Fujiya Milky Mont Blanc Chocolate

I have reached an important conclusion about the Fujiya brand's versions of chocolate. Well, it's not important in a global sense. It certainly isn't going to impact climate change, cure cancer, or end starvation. It's also not important in a local sense. It won't end the California drought or lower the local taxes. No, it's only important in helping my readers relate to the status of this particular brand in Japan relative to the status of a similar brand in the U.S. Saying it like that sort of undermines the sense of my conclusion having any importance at all, even in my estimation. Oh, well.

At any rate, despite the less than earth-shattering nature of my revelation, I will finally offer it. Are you ready? Fujiya is the Hershey's of Japan. By that I mean that they make sub-standard chocolate products which are popular mainly because their taste is familiar, their packaging and logo can be related to, and their mascot a long-standing icon in the culture. Their products aren't great, but people know them so they like them.

This is not exactly a criticism of Fujiya. I like Hershey's kisses despite their chalky texture and sour milk/yogurt-like flavor profile and less than endearing chocolate notes. You can enjoy something and recognize that it's not the greatest quality version of that item on the market. Bad pizza is a case in point. I love bad pizza because it is familiar to me as someone whose mother would purchase an enormous quantity of bread-like squares with some form of ketchup and vegetable-based cheese-like product on it. It was a fast food meal from our freezer that provided a welcome alternative to the disgusting sloppy mess of canned vegetables, stacks of day-old white bread, and meat stuffs cooked into a grey, tough mass that my mother used her very special culinary skills to create. Yes, I like things because they were introduced to me in my childhood when I had a very different frame of reference.

The chocolates look cute with the adorable little embossed faces.

You may guess from that introduction that this box of twelve "Milky" mont blanc (a chestnut-paste-based dessert pictured on the lower right of the product's box) candies let me down. Indeed, it did. There is a particular flavoring in all of the Milky chocolates which I am not a fan of. I don't know what it is, but it is like the sour milk flavor in Hershey's chocolates. You either like it or you don't, and I don't.

The bigger sin than this weird taste is that the chestnut/mont blanc component, which was the part of this candy which compelled me to buy it at Nijiya market for about $2.20 (224 yen), is quite weak. It tastes a little like caramel at first, but it dissipates too quickly to really detect any greater depth of flavor. Mostly, you're just getting the very soft, fatty weird chocolate exterior. I should note that this is not because it is fake chocolate, or at least I think it's not. Fujiya uses cocoa butter and cacao mass. It also uses vegetable oil and "artificial flavor", which may account for the strange taste that I dislike. This is not horrible by any stretch of the imagination, but I'll turn to this when I'm out of other candy or want a tiny portion (each square is 20 calories) and only have big amounts on hand.

I have to try to remember that I don't care much for Fujiya's products. I buy them so infrequently that I forget and make mistakes like buying this. That being said, the chestnut part would probably have sucked me into buying it even if I remembered Fujiya's freaky chocolate recipe. Besides, if I keep eating it, I may get used to it and actually learn to like it. It worked with Hershey's, after all. 

Fujiya Milky Big Ball Corn Potage Candy

Friends, Romans, countrymen, and anyone from any country other than Italy or America who reads my blog, I am here today to talk about corn. Yes, I have spoken many times about how corn is the king of all grains and I will speak of it again as long as you don't start posting comments about how you're sick of me talking about corn and will quit reading if I keep up this nonsense.

One of the many things I learned from life in Japan (and I've learned so much, including the fact that mayonnaise is considered its own food group with a minimum daily allowance in said country) was that we view corn in far too limited a fashion in the U.S. Sure, we have cornmeal, muffins, cakes, etc., but we have no yet released a candy that is corn flavored. The furthest that we are willing to go is to cram cornflakes in our sweets... and, for some reason, the sushi at Safeway supermarket also has cornflakes but that's a life mystery for another time to explore. Today, we're talking about the under-utilization of corn.

When I saw this corn candy at Nijiya market for a mere $2.19 (I'm sure it sells for about half that in Japan, but, imports, go figure), I knew that I would have to buy it because this was the sort of "only in Japan" thing that people need to be aware of. Sure, they think "only in Japan" applies to men cuddling pillows shaped like women's laps and muttering "moe" under their breath in contentment or that people are eating burgers made from the ground flesh of beef that drank nothing but beer and had their torsos massaged daily by cherubic children in school uniforms.

The real "only in Japan" is far more mundane than that, at least in my opinion. It's the funk that isn't funky enough for the blogs to cover, and it includes (but is certainly not limited to) how they more fully embrace corn. Sure, we know they put it on their pizza and sell it with their pizza (so that you can put mayo on it and eat it as your "vegetable" side dish), but they also drink it in soup for breakfast and, they put it in their candy. They put it in 22-calorie morsels of taffy-like candy that are marketed as "big balls".

I opened a wrapper and gave the candy a sniff. It doesn't smell like anything. When you put it in your mouth, it is a little on the hard side and you have to warm it up and chew it to release the flavor. As it softens into a chewing gum-like taffy, it starts to melt in your mouth and release strong sweet-corn flavor which is amplified by the corn syrup (which is the first ingredient). It is also infused with richness and even more sweetness from sweetened condensed milk. In the end, it is potently sweet and has strong corn flavor. This is not necessarily a bad thing, but this is a pretty intense flavor experience both on the sweetness and corn front.

I liked this quite a lot, to be honest. I love corn flavored things and corn potage soup in particular. Lately, I've also taken to making polenta and eating it with pancake syrup and butter (as well as in savory preparations). When I make corn tea, I even sweeten it to bring out an essence which is similar to this (and corn tea is naturally sweet). Corn and sugar are in a good relationship as far as I'm concerned.

That being said, I would not say this is for everyone. For some people, corn is associated with more savory options and they think of it as something slathered with butter and sprinkled with salt - either at a movie theater or a backyard barbecue. Depending on your tastes, this could be manna from heaven or a horrendous blob of sugary awfulness. All I can say is that, this is what "candy corn" should be rather than the horrible stuff we see every Halloween. If candy corn tasted like this corn candy, (at least some) people might actually be happy to eat it.

Fujiya Big Milky Balls (QR)

My New Year's fukubukuro continues to be a snack review albatross around my neck. Yes, it's past the middle of the year and I'm still working my way through those surprise bags of processed food. As time goes by, the less thrilling stuff gets just that much older, and though the name "big balls" sounds impressive, these are really just large gumball-size wads of white taffy candy. The big selling point for them is that they are 1.7 times their previous size. Woohoo?

These are standard taffy balls in many ways. When warm, they are soft and easy to chew. When cold, they are hard a chore for the jaw. I first sampled these in February and remember having them stick to my teeth and tax my muscles quite a bit more. In July, they're not nearly such a hassle. The main difference is in the flavor which is rather buttery and fatty compared to similar things I've sampled back home. There isn't a strong flavor, which probably isn't a bad thing since "milk" flavor in Japan often means actual "milk" and not "vanilla". That often means "powdered milk" taste, not good farm fresh delight.

These aren't bad at all, but any sort of taffy candy is essentially grandma's territory and hard to get too excited about At only 23 calories per ball, it's not a bad way to get something sweet in your mouth for awhile, but eating just one makes my teeth ache and this isn't my sort of candy. I figure that it'll probably take me the rest of the year to get around to finishing the remainder of this small bag.