Mizuho Arare Handmade Sembei (Wasabi)

Have you ever purchased a blueberry waffle, blueberry muffin mix, or any commercially produced product which is blueberry flavored? If you've done so, there's a very high chance that the product you've consumed contains no blueberries whatsoever. Most "blueberry" is candies that are flavored to taste like the real thing, but actually have little to do with it. That's because real blueberries are expensive, not particularly sweet, and troublesome to handle in their fresh state (as they will mold or go bad rapidly).

Most people don't realize when they're being sold something as something it's not. Even when they learn the truth, if they're satisfied with the taste, they generally don't care. I think the same might be said for the often faked flavor of wasabi. I've read that most wasabi in the United States is colored horseradish. I have no idea if it is fundamentally different in taste, but I'm guessing it may be different in terms of the overall flavor depth and the experience of eating wasabi.

I've said before that wasabi is different from other spicy flavors (that's spicy in terms of being "hot") in that it burns the back of your nasal passages. Intense wasabi will punch you, literally, in the back of your nose. These rice crackers can be a full freaking assault to your entire nasal system. I found that the intensity varies, but if you get a particularly potent one, it will flood your nasal passages from back to front in a flash of painful intensity and hit the back of your throat for good measure. By random chance, if you get one of the less intense ones, it'll just offer a strong, but relatively closer to average hit toward the back.

The nuggets offer a bit more than just the pain that can accompany wasabi. They smell vaguely of soy sauce and have a nice savory undertone that lingers on the middle of your tongue quite awhile after you've recovered from the wasabi attack. The saltiness and overall savory nature is undercut by the presence of sugar. If you've ever made soup and added a little sugar to it (the Japanese often do), you'll note that it'll mellow out any too sharp flavors. Incidentally, sugar is the third ingredient in these after glutinous rice and soy sauce (and before "wasabi powder"). If you're watching your sugar intake, these may not be the best choice.

The texture of these is hard and crunchy. "Arare" sembei is denser, less airy and spongey, and crispier than what is often called "soft" or "fluffy" sembei. I think these are designed to be enjoyed mainly with drinks, particularly alcohol, but anyone who likes wasabi can dive in without potential inebriation to off-set the nasal beating.

I only paid $1.50 for these at Daiso Japan, and I'm torn about whether I'd get them again. I like them quite a lot in terms of the taste and they are made with real wasabi. However, when I hit a powerful piece, it truly is a bombastic experience in my nasal cavities. It reminds me a bit of snorting soda through my nose and not in any way pleasant. I'm not sure if the price I may pay in pain is worth the experience, but I'd probably go for another round of these in the future after I had forgotten that some nuggets are more pain than pleasure.

Rice Cracker Arare Mix

When I was growing up, my mother was the queen of buying off-brand and store-brand snacks. I'm pretty sure that we never once procured a bag of Ruffles or a Lays brand product. I'm certain we never purchased anything from Hostess. For us, "Little Debbie" was the highest rung, on the rare occasions when we got that far up the economic snack ladder. I think that we dwelt more in the zone of "Mrs. Freshley's" - that's the "Dollar Tree" brand for those of you who don't find yourselves mucking about at the lower end of the shopping spectrum.

I imagine Japan has its equivalent of "Mrs. Freshleys" (or in the case of salted snacks, Granny Goose), but we foreign folk don't know the difference between their Lays brand (it's probably Calbees) and their cheap brands as we didn't grow up with advertising and pricing fluctuations. Even after having been in Japan for 23 years, I still just grabbed whatever suited my fancy and ignored the price differences. Of course, the price differences weren't nearly as broad there between the high and low snacking ends.

I mention the branding issue because I believe today's snack is the equivalent of the lowest of the low on the sembei front. I paid only a dollar for this at Marukai market and it's the sort of thing that I tended to completely ignore in Japan. The main reason it didn't appeal to me was that there is no specific flavor mentioned. It's just a generic mix of different flavored rice crackers. The only identifying information is the use of the word "arare". That simply lets you know that they will be hard and crunch little bites instead of puffy and airy things.

My expectations of these were suitably low. They got even lower when I gave the back of the bag a closer look and saw that they were made in China. I don't necessarily think that makes them bad, but it does mean that they are made with only the cheapest ingredients and for the least fussy of Japanese consumers - think drunken old men living on limited pensions who will take the cheapest nosh as long as it's salty and crispy.

I should have expected one thing and that was that the pink crackers would be shrimp-flavored. I'm not a fan of shrimp, so this wasn't the best of news. The seaweed-wrapped ones were incredibly fishy and the ones with little dark specs were mainly soy-sauce flavored, though it was rather mild. The light ones were pretty "plain", but most of them were contaminated to some extent by a fishy flavor. This is one of the risks of any sort of mix. In fact, when my husband bought a mint candy at See's they suggested he bag it separately so that it didn't infect every other chocolate. The shrimp and fish insinuated their way into everything in the bag.

Even though I'm not mad about fish and shrimp flavors, I would have found this far more likeable if it weren't for two things. One, they weren't salty enough. All of them could have used a heavier shellacking of soy sauce or salt. Two, they were slightly stale or their texture wasn't as crisp as it might have been. I can forgive and tolerate the flavors infecting one another, but I can't excuse the poor texture. That meant I couldn't finish the bag, much as I hate to waste any food.

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.

Sanko Seika Camembert Sembei

Like all people who review things in their blogs, I often find that  my ratings system has shortcomings. The main shortcoming is with the "indifferent" rating because it means that I will eat what I have, but I won't buy that product again. I'm concerned that that will make people think that I don't actually enjoy products with such a rating. I want to say that that is not true. I can enjoy something, but not want to have it again because the threshold for buying it again isn't quite cleared. Note that this is a bigger issue for me as a reviewer than for the average person. I'm always trying to slot new things into my daily consumption and something has to be pretty freaking good to be bought again.

This Camembert cheese sembei falls into the category of "things I enjoyed, but wouldn't buy again." It's not that it wasn't adequately tasty. For the most part, it was. The problem was that it was just "good",  not "very good", or "makes-me-want-to run-out-and-stock-up-before-it-goes-off-the-shelves good".

There are two types of sembei in each little single serving bag (99 calories per bag). One is a little ball with red flecks which is supposed to be black-pepper-shrimp-flavored, but just tasted weirdly sweet and rather smoky to me. The rods are the part with Camembert cheese. The bag claims they are 10% cheese, but it's still relatively subtle because Camembert is a mild cheese. It's pleasantly salty and cheesy, but you taste the cheese better if you don't eat the little shrimp balls. The two together make for an interesting mix but the balls are too sweet on their own. I think the little Camembert rods would be good on their own.

I think that I would have given these a better rating had I reviewed them in the early days of my blog. I think these are nice enough, but the competition for my snack affection is pretty intense and these don't make the cut. If you're interested in sampling them (and I think they are worth a try if you like crunchy sembei with a bit of cheese flavor), they're available for about 170 yen ($1.82) for six 23-gram (.8 oz.) bags at Okashi no Machioka snack shops and a variety of supermarkets.