Suprise Find: Ginger Frosted Sembei

As I mentioned in my "I'm back" post, I now live in a very remote area. What is more, I also live in a small town (less than 10,000 people). There are very few local markets and I can charitably say that local tastes match local political views; they are very conservative. That means that the restaurants around me focus mostly on burgers, bad steak, pizza, pasta with heavy sauces, Americanized Mexican, and sandwiches. The most exotic place is a Thai restaurant and there is one American Chinese place which offers very pedestrian options.

I'm not mentioning this to criticize the local food scene because I know that one's taste in food is one of those things that is shaped by experience. People like what they like because it is what they grew up with and it's not like the people who live in rural areas made a conscious decision to have limited food options. If anything, we can blame their parents and grandparents. I certainly can say my parents have terrible taste in food and any restaurant scene that their patronage cultivated would be populated by places with leathery, over-cooked meat, canned vegetables, noodles, and potatoes. It would be even more grim than the reality I currently live in.

The reason that I mention the limits here is that any Japanese food I find at local markets outside of Pocky and some more common cooking ingredients (soy sauce, rice vinegar, etc.) are a suprise find. When I locate one of these finds, I'm stunned because I can't imagine the locals buying them. That leads me to today's shocking find of frosted ginger sembei.

I found these at Grocery Outlet Bargain Market. I've been told it's the west coast equivalent of Aldi's, but I can't verify that as I've never been in an Aldi's. The thing they are supposed to have in common is food at low prices because it was over-produced, unpopular, or is getting on in years. I'm guessing this sembei showed up because it was unpopular, but it's hard to know for sure.

The first shocker was that it was in a local market at all. The second was that it was being sold for 50 cents a bag. In the Bay Area, I had to pay $4-$6 per bag for this same brand of sembei. In Japan, this would cost the equivalent of $1.50-$2.00 for a bag. It was insanely cheap by any estimate. I bought 25 bags. I am not exaggerating. My pantry has stacks and stacks of these.

The difficulty in marketing these to the American market is explained somewhat by the description panel on the lower right panel of the bag. In particular, the fact that the manufacturer feels it is necessary to say, "no topping needed" is revealing. Americans see rice crackers as a savory item that needs a topping like a Quaker rice cake. Buyers have no idea what these are until after they've purchased them. In fact, when I bought them, the cashier looked perplexed at what they were. I'm guessing just me, and possibly the Japanese members of the taiko club a great many miles South of me, are the only customers and potential customers who know what these are.

What these are is a very, very tasty snack with a surface that makes you think of the moon with luscious sugary craters. They'd better be great if I'm going to drown myself in stacks of crispiness. They are light and somewhat sweet with enough ginger to whisper kindly at your tongue, but not to overwhelm. They snap without being too brittle and actually do melt in your mouth if you leave them in there long enough. It's easy to eat far too many at one sitting, but given that each large cracker is only 25 calories, it's hard to get fat on them. I've actually be fairly responsible with these and limit myself to one packet (two crackers) per day. I will likely have my stash for months at that rate, but they come with an enormous oxygen absorber packet so I'm betting they won't go stale. If they start to, I'll just have to watch a good movie and start consuming them by the bag-full so as not to waste my luxurious investment of $12.50.

I should note that I had confidence in these and how good they'd be because the company that mades them, Kameda, is one that I recognized from my time in Japan. In fact, I have reviewed no small number of their sembei in the past including one sweet variety made of chocolate. They rarely let me down and I was pleasantly surprised to see something from that company at a local market. While this clearly is packaged for the American market (since everything is in English), the rice crackers (sembei) themselves are precisely the same as what you'd get if you shopped in Tokyo. And, yes, I'd absolutely buy them again, even at a higher price.

Information:

Where I bought it: Grocery Outlet Bargain Market
Price: 50 cents/bag

Kuchidoke Happy Turn Rice Crackers

I've been told that "Happy Turn" is a brand that many folks in Japan find familiar and comforting. The happy sembei (rice cracker) on the cover gives them the same sort of warm and fuzzy feeling that an American might get from Tony the Tiger. I'm sure he doesn't yell as loudly or often about how "grrrrrreat" things are, but I think one can do without the bellicose nature of some mascots.

