When Marge says to Homer on the plane that he liked Rashomon (1950) by Akira Kurosawa, Homer claims he doesn't remember it that way. The underlying joke is that this famous film is about people remembering different things about the same event.
This episode is banned in Japan due to scenes that are considered offensive to Japanese culture (the scene regarding the Hello Kitty factory [due to the implication that the various Hello Kitty products were created by burning various cats alive], the "Battling Seizure Robots" parody (kind of based on the anime episode Dennô Senshi Porygon (1997) that caused about seven hundred people to go to a hospital in Japan, which is why the Japanese people wouldn't want a reference to it), Homer tossing the Emperor of Japan into a sumo thong dumpster and declaring himself "Emperor Clobbersaurus" before getting arrested, and the Japanese game show sequence. The episode is also not included on the Japanese version of the Season 10 DVD.
When the Simpsons go to the 33¢ store, one of the products on the shelves is Skittlebrau, a drink made of Skittles and Beer that Homer supposedly dreamed and asked Apu for in Bart Star (1997).
Originally, there would be a long scene about how Homer had bought a "pre-Columbian vase" on the Internet, however the scene was ultimately cut from the episode.
As the family are leaving Japan, Bart comments on the country's "Kentucky Fried Chicken." Indeed, the restaurant is immensely popular in Japan and is traditionally eaten on Christmas.