Analyzing the Design of Unusual Japanese Butter Tableware

Do you have a reference for this newspaper trivia? I've just mentioned this "butter smell" to a friend of mine who lives in Japan and got told that it's not a thing and that it doesn't exist.

Japanese designed and manufactured tools are always a delight to use. Whenever I go to Japan I always find myself picking up some new beautifully designed and made object. The last time I was in Tokyo it was lighters. I bought probably $300 of various lighters from Tokyo Pipe Co. I don't even smoke!

Unfortunately it's getting harder and harder to find products actually made in Japan, and despite what many people want to believe, Japanese obsession with perfection makes a big difference in the quality of manufactured goods. Makita doesn't manufacture in Japan anymore, and quality has suffered. Fujifilm stopped making several of their lines in Japan, and quality suffered. Very sad.

My grandfather bought a knife in Japan while on a business trip in the 80s. The owner of the shop used to call him once a year (now they communicate via email) and ask if he needed to ship it back for any repairs. The repairs are free.

At this point, he considers this guy a friend. It’s a really interesting relationship. In my experience, the only similar relationship that most Americans might have is with the person who cuts their hair or with a bartender.

even mass produced japanese products are beautifully designed. my last acquisition is the beautiful Pilot MYU. Vintage, but new. Gorgeous. I am so worried about the integrated nib that i am not enjoying it as much as I probably should..only one other matches the passions the MYU can evoke. Parker 51. American.

turns out they did a limited release of the pilot myu in 2008. $180 is a bargain. https://www.penaddict.com/blog/2013/1/30/my-fountain-pen-edu...

Japanese tools are insanely good. I bought a specialized plastic cutter from a Japanese company a couple years ago. It was expensive, but I couldn't find another that took less than 4 weeks to ship.

It's built more like a smartphone than a cheap hand tool. Fully machined, no parting lines, very tight tolerances. The plastic is quite strong, maybe nylon. The steel cutter is definitely hardened and non magnetic so possibly stainless.

And in Japanese fashion, as far as I can tell this company only makes plastic cutters

Talking about nail clippers: I always found it weird that nail clippers seem to be the most common device for cutting your finger nails outside of Europe. Over here we have specialized scissors[1] for this which seem to give a lot more control and better results. Anyone seen these elsewhere? I guess they’re a bit harder to use?

[1] https://de.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nagelschere

It's not nail cutters, but perhaps other readers would be interested in NHK World's (English-language) programme which explores a different aspect of Japanese culture each episode, usually through the lens of a specific object (scissors, coffee, stationery, expressways, etc…): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ilPC-uJ8Yuw

> It was a fascinating demonstration of what I believe is called "kaizen"

It's not kaizen, it's the perpetual appetite for novelty rather than anything else. Also Japanese TV programs are anything but legit, everything is scripted ahead of time and there's not such thing as a winner which does not happen to buy ads on the same network.

I have nails which are (evidently) really hard; if I try to use the standard American 89-cent "Gem" cutter, I can squeeze the handles until they touch and it won't go through my nail.

Mentioned this to a co-worker, and he pointed me to Seki Japanese cutters. Extremely sharp, extremely well made, fantastic. They go through my nails like butter.

On YouTube there is a show called Japanology that discussed such things. Very interesting, even the episode about moss.

I don't want to get between a Frenchman and his butter, but I just use a potato peeler for cold butter. I find it works well enough. I've also used a cheese slicer, but I found it harder to control the thickness.

A French girl once asked me, "Why is there no salt in your Norwegian butter?" This really got to me. It forced me to ask existential questions like, "Should there really be salt in butter?" But the fact is, putting salt in stuff is an old conservation method. Because of it, unsalted butter was looked upon as fresher, and thus of higher value when used as spread or in cooking. As far as I know, the idea of unsalted butter was actually popularized by French gourmands! But as newer and cleaner dairy production methods came about, the production of unsalted butter became more common. On top of that, the colder climate in Scandinavia means that unsalted butter keeps for longer than in warmer countries. So that's why Norwegian butter isn't salted. But yeah, as for the "grater knife;" I think it just made it to the top of my wish-list for Christmas!

We don't cut our butter, but instead use a regular knife to scrape[1] curls off the top for spreading. (changing sides every now and then so the top of the butter winds up with a dihedral "roof" shape) Depending upon temperature of the butter, one has to use different speeds and feeds, but the correct ones for easily spreadable curls come quickly with practice.

[1] other scraping folk arts: hand-carved toy "christmas trees" with wood curls (originally, I think, suitable for use as tinder. These days we use chemical blocks as starters) and raclette, a dish involving scraping molten blobs off a wheel of cheese.