Besides the familiar anthropomorphic rice cracker, I noted the color scheme of the bag. It is most elegant in its largely white design. I'm not sure what inspired it, but this is not a winter release since it is still listed on Kameda Seika's web site as an available product. I expected this to be white chocolate because of that, though there was no indication of that on the bag. That's probably because I've had white chocolate sembei before, and loved it. It was likely wishful thinking. Perhaps these are appropriate for weddings? At any rate, it caught my eye and then it grabbed my wallet.

"Kuchidoke" means "melt in your mouth" so, I was expecting something that was more in line with the kinako or cheese "mochi" sembei that I've had in the past. Those balls of spun fat and rice literally melted in your mouth. When I opened the bag and saw the same old planks of sembei that I have always seen from Happy Turn, I was disappointed, but I remained hopeful that there was going to be some magical quality to these which differentiated them from regular Happy Turn.

As it turned out, there was no magic at all. Don't misunderstand me. These are good sembei, albeit quite vinegary ones. It didn't seem particularly "melt in your mouth" compared to regular Happy Turn. Okay, maybe it was a little bit softer and less crisp, but it was nothing like the "fluffy" sembei I'd had before which literally melted like shelf-stable ice cream in my mouth. These were fresh, somewhat crispy, and rather super-charged in their flavor (like the Happy Turn 200% version, but perhaps not quite as dusty).

This is a very savory rice cracker and a well-made one at that, but it really doesn't deliver much in the way of textural variation. If you like strong, vinegary flavors, then this is going to be a pleasure, but don't expect them to melt away in your mouth or to be a very different experience from conventional Happy Turn sembei.

Kameda Seika Happy Turn Maple Sembei

My husband and I brought back select souvenirs from Japan and had to be extra cautious about large items. One of the big things we brought back was a Happy Turn tin. He won it in a crane game (aka UFO Catcher) and I had a good association both with how it was acquired and with the product inside - the "Happy Turn" (sometimes called "Happy Tan" sembei. We keep the tin in the kitchen and I store my snacks in it. It's a nice way of keeping the multiple open bags and food waiting to be reviewed in an appropriate place.

"Happy Turn" is a very popular brand in Japan and most people know it and enjoy it. If you want to understand just how popular, you need only consider that there is a stamp made with its mascot's image. A real postage stamp. Yes. I haven't seen a Dorito's stamp in the U.S. - but then I haven't been looking either.

The brand's signature is a unique combination of sweet and salty with a heavy emphasis on vinegar. When I saw this maple variety at Marukai market for about $2.60 (around 270 yen), I jumped at the chance to sample it. I only had a few second thoughts when it came time to open the bag. Since vinegar is a large part of the Happy Turn experience, I suddenly realized that maple may not be the best choice. After all, few are the times when I've mixed vinegar with maple syrup and poured it on my pancakes or chugged it down as an elixir.

There aren't many flavor variations on Happy Turn, oddly. Besides the regular variety, there is cheese, this maple flavor, and, very strangely, a chocolate-covered version that is being sold as part of a variety pack. I would pick up said pack if I saw it, but mainly because I'd get to try the cheese version. The chocolate sounds pretty out there, but you just never know. Vinegar is nearly a cure-all and can mix with some pretty interesting flavors... but I'll hold off on the Hershey's syrup and rice vinegar, too.

With some apprehension, I gave it a taste, and it did taste weird at first. There is a definite maple flavor followed by vinegary sharpness. After I had it, I thought that was strange, but then I wanted another, and another, and another. It's strange how it was so enticing even when it seemed like such an odd flavor pairing. Somehow, it worked for me with the sweet, salt, and sour flavors mixing in. Of course, the light crispy cracker was adding something very "more-ish" to the textural delights.

