Kameda Oyatsu Cafe Butter Sweet Sembei

Note the design motif - they're supposed to be for tea time, hence the tea cup.

Butter flavored sweets may be becoming a bit of a fad. First, there were the buttered toast Country Ma'am cookies and now this sembei. Honestly, this has been around for a few months and it has taken me some time to get to writing a review. There are 17 crackers in the bag, and each is 8 cm x 3.5 cm. (3.15 in. x 1.4 in.), and it takes me a long time to eat a whole bag of this size. It only encourages me to procrastinate in doing the review.

These are available in most supermarkets in Japan as well as drug stores that carry food. I paid about 160 yen ($1.84) for them. Given the large quantity, this is pretty good value. It'll take awhile to get through such a big bag unless you're pigging out on a regular basis.

These don't smell like much other than a faint soy sauce flavor and the usual "baked rice" scent that comes along with sembei. They're light, crispy, and have a great texture. The flavor is hard to pin down because it's a mixture of elements that you wouldn't expect. Mainly, it's an oily, fake butter with light soy sauce flavoring and salt. They're also a little sweet. The ingredients reflect all of these flavors - mochi rice, vegetable oil, butter oil, soy sauce, sugar.

Though these sound strange, somehow all of these flavors come together and are tasty. I wouldn't say they're the best thing I've ever put in my mouth (it's not that kind of blog) and I can't even say that they are at the top of my sembei experience, but they're good. I'd pick up another bag some time.