The world's largest rice cracker

Japan has always baffled me, I'm often wondering if I should be impressed or just simply terrified at vending machines selling breast milk, diet water and salad juice. From the crazy reality TV shows, mopping slippers, Sumo and the craze of young kids poking adult strangers up the butt, Japan has at least entertained us.

The recent Tsunami and consequential radiation from its nuclear plants has struck the country to its core. There have been more suicides than ever and the population is living in a vortex of uncertainty about the health of their future in the current radiation levels. However, given all of the crappy things that they have gone through, their sense of fun has not waned.

Last week The World’s Largest Rice Cracker Committee finally lived their dream of you guessed it, building the worlds largest rice cracker. With a diameter of 5 feet 3 inches the cracker dwarfs the typical "senbei", a crunchy snack made from rice flour that is eaten widely in Japan. For Michihiro Yamaguchi, a 63-year-old member of The World's Largest Rice Cracker Committee in Kioroshi, a town east of Tokyo, it was a moment of triumph.

"We made it. It's sweet revenge," he said, after a failed attempt to get into the record books last month with a cracker that fell three centimetres short of their target. Once the cracker was measured and photos taken to prove their feat for an inaugural Guinness World Record largest rice cracker title, the soy-sauce flavoured snack was broken into small pieces and presented to townsfolk.

I have to say I’m pretty impressed with not only the committee itself, but their fortitude in tough times. The saying used to be “only in America”, I now beg to differ.