I can't say that this is for everyone, but I liked it. It wouldn't be my first choice of Happy Turn, but it very much won't be hard to finish the bag. I can't say I'd kill to get more, but, if it was on sale, I'd certainly pick up some more for future consumption. At only 20 calories per cracker, it's also not the most calorically dense treat and the flavor is strong enough to satisfy after about 5 or so of them. My only issue with them is that, while they are all individually wrapped, they're done with a twist wrapper. Chances are they'll go stale fast if the bag isn't kept tightly closed or they aren't eaten pretty fast. That's a small complaint, and I can say that Happy Turn deserves the "happy" rating.

The "Happy Turn" download page currently features some adorable illustrations of the king and his castle. You can get it here for the time being.

Kameda Seika Togarashi Mayonnaise Rice Snack

Since I was a psychology major and continue to study psychology of my own volition to this day, I often run across various studies and theories about human behavior. One of them is that choice is good for people, but too much choice is very stressful for them. Having three types of chip to choose from is good. Having 20 is just going to make you stand in the aisle biting your nails trying to decide what to buy.

Apparently, most American manufacturers don't know about such studies as there are eleventy-billion (that's an "imaginary number" in every sense of the term) varieties of everything back home. How fortunate for me that I live in Japan where the only thing they saturate me with choice about are fish, tofu, panty fetish items and anime characters, none of which is of any particular interest to me. While there may be a ton of Kit-Kat flavors, more than three are rarely offered at once. These "Okome Kitchen" ("Rice Kitchen"), a brand made by my favorite sembei maker Kameda Seika, snacks come in three varieties, too. I found these on the shelf at a little market near my house for 100 yen ($1.24) per bag and had my pick from among red pepper and mayo, garlic and black pepper, and wasabi and salt. I choose the mayo because I figured it'd be the hardest child to love in this little snack family.

A good whiff of the freshly opened bag gives you the familiar scent of mayonnaise, as should be expected. The first bite, as is so often the case, is the best because you get the depth of flavor most acutely with a clean palate. The flavor of Japanese mayonnaise with it's eggy and rich taste comes through potently, but not overwhelmingly followed by a nice spicy hit of red pepper. The blending of these two components is damn near perfect as the mayonnaise taste is cleaved beautifully by the pepper's heat. There are also some savory flavors added in to provide a better backdrop including cheese, vinegar, pepper, chicken and seafood. These components don't come through as individual tastes, but as a melange of seasoning. This blending of savory spices with hot pepper stops this from tasting like you're sucking on a tube of mayonnaise.

The chips are light and cripsy and have the feel of being baked rather than fried, though vegetable oil is the third ingredient after rice and rice flour. This is like a cross between sembei (rice cracker) and a processed potato snack, but in a good way. They're a bit on the smallish side, at about half the size of a standard chip,  so it's easy to find yourself popping two or three in your mouth at once. Fortunately, the entire 60 gram (about 2 oz.) bag is only around 300 calories so you can indulge fairly freely without paying too heavy a price.

I was surprised that I really enjoyed these. I think mayonnaise flavoring is something which is quite easy to overdo and get very wrong, but felt this was well-balanced. While I can't say I was over-the-moon about these such that I'd be buying them again and again until they're taken off the market (and ultimately, they won't be around because that's the way it is in Japan), but I'd definitely buy them again.

Kameda Seika Pizza Sembei

There was a period of time in my life when I was absolutely bonkers for pizza. I call that the time "when I was young and lived in the United States". Since coming to Japan, several factors have conspired to undermine my devotion to that fattening delight. First, there was the year or so when both my husband and I were working full-time and every Friday night we'd come home and be so exhausted that we'd just order a barely adequate pizza from Pizza Hut. It got to the point where I actually was so sick of pizza, any kind, that I didn't want to touch one.

The second factor, and anyone whose lived in Japan for any length of time will understand this, is that Japanese pizza blows like a gale-force wind. It's not only that they are skimpy with the cheese and meat toppings, but the crusts always fail to inspire. Unless you go to a top of the line pizza place with equally "top of the line" prices, you're going to get something between a pre-made crust and a frozen mass-produced dough. Even when you stumble across a nice-looking Italian place (of which there are approximately a gazillion in Tokyo), there's a very high chance that they're using frozen pies or bases. Trust me when I say there's a very small chance that there's some guy in the back tossing dough, even in a relatively authentic-looking place.

