Ok, so I haven't read the article yet (I will, thanks for posting it!!)

But I have to say, the secret to dishes like this is most likely Japanese bread (shokupan, sometimes called Japanese hotel bread).

We just moved and were *absolutely* thrilled to discover that not only is there an Asian grocery store in town but they also sell Japanese bread. Where we lived before, we had to drive an hour to get to a Japanese grocery store, but it was too small and they didn't have Japanese bread.

Apologies if this is a bit of thread drift.