We buy 200g (table, in tub) and 250g (cooking, as slab, with wrapper measure) but it looks like there's a wide variety https://www.coop.ch/fr/nourriture/produits-laitiers-oeufs/be... of which I'd say the other I most commonly see are 15g (single service).

Edit: looks like you all have more than 250g and 500g, but not as much more: https://www.ah.nl/producten/zuivel-eieren/boter

In the states we've been getting more and more 'European' butter thats sold in 227g slabs.

I do prefer the sticks, they seem to keep a little longer and make baking easier.

I'm a total convert to "spreadable" butter, which is blended with vegetable oil to reduce viscosity and sold in tubs of 250/500g size.

You definitely get the sticks in Cape Town, South Africa (along with packets of ham that say “edible” in big writing on the front). The butter is also ungodlily expensive, and margarine is in very common use

In Finland it seems the most common sizes for butter are 200g and 500g, in the UK I'd be more used to 250/500g.

(Wrapped in paper, not in a box.)

Israel: The most common form used to be 100g slabs wrapped in paper (with lines printed for 25g blocks) for locally produced butter. Recently I'm seeing more of the 200g slabs, which are the same size except double the height. Also more varieties of imported butter.

A common form factor here in Brazil is a plastic cup, for instance https://www.itambe.com.br/portal/produto/manteiga-com-sal-po... (that one is 200g, there's also a 500g cup, and a 200g slab which is easier to use when cooking).

There are two stick form factors in the US, the east coast long skinny stick and the west coast short fat stick. Each of them are 4oz.

In Canada we have both a slab of 4 sticks, but also 4 individual sticks in a cardboard box. I like that one a lot, since a stick of butter is too little and a slab the size of 4 sticks is too much. 4 sticks in one pack is perfect.

As a side note though, it’s not just packaging. I’m originally from Germany, and we don’t use salted butter there. In Canada it’s all salted butter by default.

Japanese butter actually comes in many sizes, and unlike what this article says, it comes both in slabs and sticks.

You can get a 100g stick, which has pre-cut slots every 10g. This one is easy enough to break evenly with a normal knife: https://livedoor.blogimg.jp/ddmp-mmpj/imgs/5/4/549fd611.jpg

This is not very far from the standard American 4oz stick, as far as I understand, and for most Japanese households it might be enough.

Beyond that size you can commonly find 150g and 200g slabs in supermarkets, and huge 450g slabs in bulk-oriented supermarkets (like Hanamasa or Gyomu) and specialty shops (like Tomiz). I tend to use butter quite regularly for cooking so I'm generally buying the 450g ones, as it is quite expensive here.

I guess the reason many people here mention they've never seen these kind of tools in Japan, is that you wouldn't find them in a normal house. Relatively few people bake at home here (or even OWN an oven) and butter is mostly used for toasts. If you have an insatiable kodawari (pedantry) for nicely cut butter cubes, I guess you could just go ahead and buy the pre-cut sticks.

I am using the wire grill cutter myself though, so I know it exists. And I'm pretty sure that these different cutters are heavily used in cafe's restaurants, which often serve butter toasts. They tend to serve fancy-looking toasts like this one: https://storage.googleapis.com/mbs-recipe-and-restaurant-ass...

Yes, the toast bread is quite thick (though usually not as much as this), and the butter is frequently served as a perfectly slice on top. So perhaps having tools for perfectly slicing butter in right angle out of bulk-size slabs is not so surprising.

454g is one pound, which is a very natural bulk unit for butter in English customary measures, so it's not too surprising that it survives in Canada. We Americans may have contributed to the survival of the size, but I'm sure we didn't introduce it.

All form factors are wrong. They expose the butter to air.

The proper form factor would be a cartridge for a caulking gun. The extra leverage provided by the mechanism means that cold butter works fine, and the protection from air means that warmth doesn't cause much loss of quality.

I don't know whether to thank you or curse you.

Sounds fun, I'm making an account. How do you pay? I see internet money and atm options.

Looks like the "right angle" cutter is the Kaijirushi KHS Butter Knife

https://www.amazon.co.jp/-/en/FA-5162-Kaijirushi-KHS-Butter-...

Yeah Amazon JP is great, plus it's handy to already have one if you plan to make a trip to Japan. Both times that I went, I already had an account so it was super easy to order the SIM I wanted from Amazon to my hotel a couple days before arriving.

As far as shipping to the USA, YMMV, but when you can order items with delivery here then it's super awesome and generally fairly quick (aside from during COVID times with slower logistics).