Despite my loss of enthusiasm for pizza, I still love it "in theory" and what better way to get your pizza on in the abstract than going for a cracker with pizza flavoring? I was compelled to buy these for a mere 120 yen ($1.56) by the illustration which shows a copious slathering of pizza seasoning on the top. It actually looks like it has more toppings than the average Japanese pizza on a relative scale.

Tearing open the foil packet, a task I always have trouble with because my puny girl muscles are fueled by years of anemic pizza, I caught a whiff of lovely Italian seasonings - Parmesan, oregano, tomato. The crackers are medium-sized (about 2/3 the size of my palm) and of the "soft" type in Japan, which is to say that they are crispy but airy instead of crispy and very thin. The seasoning was strong, but not too strong and had a nice zesty bite.

These were better than pizza, or at least better than the pizza I can get here. I loved them and gobbled down half the (decidedly small) bag in one sitting. These are a great companion to a soft drink and would also be excellent movie-watching fare. Honestly, if you want pizza and you're in Tokyo, you're probably better off with a bag of this sembei than with the real deal. You'll save money and calories and these taste better.

Shiroi Fuusen Chocolate Cream Sembei

I've spoken before about how I'm rather dumb about packaging even though I really should know better. I'm about to reveal that I'm even stupider than people may suspect, though if you're thinking my I.Q. hovers around 80 or less, then perhaps not. Putting a picture of an enticing food on a package even though it isn't what I'm buying (like ice cream on a yogurt package) is one way to sucker me in. Another way is to put a pot of tea. As soon as the idea of consuming a sweet with tea is nearly irresistible to me. So, I bought this because of a piece of clip art that set off a food cue in my brain. Tea + sweet = buy!

Now that I have laid bare how easy it is to manipulate me into purchasing a product, I will try to mitigate that to some extent by saying that I probably would have tried these anyway because of their unusual look and composition. They are blindingly white crackers with a bittersweet chocolate filling. When I say, "blinding", I'm not kidding. When you die, this is the color of the light you're going to find yourself walking towards (unless you were "bad", then I have no idea what color light you'll be walking into).

I found these at Inageya supermarket for 168 yen for a bag of 21 individually wrapped crackers. Each is 16.7 calories, which is pretty good considering you're eating two crackers per serving with a smattering of filling. Note that "smatter" is not an exaggeration. There really isn't much, but that's okay.

When you remove the crackers and give them a sniff, you smell the chocolate filling. The crackers themselves are crispy and slightly salty but pretty much have no other flavor. The chocolate filling, when you encounter a higher concentration of it, is bittersweet and has a smooth, rich texture. However, there is so little of it and it sits largely in the center that only about one bite carries a significant chocolate impact. That bite is actually a very nice combination of salty and modestly sweet.

I'm slightly torn about these. I like them well enough when I get a solid combo of chocolate and lightly salted outer cracker and the textural mixture of the cool, creamy filling and crispy crackers is nice. There's also something a bit nifty about eating something that looks like an inverted Oreo cookie. Ultimately, I will finish the bag, but I can't see buying another. If there just were more filling so that the flavor was spread over more of the crackers, I think these would be a repeater.

Kameda Seika Cheese Rich Arare

Sometimes I wonder what companies believe the average I.Q. of customers is. On the back of this bag of cheese rice crackers with almonds, there is an illustration and instructions telling you how to manage to get the bag open. I wonder if they imagine we're all sitting around looking at our snack bags scratching our heads like confused chimps trying to workout how to access the salty goodness within.

In order to stop us from having a fatal aneurysm from the mental storm required to figure out how to open the bag, they give us a picture and tell us what to do. After all, you can't have your stupid customers dropping dead from the mental energy they have to expend trying to figure out how to get the bag open. No one would be around to buy more snacks!

I guess this could mean they are trying to expand their demographic. Maybe they're hoping monkeys will actually start buying snacks and that they will require illustrated information. It'd certainly help boost sales in light of Japan's rapidly shrinking population.

At any rate, I resisted these hard and crunchy sembei (arare) for awhile because I thought no one would be interested in reading yet another review of a cheesy salted snack. Then I caught a cold and figured that I was interested in eating another cheesy salty snack and I don't care if anyone wants to read about it or not. Harrumph. Sorry, colds make me grumpy.

