka Giant Takoyaki By far my favorite battle. Okada, the only native of Osaka, grew up with takoyaki. As a child, he had a dream: a dream to eat a massive takoyaki the size of a baseball. So Nagaoka created Okada's dream: First, they took an egg. And then they put it inside of a regular 3cm takoyaki. And they they put THAT inside of an 8cm takoyaki. It was insane, but Okada-kun was like a little kid; he was so happy. At the very end of the battle, Okada-kun brought out his secret weapon: three 8cm takoyaki inside of a giant mold to make a 16cm takoyaki. It apparently tasted like crap, but Okada-kun was still so amazingly happy to realize his dream that he was actually moved. The rest of V6 insisted it was just him. |
Inosaka Gumi Rice Takoyaki Unlike Nagaoka, Inosaka Gumi didn't have Okada-kun to coach them how to make takoyaki. They had to call in their director, a native of Osaka, to teach them the subtleties of takoyaki making. But then they had to come up with a theme... they finally decided on giving a Tokyo spin to takoyaki by filling the batter with rice. Inosaka Gumi first thought about selling their takoyaki using only Osakan dialect. But when the line in front of their little truck mysteriously grew to over 70 customers, the panic caused them to lose their careful dialect. Ah, well. They tried. |
| Winner: NAGAOKA | |
| Gyouza Battle Gyouza: Fried Chinese pork dumpling thingies that are very popular in Japan. | |
| Nagaoka Pea Pod Gyouza Unlike Morikens, Nagaoka had no problems making gyouza. So they decided to do something a little different and change the shape of their gyouza. They finally decided on colorful red or green pea pod shaped gyouza. The gyouza was long and narrow, and each of the three "peas" were a different gyouza filling. Nagaoka had a rather tough location for their gyouza stand, right next to another famous stand. But they eventually stole some of the overflow customers and, in Okada-kun's tradition of "bigger is better", they even created a massive gyouza chain with 30 pea pod gyouza stuck together. Aiya... |
Morikens Kawatta Kawa Gyouza The theme translates to something like "Gyouza with Strange Shell." Sick of Ken-ken's "take-out" series of junk battle ideas, Go-tsun took over this gyouza battle. Since neither member could handle the delicate gyouza shell, Go-tsun had a brilliant idea: make gyouza, only use something else instead of normal gyouza shell. They finally decided on bread, chicken, ham, and salmon skin. But then, they ran into another snag: unlike gyouza shell or bread, meat doesn't stick together when wet. But at a chinese restaurant, they discovered their miracle ingredient: meat paste. I have no idea what it actually is, but it's a white powder that looks like flour, only when wet, it causes meat to stick together. Thanks to their miracle meat paste, Morikens were able to make and sell the oddest looking gyouza ever. |
| Winner: MORIKENS | |
| Special Edition: New Year's Ramen Battle This was a special edition Junk Battle before the J-Friends (KinKi Kids, Tokio, and V6) New Years concert at Tokyo Dome. Two members of V6 formed a team with one member of Tokio and developed a special ramen to be sold on New Years in Odaiba. They had such a good time, that V6 actually ended up forgetting about their concert and barely making it in time... | |
| Sakamoto, Morita, Yamaguchi (Tokio bassist) Spicy Ramen Go-tsun developed a plan following one of the great stock Junk Battle ideas: when in doubt, make it painfully painfully spicy. He figured that since they'd be selling the ramen towards midnight on a cold winter night, people would like it the spicier, the better. But instead of making just the soup hot, they decided to make the actual noodles spicy. After trying several burning options that had all of them dashing for water and showed Yamaguchi's amazing talent of sweating buckets in reaction to spicy food, they decided on... red jalapeno noodles. [wincing] It looked so spicy I was surprised that no one lost skin just making the red jalapeno ramen noodles... |
Nagano, Miyake, Matsuoka (Tokio drummer) One-Strand Ramen It's apparently a saying that if you get an extra long soba noodle on New Year's, you'll have good luck for the year. Therefore, Ken came up with the idea to make everyone's year lucky by making ramen that consisted entirely of one GIANT strand of ramen. They measure out exactly how much noodle was in a normal bowl of ramen (a surprising amount) and then set to make their noodles. To help them out with technique, Nagano called in his "ramen friend." Yes, to the shock of Ken-ken and Matsuoka-kun, not only does Nagano apparently HAVE a ramen friend, but he also has said ramen friend programmed into his cell phone memory. No wonder he's so good at cooking for the Junk Battles... |
| Winner: NAGANO, MIYAKE, MATSUOKA | |
| Viva Viva V6 | Junk Battle #2 |