SASEBO, JAPAN IS A PORT CITY that has long been home to a U.S. Navy base. And what's one of the United States' biggest cultural exports? That's right.

It didn't take long before Sasebo's native residents put their own spin on the classic American lunchtime treat, and, recently, the Sasebo-style burger has become a sensation in Tokyo. This, according to the Asahi Shimbun:
 

It is a few minutes before 10 a.m., and the shopping mall is still empty, yet the crew at Big Man is already at battle stations. The grill has been greased, the bacon sliced and the first load of eggs fried-and just in time too. When the doors to the food court fly open, a swarm of diners makes a beeline for the counter and the delicacies beyond.

Such was the scene one day last week at Tokyo Panya Street, a bread-themed food park recently opened at LaLaport shopping mall in Funabashi, Chiba Prefecture. Elite bakeries from all over Japan have been brought together to create Tokyo Panya Street: One business from Kyoto specializes in curry-filled buns; another from Hokkaido offers melon-flavored ones; but the undisputed star attraction is Big Man, hailing from the naval base town of Sasebo in Nagasaki Prefecture, Kyushu. It isn't actually a bakery at all.

But what is a Sasebo burger, exactly?

[Big Man head honcho Yutaka] Ogura serves up a regulation Sasebo burger, featuring a patty of Japanese beef, a fried egg, cherry wood-cured bacon a la Canadienne and lettuce, onion and tomato-everything locally produced. He and his crew make up to 800 of them a day, yet the owner insists that his burgers aren't fast food.

"This is slow food," says Ogura. "There's time put into it, and it requires patience ... It's a handmade burger."

Three hours might be an infinity by Tokyo standards, but for Sasebo officials, the wait may not be long enough.

"I was slightly concerned to see Mr. Ogura working as fast as he was," says [Sasebo tourism commission representative Mihoko] Oniyama, who showed up in Tokyo to monitor Big Man. "Rushing them may cause the quality to slip-which is worrisome. We want people to come to Sasebo for the flavor, so we don't want to give the wrong impression."

So what does a Tokyoite say about the Sasebo burger? Friend of A Hamburger Today, Chorickr, who graciously let us use the beautiful burger photo in this post, says, "It was really good, oishi katta desu, and HUGE! That made me happy. Really."

It does look oishi, to be sure.

Burgerville: A hamburger worth lingering over [Asahi Shimbun]
Photograph courtesy of Chorickr