Because I was still on the tail end of my cold when I sampled this, I couldn't really smell it, but I could taste it and it was very, very good. The little triangles are crunchy and a bit hard, but easy to bite into. They taste cheesy in an intense but not overbearing manner. If you think of a classic Cheez-it flavor without the fake elements, you'd come close to this. They taste like salty cheddar. I can't imagine a better accompaniment to an alcoholic or soft drink than these, provided that you like cheese (and who doesn't?).

I found these at Inageya supermarket for 178 yen ($2.18), but you can find them almost anywhere at the moment. Each bag has 5 small packets of 17 grams each (.6 oz.) at 77 calories per packet (entire portion pictured in this post) so they're great for portion control as long as you can resist tearing through more than one bag at a time. There are only about 3 almonds in every little packet, but that's really not a problem because the crackers themselves are the shining beacon of this snack. Get them while you can. The product has a 4 month life cycle then will go away for awhile.

Note that the back of the individual packets have little recipe use recommendations. They suggest you sprinkle them over salads, onto pasta, doria (cheesy rice), scrambled eggs, or even use them in a chocolate fondue. Except for the last suggestion (but I'm conservative about chocolate and cheese), I think those are all actually pretty good ideas.

Kameda Roast Onion Kongari Snack

When I was a kid, I turned my nose up at things like onions. They were too strong tasting and I'd get annoyed when my parents would order pizzas with onions, or worse, slimy mushrooms. While I can't say I ever got into mushrooms (though I don't hate them anymore), I've grown to adore onions and probably eat them raw or in various dishes nearly everyday.

When I saw this "roast onion" snack at Okashi no Marche discount snack store for a paltry 100 yen ($1.16), I happily tossed it in my basket. The strange thing is that I had not seen this for sale at any convenience stores before and it is clearly one of Kameda's "convenience store (conbini) only" products. You can tell the difference because of the size. Conbini-only items often are small and meant to be single servings. This is 42 grams (about 1.5 oz.) and 174 calories.

There are two different crackers in the mix. The flat ones are all onion flavor and the round balls are supposed to be red pepper flavored. The onion chips taste a lot like the type of french-fried onion pieces you can buy in markets and use in cooking or food preparation. They are very "oniony", but also quite tasty if you love onion. The little ball-shaped crackers are not as hot as I expected them to be given that they have visible pepper flakes on them. They are a mixture of savory flavors, including soy sauce, parsley, and meat flavorings with a small amount of pepper heat. Eaten separately, you can clearly discern the flavor of each cracker. Eaten together, the onion nearly overwhelms both completely.

The crackers are fresh and have a strong flavor and quite enjoyable. That being said, they're not the sort of thing you sit around hankering for. I love onion, but perhaps not at this level of roasted intensity as a snack. I think onion works so well in cooking because it adds dimension to dishes. As the sole component and featured flavor, it is only good in small doses. I ate half this bag, really like it, and closed it up to finish another day.

If your really love onion, by all means, give this a try. However, I recommend having it with a drink and not having to kiss or speak in close quarters with anyone after eating it. I would buy this again, but not often, and not soon.

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.

Kameda Seika Ponzu Sembei

I can't believe that I've been snack blogging for coming up on two years and I hadn't sampled anything flavored with ponzu until now. This wasn't willful on my part. It's just that I hadn't encountered anything flavored with it in my cursory searches. The reason this is so strange is that ponzu, a slightly sour, tart dipping sauce, is quite common in Japanese cuisine.

My first experience in Japan with ponzu was with a teppanyaki steak restaurant. My husband and I were taken to a very expensive place in a large hotel in Ikebukuro by one of his students at that time. This particular fellow worked for Toyota, and this was back in the days when Japan was a big economic threat and the world was its oyster. On his expense account (I'm sure), we were treated to small, expertly grilled bits of meat, garlic, and onion. Each small thin slice was individually handled by an expert chef and offered up in portions that would make an American weep. Among the sauces we were given to dip these small morsels was ponzu shoyu, a mixture of soy sauce and other traditional ponzu elements like lemon or yuzu.

