Video: Making the world’s longest yakitori

NTV’s Real Time News had a special report yesterday about how Kawamata Town in Fukushima Prefecture made the world’s longest yakitori (Japanese-style grilled chicken on a stick). Here’s a clip of the record being broken:

It took 48 volunteers 40 minutes to carefully slide chicken onto the stick and another hour to cook the 22.07-meter yakitori. The most dangerous part of the challenge was having all the volunteers raise and rotate the chicken to fully cook it without breaking the stick. After the volunteers held the completed yakitori at chest-height for 5 seconds, an official verified that all the chicken was fully cooked and declared it the world’s longest yakitori.

If you’re wondering how they managed to find a 22-meter stick, this clip has the answer:

Since no appropriate sticks could be found in their home prefecture, representatives of the city traveled to a bamboo grove in Kyushu and cut down the tallest bamboo shoot they could find. Because it was too long to transport, they cut off a section of the bamboo and rolled it up so it could fit in the back of a truck. Once home, they carefully carved it down to the size of a yakitori stick.

The record was set back in August, and it doesn’t look like they’ll hold onto it for long. A city in Yamaguchi Prefecture has announced that it will cook a 23.20 meter yakitori at a festival tomorrow.

[Note: The world record for longest non-yakitori chicken skewer is much longer (possibly because it does not involve having a single continuous wooden stick).]