Starbucks Banana Chocolate Cream Frappucino (product information)

Bananas are one of the most accessible types of fruit in Japan. They're cheap and you can buy them nearly anywhere including conveninece stores. Of course, they tend to not be very tasty or sweet compared to some of the bananas you can get in other places (at least the Tokyo ones). I'm guessing this Starbucks concoction is going to be quite a bit sweeter and tastier than the standard imported banana (which I believe come from the Philippines). You really can't go wrong with chocolate and cream, though I'm guessing this won't live up to its potential if the banana is fake.

If you find yourself ordering one of these (I wouldn't try this as I love bananas, but not things flavored with banana), let me know what you think. 

Starbucks Vanilla Latte with Lemony Swirls (product announcement)

I once read a former high-profile model say that she was encouraged to "drink her calories" instead of eat them. This applied to alcohol and, I guess, was supposed to not make one gain as much weight. I'm not sure how that works, but I think Starbucks has been onboard with the entire "drink your calories"  notion for the entire time that it's been in business.

As you can see by the picture, Starbucks is offering a new limited editions drink to help you get your calories. While I don't know how caloric this is, that rich head of whipped cream is a hint that this probably isn't going to trim your thighes any time soon. This is a "creamy" vanilla latte with lemon peel and lemon-flavored whipped cream. It's supposed to evoke lemon cream pie in the silky texture and sweetness. A short will run you 430 yen ($4.19), a tall 470 yen ($4.57), a grande 510 ($4.96) and a venti 550 yen ($5.35). It'll be around from March 19 to April 15 and you can have it hot or cold.

While I personally think that the lemon/coffee combo (this is an espresso drink) is a bit strange, I'd probably buy a short and give it a try provided that my husband was also willing to be a taste tester so that we'd both have a chance to hate it before throwing away what was left. ;-) If you give this a try, I'd love to hear your opinions of how the two tastes come together in this drink.

Starbucks Sakura Chocolate Latte (product announcement)

You know that spring is on its way in Japan when the "sakura" (cherry blossom or cherry depending on the entity that distributes it) foods start popping up. In my buffer, I have a post I've been sitting on which talks about seasonal flavors and sakura is definitely a harbinger of the end of winter. Starbucks is launching a very pink-looking beverage the day after Valentine's day. You'd think they'd do it before, but I believe this is a way of appealing to palates that are tired of all that chocolate. This is cherry and white chocolate with strawberry-flavored candy bits on the top. While I have to admit that the colors are beautiful, this is the sort of thing I'd avoid because I'd expect the fruit flavors to create a strange melange and the white chocolate to make it too sweet. 

Starbucks Japan Wants to Fatten You Up

Images from Starbucks Japan.

Starbucks Japan would like you to get your tiramisu on in liquid form, because you get your calorie bombs far too slowly if you have to pause long enough to masticate them. Yesterday, Starbucks Japan started selling a very decadent looking coffee with little chunks of what appear to be bits of cake floating on top of a frappucino base. This is the sort of thing I wouldn't buy, but I'd probably go to the local Starbucks in Asagaya and buy a coffee and hope they'd give me a sample of this while I occupied their precious space and took advantage of their Wi-fi.

They also rolling out three types of cake based on various sugary coffee beverages. Each variety if chock full of sugary "chunks" and sauces:

• Caramel macchiato - cookie crumbles, caramel chocolate, white chocolate chunks and bitter caramel sauce
• Caffe mocha - white chocolate drizzle, black cocoa cookie crumble, ganache cream and chocolate chunks
• Latte - white chocolate topping and white chocolate "powder", white chocolate chunks, milk cream (like condensed milk in taste) and a cookie base

The slices of cake look great, but they all seem a bit overloaded with sweet things. That being said, I'd bet dollars to donuts that these are not insanely sweet, but they are fatty. I very rarely bought cake or sweets at Starbucks in Japan because there was always a plethora of fantastic bakeries around me. I'd buy a pastry at one of them and take it into Starbucks and the employees never seemed to care. Though these look pretty tempting, the baked goods sold at Starbucks were never appealing because they were sealed in plastic just like convenience store pastries and could never live up to the fresh stuff I could get nearby. I don't think these would change my habits, but the mixture of ingredients would be tempting. 