I discovered these sembei at Family Mart for about 170 yen ($1.90). They can only be had at convenience stores for a limited time. There are 11 crackers in the bag and each is 8 cm. x 3 cm (3.1 in. x 1.2 in.) in size. The bag touts the use of yuzu (a Japanese citrus fruit) powder, but the ingredients list also includes lemon.

Sorry for the bad picture. These actually looked just like yuzukoshoo sembei I reviewed in the past, but I decided to use a bad picture instead of recycle a better one. I'm just that stupidly honest.

As soon as I opened the bag, I could smell the familiar citrus scent of ponzu. The crackers are a savory blend of salt, vinegar, lemon, yuzu, and soy sauce. The balance of these flavors is excellent. They are neither too acidic nor too savory. I could easily eat the entire bag at one sitting if spending 326 calories on something so salty weren't a monumentally imprudent thing to do. If you do the math, you'll see that each cracker is 29.6 calories.

These are excellent, crispy crackers which feel like they're perfect for summer. There's something about the citrus and vinegar nature coupled with the seasonal heat that fits just right. They're also one of those uniquely Japanese things that are relatively accessible to foreign palates, provided that you like slightly sour things made with vinegar and citrus. I strongly recommended sampling them if you have a chance.

Grilled Cheese Sembei (Camembert)

Sometimes I feel like I'm cheating doing a snack review blog and eating things which are flavored with cheese. My readers might expect that I'll review weird or exotic items because I'm in Japan, land of the weird (and to some "exotic"). Cheese is about as safe a flavor as one can choose. Still, could anyone who likes cheese (and what sort of dairy heretic doesn't like cheese?) resist a grilled cheese rice cracker? Even if you could resist, I couldn't as cheese just so happens to be the boss of me. That's right, I'm a dairy bitch.

I found this small (1.1 oz./32 grams) bag of yaki cheese sen (grilled cheese rice crackers) at a 7-11 convenience store for 105 yen ($1.12). This particular 7-11 was far afield for me. It never ceases to surprise me that shops which are part of the same chain stock different items and that a snack I can find at the 7-11 30 minutes from my apartment aren't stocked in the one 5 minutes from it.

The big wedge of melty Camembert on the front of the package leads you to think this might be a mild cheese experience, but it's actually quite savory and on the strong side. The cheese is concentrated on one side of the crackers, but it's still immensely flavorful. The crackers themselves are what is called "soft" sembei, which means that they're slightly airy and puffy, but still quite crispy. This particular style is my preferred type.

Some of the cheese sembei I've had before has had a bit of a "burnt" cheese flavor to it, but this has been avoided in this case. These are pungent and nicely cheesy with a developed taste. This is probably aided by the various flavorings including soy sauce, pork and chicken, and fish powder. Note that none of these flavors is strong or profound, but I think they boost the savory nature and deepen the flavor. 


This is another winner from Kameda Seika, a company which makes some of the best rice crackers in Japan. I would definitely buy these again. I not only like the sembei, but I think the serving size is very good at 146 calories for a single serving with about 11 medium-size (about 6 cm./2.4 in.) crackers. This is a great treat to have on hand with a soda or, if you're the imbibing type, beer.

Kameda Yaki Choco Snack

Every time I go to Seiyu supermarket, I find that there is a whole world of goodies that I can't find anywhere else. Their selection is bigger, but they also seem to carry a different assortment than other markets. One of the things about snack blogging is that you keep finding every shop is a little treasure trove of unexpected finds. Even when the shops all look the same, the stock is different to some extent.

These "yaki" (grilled) chocolate snack chips grabbed my attention because they aren't fried. That usually is a cue for lower calories, though I can't say that is always the case in Japan. I can't remember what I paid for them, but I think it was something in the vicinity of 130 yen ($1.40). They are made by Kameida Seika, a company which I favor for their sembei.

