How We Verify Our Data
Every product on Furikake Finder goes through the same checking process before publishing. This page explains what that process actually is â grounded in what we did for the current 27-product database, not an idealized version of it.
Where the data comes from
We source every product's name, ingredients, allergen list, and images from the manufacturer's own official page or site â never a retailer listing, a fan wiki, or a third-party roundup. No official source means no publication.
Cross-checking the label itself
Automated extraction isn't always reliable. Some manufacturer pages show allergens as a color-coded matrix that an automated summary can misread as "every allergen applies." Some package ingredient text exists only inside a product photo, not as selectable text. And some labels put the legally required "contains" notice at the very end of a long ingredient string, where a summary can drop it. Wherever extraction looked uncertain, we checked the raw page source or the actual package image by eye instead of trusting the first pass.
Every file is machine-validated
Each product's data is stored as a structured file and validated against a schema before publishing: required fields must be present, allergen and category values must match an approved list, and no product can list the same allergen twice. This catches typos and structural mistakes before they reach the page you're reading.
Every allergen claim is checked against the source text
When we say an allergen "is" present in a product â as opposed to "not listed" or "unable to determine" â we also store the exact snippet of Japanese ingredient text that justifies it. Across the current database, that's 74 individual claims, and we checked every one against the original ingredient list to confirm it's a genuine quote, not a paraphrase. All 74 checked out.
We don't invent English names
Not every manufacturer publishes an official English product or brand name. When one doesn't exist, we leave that field blank rather than write our own translation and present it as official. An empty English name field means exactly that â no official name exists yet, not that we forgot to fill it in.
Translation is AI-assisted, and we say so
Ingredients and taste descriptions are translated with AI assistance, using a shared glossary so recurring terms â ããã, æåĪŠå, æåļ â get translated consistently across products. Each translation file also carries a review status. Right now, every product's English translation is marked "ai_draft": produced by the AI-assisted, glossary-checked pipeline, but not yet a separate manual proofread. That's why every product page also shows the original Japanese text â treat the English as a helpful guide, the Japanese as the source of truth.
Every product shows its date and source
Every product page displays the date its label was last checked and links directly to the official page it was checked against â so you can check the primary source yourself.
What we know we still get wrong
Japanese ingredient labels don't sort seafood the way English labels do. Squid, octopus, krill, and shellfish-derived ingredients like calcium don't always fall cleanly under "fish" or "shellfish." We hit this directly: a product that looked plant-based at a glance â no listed fish, no listed shellfish â turned out to contain squid and krill once we checked its full ingredient list and allergen codes. We now cross-check the specific allergen list against the fish/shellfish fields before calling anything plant-based â a real gap in mapping Japanese labels to English dietary categories, and a big reason we mark things "unable to determine" rather than guess.
Found a mistake?
We're one person checking 27 products by hand against official sources â we will get things wrong sometimes, or fall behind a label change. Every product page has its own "Report an error" link, pre-filled with that product's name. You can also emailhello@example.com any time.