Starbucks Azuki Matcha Latte

One of the things that Japan used to be famous for was copious numbers of free samples. There was a time, in days gone by, that foreigners would remark that a trip through the food areas of a department store (the basement) would net you so many samples that you could get a free lunch. I'm here to say that those days are long, long gone. Samples are offered on occasion, but the only places that reliably pony them up are Costco and some of the posher traditional rice cracker (sembei) and sweets shops. Such shops still serve a cup of tea and a small sample in many cases, but things are far spottier in markets, bakeries and department stores.

Since most customers descend on open trays and baskets of free samples as if they were living in the midst of post-war famine, I can understand why various places have cut way back on offering them. Few customers tend to actually make purchases based on such samples anyway. In fact, one enduring frustration for my husband and I is that there are some things (especially in bakeries) that look good and if samples could be had, we might buy them. I don't blame the bakeries, but rather the greedy customers. Honestly, I've seen people hover over sample baskets trying to block other people's access while they feed themselves with two fists. I'm not talking about grubby homeless people or impoverished students (I'm not sure Japan actually has any poor college students), but middle-aged women in nice clothes with shopping bags bearing the names of tony shops.

My most recent experience with free samples came along this very day while I was hanging out in a local Starbucks waiting for my husband to finish a swim and rejoin me for a convivial walk home. I rarely sit in coffee shops because I'd rather walk about. However, with my recent surgery (on Dec. 20), I really felt too tired to spend an hour walking while he swam. Before half my thyroid was extracted and I attained a big piratey scar across my throat, I would have happily gotten some extra exercise instead of occupying space for the price of an expensive cup of coffee. As I sat there reading a medieval novel on my ancient Palm, one of the Starbucks employees walked over with a tray of samples and told me it was something for New Year's, but she said it so fast that I only caught the word "matcha" (green tea). Looking at it, I knew that it was a latte by the color, but I didn't know what the little brown swirl on the top was. It turned out that it was azuki (sweetened red bean) sauce. Frankly, I thought it might be chocolate syrup.

I'm not a huge fan of green tea. It's in the category of "if they serve it to me for free, I'll drink it, but I won't order it myself". I've tried a lot of green-tea flavored things including KitKats, cookies, cakes, bean cakes, ice cream, and actual tea, of course. On occasion, I've really enjoyed it because the right balance of bitter and sweet can really create something tremendous with green tea. At other times, I've felt far too much bitter or grassiness in the mix and that the green tea element was overbearing. To my taste buds, green tea flavoring is like coffee flavoring. It's easy to get wrong, and hard to get right.

This is how I remember my experiences when I'm out of the apartment and forgot to put my notebook back in my bag. Thank goodness for all of the advertising tucked into free packets of pocket tissues.

I sniffed the sample with interest and noted that the scent had some nutty elements as well as the familiar green tea scent. The taste was milky with a strong green tea flavor, but nearly zero bitterness. The creamy full fat milk and enough sugar to make it sweet but nowhere near cloying offset any unpleasantness that may have come from using such a strong green tea flavor. The azuki, which I perceived as chocolate based on the color and appearance, was too small in quantity to really add much, but it may have added a dimension that wasn't overtly "beany". It may have just added rather more depth of flavor. In fact, one thing that I really liked about this was that drinking it was such a multilayered experience. The texture was creamy, but not overly rich and the flavor was strong, but not overbearing. The manner in which the latte was made or the tea roasted left me with a good nutty finish.

I really liked this, and would actually buy one for myself now that I've tried it. Considering my relative indifference to green tea, that says a lot about how good it is and the power of offering free samples. I'm not sure how matcha purists would feel about this, but I thought it was truly delicious. That being said, don't be fooled into thinking the fact that this is green tea with red beans makes it healthy. If you drink one, you are essentially having dessert as a short one with regular milk has 180 calories, a tall about 300, and a venti nearly 400 calories. Since this is likely to disappear after the season is well and truly over, I'd recommend skipping dessert one day soon and enjoying one while you can.

Random Weekend Picture 25

For the summer, Starbucks Japan is offering some exotic options. Since they accommodate English speakers by writing more of their advertising in English than in Japanese, I don't have to translate for my readers.

Mango continues to be the fruit du jour in Japan. Many things are sold in mango flavor including chocolates, but dried fruit tends to be one of the more popular ways for people to partake of it. While I like mango, I'm not really inclined to try that particular frappucino.