You can do this with Amazon.co.uk too

The UK is my go-to source for black market medical products. You can get contacts shipped without a prescription because its not required in the UK. Also some OTC cosmetics and sunscreen is way better because they don't drag their feet on approving new ingredients for 20 years like the FDA.

I recently ordered a couple of Japanese books from Amazon Japan and they were delivered in under 48 hours (to the UK).

Butter also lasts longer when it's covered, as long as the ambient temperature doesn't get too high.

We generally keep at least 100g of butter in our butter dish (i.e. under a cover) on the kitchen countertop, more if it's not summer.

As a child in the west of Ireland, we'd go through a pound of butter a week. I can't even find butter sold by the pound (or 500g - I'm not fussy) in the UK, blocks are generally 250g.

And I’m a Swede and have seen them all sold in stores, although the grid one is rare nowdays (we use prepackaged serving size ones if needed).

And the butter cover looks about the same size as ours.

Just curious, how popular are butter croissants in Japan?

“Unsliced” or just sliced into larger pieces than in the US?

I've always enjoyed stuff by Rain Noe (the author of this article). I believe he has lived in Japan previously, and seems to have a more realistic viewpoint of Japan's pros and cons.

It’s not bad but ‘need for order’ and ‘would be too visually chaotic for Japanese sensibilities’ are borderline. Japanese people eat sloppy katsu curry and noodles that are no less chaotic than shredded butter. Also, plenty of people in Japan do not live or work in immaculately organized quarters.

I (and my family before me) just cut them into pieces. We have small bowls that will take about a 1/4 square section, so we cut off a fourth along the short axes of the large block, leave that in the dish on the counter, and put the rest back in the fridge. Salted butter keeps at room temperature for longer than it takes for the butter to be eaten.

I spent weeks trawling Amazon for a butter dish that was explicitly listed as handling a Canadian block. Finally found one and never looked back.

You can get sticks at any grocery store, they are just slightly more expensive.

https://www.loblaws.ca/Food/Dairy-and-Eggs/Butter-%26-Spread...

Heh, during the early days of the pandemic when there were shortages these 1 lb blocks turned up at my grocery in California marketed as "chefs size" and I loved them.

A chef friend of mine treated me to a spread of different butters, salted and unsalted, sourced from various areas in Canada.

There's top quality butters to be had, but the supermarket stuff isn't it. Maybe try a local farmer's market if you're not up for huge blocks? I find they have wonderful honeys and butters if you find the right one.

Haven't found one of the big blocks you're referring to. Where are they stocked?

250g is the standard size in Europe too, at least in Germany

https://static.openfoodfacts.org/images/products/425/036/590...

250g is the standard weight of a piece of butter in Germany.

Btw, our German butter tableware is nothing to be sneezed at, either. Here is my butter dish (to be fair, designed by an American):

https://www.pinterest.de/pin/396527942192892955/

Or maybe it was bought from Japan?

Yes, i remember seeing the rasp-type butter knife in the '80s or '90s in the UK.

I'd seen most of these before too (UK/Ireland), a butter curler is common and cheap. However the right angled curler is new to me; it seems to be a consequence of their butter dishes being different tho? My butter dish (and most of the ones I've ever seen here) looks like: https://www.porzellantreff.de/en/Friesland-Ammerland-Blue-Bu... (a flat plate with a cuboid lid), so straight butter knives with a curler edge can work right to the last of the butter, where the photos in the article show a cuboid dish with a flat top - the right-angled knife is going to be needed to reach the butter when the butter has been used to below the rim of the dish.

I've lived in Japan for a long time too and while the dishes are familiar, I've never seen anything like the knives presented in the article. They look more like novelty items you'd get from the home shopping channel than a staple of every Japanese household (still neat though!).

Butter dishes are commonplace everywhere. That's not what the article is mainly about though.

true story: i had always made cream and butter from fresh milk. milk from cow every morning, quick boil. skim cream off the top. collect for a week or so. churn to make butter and buttermilk.

when i moved to the united states many many years ago...i kept trying to extract cream from full fat milk and couldnt figure out why i kept failing. having never had store bought homogenised milk before, i had to learn full fat isnt truly 'full fat'. gnarly!

Cheese has lower levels of lactose generally. Probably the same with butter?

Butter is so pricey in Japan that you would not risk eating much of it. Most pastries are devoid of it (even croissants, which make for a surprising taste when you know the real thing).

Interestingly enough, one of the things that I hate about travelling in the US, is that a lot of restaurants only have that creamed butter.

Maybe it's an acquired and/or cultural taste, but it certainly isn't what I prefer :-)

Chinese spends their life finding a way to do things. Japanese spends their life finding the way to do things.