These chips don't smell like much, and at first, scent and taste match one another. There is a cocoa flavor there, but it's not carried to the taste buds by much. They really need more salt and some sort of sweetener. It doesn't have to be sugar, but maybe a little more Sucralose (which is one of the ingredients already). Cumulatively, the chocolate flavor starts to build up a bit, but not in the way one is accustomed to chocolate flavor as it is delivered with copious amounts of fat and sugar. It's more of a diluted flavor reminiscent of cocoa nibs at about 10% of their power.

These chips are designed as much for their wonderfully crunchy texture and low calorie nature as anything else. The entire bag is 45 grams (1.6 oz.) is only 198 calories. You could sit down with a cup of coffee and eat the whole thing with limited guilt. As is often the case with Japanese chocolate products, they're designed more toward the bitter end than the creamy, sweet experience you get with a lot of Western chocolate.

I liked these. They reminded me of diet food back home, but in a good way. I'm not sure that they would be as appealing to others as they are to me, but texture is half the battle when for a food becoming a part of my diet. If you don't judge these by their distance from a chocolate bar, and think of them more as a much, much milder chip version of an Oreo cookie's non-creamy part, you may enjoy them as well.

Kameda Seika Four Cheese Rice Crackers

If one cheese is good, then four types of cheese must be better, right? I'm not sure if that works after sampling this sembei. If you pair a potent cheese with less potent cheeses, the dominant ones are bound to take over. That sounds it bit like the lesser cheeses are the passive ones in the relationship. I'm not sure if that's somewhere I'd like to go.



I found this cheese sembei at Okashi no Machioka sweets shop for about 160 yen ($1.78). It contains six 13-gram bags of crackers. The contents of an entire bag (pictured below) is only 58 calories so the size is right for snacking. The ingredients include rice, vegetable oil, cheese seasoning (including soy, chicken and pork), cheese powder, salt, butter oil, and soy sauce powder. There are a lot of seasonings in it so one has hopes for good depth to the flavor.



The main scent is that of Parmesan cheese. The texture is crispy, but also a little soft. I think that these aren't baked as long as other types of rice crackers to avoid that strong flavor that comes with such baking. It gives you a vague sense that they're marginally stale, but they certainly are not. The outside has a fine powder on it, but it's not as bad as something like Cheetos and won't turn your fingers a different color.

The flavor is dominated by Parmesan, followed by Gorgonzola. The other two cheeses are cheddar and Gouda, but you can't really detect them much. Gouda isn't a strong cheese normally anyway, and I have to imagine it would only lend a buttery flavor at best. Frankly, there is a cheese-like pungency to these but a lack of sharpness or bite which I'd prefer to have. I'm guessing a little more salt may have helped out in this regard, but I can't say for sure.

I liked these just fine, but the somewhat soft texture and the less than sharp cheese flavor made them something I'm indifferent to. It's rather a shame really as I will happily finish off the bag and I certainly love the portion size and the potential associated with them. If these are ever redone by Kameda Seika, I'd happily give them a second chance.

Kameda Seika Special Soy Sauce Sembei

These days, the old sembei well has been running dry. Lately, it seems that the only things of interest that I haven't tried are those which are made with shrimp or has little dollops of fake cheese on it and an almond. I hate shrimp, and those little fake cheese ones scare me a little. They look like someone put hardened Cheez Whiz on them. My guess is that I'll get to those scary crackers eventually, but I decided to try some conventional soy sauce (shoyu) style sembei. Often, I shy away from the mainstream items because they seem less interesting than the limited edition products.

Strangely enough, this is a "limited edition" soy sauce sembei. According to the Kameda Seika web site, it'll be around for only 120 days. I'm guessing this is a spring flavor release. Loads of wasabi and pepper showed up in winter and I guess soy sauce is more of a warm weather thing when it comes to rice crackers.


This is promoted as an "original" and "special" sauce. Perhaps I should try it with lettuce, pickles, and onions on a sesame seed bun. Of course, "special sauce" can conjure up all sorts of far less savory associations, but I leave those for Marvo at The Impulsive Buy. He's the king of bodily fluid joke writing. And, I mean that in the best possible way.

