Shimi Choco Corn and Anpanman Pero Pero Choco

I'm headed close to the finish line in my race to review all of my ZenPop box treats before I loose my free time to jury duty (which is coming up on May 2nd). I have to say that it's been quite refreshing to get back in the groove of steady reviewing, though I know that I'll run out of things to review pretty soon.

If aliens came to earth and looked at our food, would they be confused by the fact that we shape our food like humans and then eat them? There are chocolate Santas at Christmas in the U.S. Why would we want to cannibalize a jolly guy who wants nothing more than to give us free toys?

These are the thoughts that occur to me when I look at snacks like the Anpanman chocolate lollipop. He looks so happy, and I just snapped his head in half, took my picture, and then took a bite out of him. If it is any consolation, he didn't taste especially good.

Incidentally, "pero pero" means "lick, lick" which I guess refers to the fact that this is on a stick. However, this isn't really designed for licking. It's barely designed for eating at all because the texture is too soft and the chocolate flavor is fairly muted, especially toward the center where there is more pink chocolate. It's balanced in sweetness. It's vaguely milky, but mostly seems to be too adulterated with vegetable oil to have any sort of pure flavor elements. It looks cute, and it doesn't taste terrible, but this is largely for novelty rather than for flavor. I had my husband sample it and he said, "It tastes like inferior chocolate." That about sums it up.

The other item in this double review is best known for it's tasty animal crackers. The "shimi corn" like is made up of various flavors of a cereal like corn base. It sounds very unimpressive, but it actually was very satisfying. The flavor of the chocolate was excellent and the texture of the star-shaped corn tube was perfect. It was neither too dense nor too crispy. If you like eating sugar cereal dry out of the box (and I do), this is going to be the bee's knees. This was unexpectedly tasty and I wish I had a case of them around for future noshing. It just really played into my tastes.

So, the moral of the story? Cannabalism is wrong in every way. Don't go around eating the heads of fictional characters. It will not be nearly as much fun as you anticipate. The other moral? Corn is always king!

Anpanman Pero Pero Choco:

Shim Choco Corn:

Ginbis Tabekko Animal Biscuits Coconut

When I was growing up and it came time to wrap a gift, I got out the paper, scissors, and wrapping paper and did a very basic wrapping job. One of the cool things about living in another culture is that the possibilities of carrying out even a small activity like wrapping a gift are expanded. Not only did I learn that there were all sorts of paper-saving nifty ways in which to wrap gifts that the Japanese employed and Americans hadn't thought of, but I learned that you didn't even have to use paper. 

Traditional Japanese wrapping cloths, furoshiki, can be used to wrap a gift in such a way as to make the wrapping itself a part of the gift. What is more, it can be reused by the receiver to wrap a future gift if he or she so desires. While it is possible to reuse wrapping paper if you're careful about how you unwrap, it's got nothing on a piece of nicely designed material.

Behold, my bunny folded-furoshiki. 

The awesome thing about furoshiki isn't necessarily the fact that it is ecologically sound and unique, but that you can wrap things in a wide variety of ways. This makes wrapping oddly shaped things easier and more interesting. Recently, I decided to use a furoshiki to wrap a gift. This was mainly because I didn't have a proper box, but also because it seemed like a more stylish option to boot. Among the choices was one in which you could tie it up like a rabbit. Though I'm not particularly good with tying knots, I did manage to pull off a rabbit-like wrapping. Trust me when I say that it's not as easy as it looks, but it's also not as difficult as doing origami.

Why am I talking about furoshiki in a review of Ginbis biscuits? Well, I was thinking about how I could have chosen a wide variety of folding techniques, but the one that appealed to me most was one that resembled an animal. I was also thinking about an episode of Archer in which he's carrying around leftovers in a foil-shaped swan. And just yesterday, I read a review of taiyaki on Serious Eats in which they were saying it was better than imagawayaki because it was shaped liked fish. Things are better when we shape them like animals. 

Perhaps it is a form of playing god (behold, I have forged an animal with cookie dough and my mighty, mighty hands) or simply the sense that we've created a low form of art, but humans have been trying to make animals out of food-stuffs and material-stuffs for many moons. In the middle ages, they used to grind up the meat of one animal and shape it into another animal ("farcing"). 

