I was told by a friend that they ordered “teriyaki beef and wasabi potatoes” and a red flag went up.

Okay, “teriyaki” is Japanese – but it’s moved from a traditional cooking form to a flavor/seasoning that is bandied about like “ranch” is here. I concede teriyaki beef is still the provenance of the Japanese; as for wasabi mashed potatoes, I can’t be so lenient.
I am sure that mashed potatoes have been served in Japan for some time now but mixing wasabi powder [a dyed-green pulverized horseradish extract facsimile meant to resemble the rare root found in mountain streams Wasabia Japonica] into the spuds as a common practice? I think it is safe to say it is more likely that one might find peanut butter or Kraft Dinner in a Japanese pantry than seeing green spicy taters in Tokyo. [link]

So the question is – wasabi mashed potatoes is to Japan like:
the Croissan’wich® is to France?
the fortune cookie is to China?
the Olive Garden is to real restaurants?

Do other countries have spoofs of our food?
I asked snuff and we came up with:

-Louisiana Blackened Steak with Ranch Rice
-Chicken Fried Steak with Salsa Popcorn
-Meatloaf with BBQ Sauce Plantains
-Hotdog with Mayonnaise Corn

England’s smoking ban on July 1st has caused a sea change in British social interaction, but not in an obvious way. A percentage of the ten-plus million smokers in Britain [statistic from Action on Smoking], have been using their outside smoking time to catch up on their correspondence. According to Orange UK [via T3] people were multitasking by sending text messages while smoking. Naturally, sending messages to bitch about how they were cast from of their now smoke free hangouts to commune with the elements and other frustrated smokers.

Without divulging the actual percentage, the network saw a 7.5 million increase in texts within the two weeks of the ban. Given, this is the summer time, I wonder if this will make the cost of messages to go up or down, or if this will just be a seasonal phenomenon. Perhaps Orange, O2, 3, and T-Mobile will be smart and make TXTs cheaper in the winter months. Regardless of what happens, my hopes lay in the notion that England will start up the use of the cigarette holder to make smexting easier.