The other variety, yuzu green tea, is something I'm more drawn to. For those who don't recall or know, yuzu is a Japanese citrus fruit which is a cross between a grapefruit and an orange. It's one of my favorite flavor enhancers in snacks and I've eaten it as a dried fruit and really enjoyed it. That being said, I probably won't buy this because I'm not a huge fan of green tea or drinking a ton of sugar. A short yuzu green tea frappucino weighs in at 130 calories and a venti at a whopping 270. It actually beats out the mango frappucino which comes in at 115 for a short and 240 for a venti.

Variety Friday: Starbucks Japan Fukubukuro

My husband buying the "lucky bag" and asking the shop attendant about the availability of such things.

Every year on New Year's Day, you can find a variety of shops in Japan selling "lucky bags" or something equivalent to what we call a grab bag in the United States. Readers who have been with me for a long time or who have read some of the archives may recall that last year I talked about a "fukubako", or "lucky box" which I bought at Mister Donut.

The main idea behind these things is that they are meant to be a bargain. The value of the items in total is supposed to exceed the amount you pay. I've always thought that these things were simply a way of unloading stuff that nobody wanted to buy and that couldn't be unloaded. After all, when that case of purple polka-dot tights isn't moving, you can stuff one in every "lucky bag" and claim that they're a 1000 yen (about $11) value. If your shop carries enough bum goods, you could easily stuff your bags with all of the craptacular inventory that won't move off your shelves and present the collection of embarrassing and distasteful items as "value".

The Mister Donut fukubukuro and fukubako are undeniably one of the best values for your money since you pay 2000 yen ($21.50) and get coupons which allow you to buy 20 donuts. The value of the donuts alone is at least 2000 yen, often more since many donuts are more than 100 yen. You also get a plethora of goodies ranging from kid's toys to dishware. Unfortunately, you also have to stuff yourself with donuts between January 1 and March 31 because the donut coupons run out at the end of March. For this reason, my husband and I decided to give a different shop our "lucky bag" money this year. Since we can never have too much coffee, we decided to try on Starbucks this time around.

Our local Starbucks is in a JR station and only had two of the cloth totes that constitute their "lucky bags" on display. They carry two varieties, one for 5000 yen ($54) and another for 3000 yen ($32) and the more expensive one was sold out. My husband asked how many of each they had on hand and the salesgirl told him they had 20 of the pricier ones and 30 of the cheaper ones. She also said that that was all they had period so we got the next to the last one for the season. Note that we arrived at 12:30 or so on January 1st so they did not last long.


As for the contents of the bag, they gave us three 70-gram (2.5 oz.) bags of ground coffee (Verona, House Blend, and Sumatra), two coupons in gift cards good for any drink of any size, a double-decker bento box, a very small and thin lap rug in a Starbucks cup cloth holder, and a small fair trade African woven cloth tote bag. The value would break down something like this:

• 3 small bags of coffee: ~1000 yen
• 2 drink coupons: a maximum of 1000 yen (biggest, most expensive drinks being purchased)
• double-decker bento box: ~100 yen without the Starbucks motif, to be charitable, let's say 300 yen
• African fair trade cloth tote bag : a maximum of 1000 yen
  
• Starbucks cloth tote bag: a maximum of 1000 yen
• lap blanket and mug: ~300 yen
  

Technically, the value of the goods exceeded the cost, but realistically, two tote bags, neither of which is large enough to really shop with are not of much use and both are overpriced as retail items. Their true value is closer to 500 yen each. I also think it's absurd to put another tote bag in the main tote as a means of adding value.

The Starbucks 3000-yen "lucky bag" was a big disappointment to us. We would have preferred more coffee, more coupons, or at least some reusable Starbucks cups to the silly lap rug, and second tote, or even the bento box. At least the bento box is arguably useful though. It's actually a pretty nice size and has chopsticks snapped into the top of the bottom box. The main thing is that my husband doesn't eat traditional Japanese bento lunches and I work from home so it's not of great utility to us personally.

I wouldn't recommend the lucky bags at Starbucks if you're looking to take part in the spirit of the season during New Year's and pick up a lucky bag. Next year, I'm thinking we'll pick up something at a different place. If you can eat a lot of donuts, the Mister Donut box is still the best bet.

Quick update: I found someone who posted about the 2010 Mister Donut fukubako if you'd like to see them (there appear to be two different ones), they're here and here. It's rather similar to last year's haul.