Ginbis biscuits are the equivalent of animal crackers in the U.S. and, frankly, part of the appeal of such things is that they are shaped like animals. If the makers of Cheez-its had been clever enough to shape their crackers like elephants or bats, they could have taken over the world (since Cheez-its are superior to Goldfish crackers). Their shortsightedness cost them the opportunity to experience world domination. 

Getting back to the matter at hand, I've reviewed the butter version of these cookies before and found them quite enjoyable. Like their butter counterparts, they are thin and a cross between a cracker and a cookie. There is a light sprinkling of sugar on the top and the flavor is very well-balanced with a strong but not overbearing coconut flavor and a light sweetness which is present enough to say "cookie" but not cloying. Because they are so thin, they are pleasantly crispy and make a great companion for tea. The entire 1.8 oz/50 gram box has 260 calories, so don't let the light nature of them fool you into thinking they're low calorie. Portion control is definitely recommended and will take a bit of willpower considering that the impulse to just toss them into your mouth one after another will be high.

The cool thing about these cookies beyond their pleasant taste and texture is the cultural aspects of them. The names of various animals are written on them in English and the back of the box has the English with Japanese translations. I find it fascinating that someone decided that it was useful to teach Japanese kids what a "macaw" is (confession, I'm not sure of what a macaw is). Each animal listed on the box is represented inside as a blobby cracker shape, and some of them are abbreviated in utterly unhelpful ways. For example, there is a listing for "M-Duck" (which is, I'm sure what is written on the cracker). If you read the Japanese, you see that this stands for "Mandarin Duck". Okay, do kids need to know what a mandarin duck is in two languages?

The funny thing is that I actually learned something by reading the back of the box. One of the animals listed is "peafowl", which apparently is the proper way to refer to peacocks and peahens as a type of bird. So, beyond enjoying these light, crispy cookies, you can educate yourself about names of animals that you may not have known about. I bought these at Daiso Japan for $1 (about 100 yen), but they can be picked up at many Asian markets for a similar price or purchased online at places like the Asian grocer. 

Variety Friday: Debu Neko Sembei and a Summer Contest

Debu Neko is the "mascot" character of a company called SK Japan which provides prizes for claw games (called UFO Catcher here) in Japan. It is my favorite cute Japanese character and the inspiration for me to get my husband to try UFO Catcher games which neither of us would have touched prior to my passion for this "fatty cat". Recently, SK Japan issued a new prize in their line of debu neko items and it's called "sembei", though it is not real sembei. The overall color, texture, shape, and design of both the foamy cat head and the plastic packet it is offered in mimics sembei. There's also a hard plate of some sort embedded in the head which if you press it will make a sembei-like "snap" sound. Be forewarned that doing that too much will result in the rubber of the cat head starting to tear (as the sample at the game shop made clear). It comes on a loop so you can hook it onto your cell phone or backpack (or just hang it on the wall).

The poorly photographed small booty pile: The debu neko "sembei", Ginbis sesame biscuits and a "white soda" Hi-Chew. I'd love to send more, and frankly, it wouldn't cost much more to buy more items, but the cost of shipping by airmail quickly exceeds the cost of the snacks rather exponentially. 

My husband won a handful of them from one of the easier UFO Catcher games. These aren't the most expensive prizes to produce, so it's no shock that they make it easier to win a handful of them as compared to the larger, more elaborate stuffed toys. I'm going to offer one along with some heat-resistant snacks as a prize in a contest. To enter this contest, all you have to do is leave a comment on this particular blog post telling me how you discovered this blog (Google search, from a comment I left on another blog, through a link on another blog, etc.). If you found me through another blog, please let me know the name of it if you recall. Only comments on this post will be considered when I choose the winner. The winner will be chosen by a random number generator according to the order in which comments are made.

Anyone anywhere can enter (even those in Japan), but I can't guarantee delivery in Central or South America or Africa. My experiences in the past have shown that postal delivery is unreliable in those countries. While I'll surely send the package anywhere in the world, I can't guarantee it's arrival on the other end, especially to countries which I've had some bad experiences with.

