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Why is Japan’s Food Suddenly Infested with Frogs?

Who brought all these frogs? As the little green creatures proliferate in Japan, they’re suddenly showing up in salads and udon.

Unseen Japan
4 min readMay 23, 2023

By Jay Allen

Residents of Japan are struggling to contend with rising prices on everything from heating to eggs. Now, they have another problem: additional (and generally unwanted) protein showing up in their food.

The furor with frogs

Frog mens sitting on a leaf boi
Picture: 工場長 / PIXTA(ピクスタ)

The trouble appeared to start around May 11th. A supermarket in Ueda in Nagano Prefecture told customers that it had discovered a frog in one of its premade salads. They said the problem stemmed from the company in Matsumoto that made the salads for them. It appears the little green mens made its way into some of the raw ingredients to have a bite (or perhaps a snooze).

The next victim of Attack on Frog was udon chain Marugame Seimen. On May 16th, Marugame released its new product, Shake Udon, an udon/salad takeout combo. However, the launch didn’t go according to expectations. Footage of a frog swimming in the remains of udon soup…

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Unseen Japan
Unseen Japan

Written by Unseen Japan

The Japan you don’t learn about in anime. A selection of popular stories from our website.

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