In the past, I never cared much for soy sauce sembei because it always seemed too heavy on the salty sauce and too light on complex flavor. These sembei are quite a bit more complex than what I've experienced in the past. They do have that familiar baked rice cracker smell and taste that a lot of people dislike, but the crackers are crisp, fresh, and spicy. They even have a little heat in them that you can really sense by the end of a two-pack of crackers. The spices aren't detailed in the ingredients list (likely to prevent trade secrets from being revealed), but I'm pretty sure I detect garlic and Chinese red chili.

Each bag has 24 crackers and two crackers of about 7 cm. (2.8 in.) in diameter and have 35 calories. These are a bit on the strong side flavor-wise, so they are best consumed with a beverage and in small portions. I count this as a good thing as you can be satisfied with just two or four because they're so flavorful. I recommend them to anyone with a taste for salty and slightly hot sembei.

Kameda Seika Wasabi Sembei

The inattentive eye probably will not pick up on this little detail, but the package above is open. I usually make an effort to take pictures of the packages before they are open, but I bought this while my husband was off in California visiting his family and he had my camera. I had to be careful about anything I bought during his absence due to not being able to get any snaps.


This wasabi sembei was actually one of the very few things I purchased while he was gone that was appropriate for this blog. I had planned to buy nothing while I was camera-less (and more woefully, husband-less), but I really had a hankering for some sembei and this looked pretty tasty. The generously sized (8 cm./3.2 in.) crackers are covered with little wasabi flakes. Each cracker is 58 calories.

The ingredients list is very long and includes a lot of different spices including various animal product extracts, garlic and onion powder, and, of course, wasabi. The crackers smell of garlic and that along with the wasabi is what hits you the strongest. The wasabi burns your tongue with a hard sting that dissipates fast. That makes it easier to go in for another round. The crackers are fresh and crispy with a very slightly oily exterior that keeps the wasabi flakes and other seasonings sticking to the cracker.

These are very good wasabi crackers and the only thing keeping me from giving them a "very happy" rating is that I wish they were just a little bit more savory and a little less intense on the wasabi. Of course, they are wasabi crackers so it makes sense that that would dominate, but the heat overwhelms the other flavors at times. When I was chewing, I mainly got the burn (and heat up the back of my nose) and the savory flavors tended to mainly linger on my tongue as an aftertaste. Still, all in a all a really good rice cracker which I'd recommend for fans of wasabi without reservation.

Kameida Seika Almond Fried Sembei

Have you ever eaten something for the first time and you could swear that you've eaten something very much like it before, but you can't work out what it is? Well, that's how I felt when I ate this sembei. It wasn't that I have eaten sembei like it before, but I believe I've had some sort of snack food which is roughly similar to it. The annoying thing is that I can't remember what it was. It's going to keep bugging me until I remember.


I'd been eyeballing this bag of almond sembei for quite some time. The calorie counts for each 25 gram bag (.88 oz.) bag put me off a bit. It is 133 calories for a pretty small-looking portion. That being said, when I dumped the contents out for picture taking, it didn't seem quite as bad as I thought it would be (entire contents of one bag pictured below). Any time nuts are a large component of some food, there is a boost in fat. In the case of these, there are 7.1 grams of fat per serving (and 3.1 grams of protein).


This sembei mix actually contains both almonds and peanuts. The peanuts are whole and coated in some sort of crispy shell which is strangely sweet. They resemble honey-roasted nuts without the honey flavor. Note that I believe they are sweetened with maltitol as well as sugar (both are ingredients). The sembei pieces are the thing that reminds me of something else. The closest food I can liken them to are sesame sticks with a nuttiness from almonds instead of sesame. They're super crispy, as are the nuts, and don't have that usual rice cracker taste or smell. In fact, when you sniff the mix, you smell peanuts.

These were good, but the peanut part is far too sweet and the almond component overwhelmed by the peanut flavor. It's not a bad mix at all, and I will easily finish the remaining 5 packets of the 6 in the entire bag. Frankly speaking, I prefer saltier nut flavors rather than sweet. These were also slightly expensive at the supermarket I picked them up in at 260 yen ($2.93) and I can't see going for them again. Someone with different tastes than me might really like them. They're definitely well-made, fresh, and offer depth of flavor, but just not my cup of tea.