This contest will run for two weeks. I'll be posting links back to it and reminders to enter on posts during that time period. Thanks for reading, and I look forward to hearing your comments!

Ginbis Tabekko Animal Biscuits

Attentive readers with an impeccable memory may recall that Ginbis is the maker of "asparagus biscuits", which don't actually contain asparagus. According to their web site, this is the company's "long seller" and it has recently been revamped (likely just the packaging). Of course, this is their long selling "biscuit" and the asparagus biscuits are the long-selling "stick biscuits". This is a little like talking about the best "long hairstyle" and best "semi-long hairstyle".

At any rate, this is part of a small collection of kid's cookies that are on offer. In the U.S., we'd call this "animal crackers", but these are actually rather different in composition. They are thinner, crispier, and much, much more flavorful. Like the asparagus biscuits, they are flavored richly with sesame seeds and are slightly greasy. The  main difference is that they don't have the same level of browning and don't carry a certain "over-baked" flavor. They're also rather salty on the outside, which is an interesting choice for crackers designed specifically for children. That being said, the salt really works on these, as do all of the other flavors.

Yes, there are important words to be learned in English.

Note that these are "educational" snacks. Each cookie has the name of the animal it depicts in English and the back of the box has Japanese and English for each animal. It's actually not a bad idea, but I somehow doubt kids are picking up much English from this considering the fact that the shapes are pretty general and don't clearly depict the animals they represent. There are 46 animals named on the back of the box, and I counted 46 crackers in my box. I didn't check, but I wouldn't be surprised if one of each named animal was represented. That would be one of those attentive to details types of things a Japanese manufacturer would do. 

I got these with my Peacock Fukubukuro, so I didn't pay for them individually. I've seen them at many supermarkets. This is a fairly big box at 63 grams (2.2 oz.), and I'd guess that it costs around 150 yen ($1.83) given the size, though it could cost closer to 200 yen ($2.43). I calculated each is about 8 calories. The whole box is 344 calories and says that 12 is a serving with 80 calories. Their calculations don't really jive but I think it's not worth sweating whether these are roughly 7 or 8 each. 

I really liked these. They were like the version of the asparagus biscuits that I would have liked. These are clearly the same basic formula or dough just pressed, shaped and baked differently and it makes a difference. The flat little crackers have a nicer texture and they aren't too dark. I'd definitely buy these again. They make a great and flavorful tea time snack and you can eat quite a lot of them without overdoing the calories.

Ginbis Asparagus Biscuits

If you want to dive deep into the heart of weird snacks in Japan, I recommend you raid the kid's section. That's what I did to find most of what I'm offering during my weeks of weird. Most of those snacks are not only a little strange, but they're also very cheap. This packet of 6 long, thin cookies (about the width of a pencil and about 2/3 the length of one) was only 28 yen (33 cents) at a convenience store. 

The manufacturer is Ginbis, and I've never reviewed anything made by them before, but I've seen some of their snacks on sale. Mostly, they make cookies, but they also offer a few salted snacks. Their web site says that this is their longest seller and has been on offer for 40 years and mentions that these small packages offer great portion control.

These smell like crackers in a rather generic way. They are not made of or with asparagus, but are merely meant to resemble it. They're made with some not so great fats including palm oil and "shortening". Other than that, they're made with your usual selection of cookie material - flour, sugar, yeast, etc. You can see that they are studded with sesame seeds. Though they don't look it, the outside of the crackers becomes very  oily when you touch them with your warm fingers. It's a very odd situation. The main good point of them is that they are super crispy. The texture is quite appealing. Other than that, the only thing to recommend them is the fact that they are fortified with Calcium, but only 31 mg.

The taste is like a not so sweet, very strongly baked animal cracker. The main flavor is black sesame with a generic biscuit/cookie flavor. These are actually pretty decent tasting, but nothing to get excited about. The black sesame flavor could be stronger, and they have a little bit of an overcooked flavor.

I finished the packet and enjoyed it, but this isn't the sort of thing which strongly appeals to me. If you like sesame and animal crackers, you might want to give them a try. Otherwise, I'd not bother.

If you'd like to share your experiences with weird foods and enter a contest for a chance to win a silly prize, please read this post and make a comment.