Kirin's April Fool's Day Prank (promotion information)

I've mentioned in my other blog that the Japanese don't do April Fool's day and I was always immensely grateful for that. It's not that I don't appreciate a clever joke. In fact, I very much appreciate one. It's just that April Fool's jokes are rarely clever. They are often mean-spirited, childish, and lacking in true imagination. Mostly, they play on making your victim look like a fool after trusting you rather than being creative and amusing everyone with your ingenuity.

This past April Fool's Day, there were two jokes that I appreciated. One was the Lil Bub video which was very nicely constructed to make it appear that there are actually two of these adorable cats with dwarfism and the other is the Kirin April Fool's advertisement promoting a 1 ml. can of beer. I appreciate these jokes because they take effort and they provoke a smile rather than embarrassment. While I do like the ad (shown above), I also hope this isn't the start of a wider trend in Japan. 

Random Picture #123

Last year, when energy conservation measures were first implemented to help compensate for losing nuclear power, Kirin introduced beer that you could put ice in. My husband wanted to try it, but never got around to it and it vanished from the mark. As a teetotaler (a status which amused some of my students, especially a few of the men, to no end), I'm not really sure why beer shouldn't have ice in it. I figured it smells horrible no matter what you do with it and you couldn't water it down enough to make me want to drink it. All I can say is that it must have been a fairly decent product for Kirin since it's back again this summer.

If any beer drinkers out there would like to leave a comment and let me know why ice doesn't go in beer, I'd love to understand. 

Random Picture #119

I like the naming of this because it sounds like you're in a race to get started on snacking. It's like the equivalent of "on your mark, get set, go!" I never saw this particular snack anywhere other than attached to the side of a 6-pack of beer. I guess that they figure that, when you're getting drunk, you may forget how to eat so they need to give you a bit of a count to cue you to get started

These little packets of salted snacks, which resembled basic processed potato sticks like Pote-long, were on a variety of beer offered by Suntory. Chances are that they were using the beer as a way of introducing a new snack product rather than attempting to get people to buy the beer by giving them a free snack. Since I never saw them packaged and sold separately, I'm guessing the reception was less than warm and they decided not to push their processed barbecue potato sticks. 

Variety Friday: Yebisu Beer Museum

The front of the museum. (Click any picture to see a much bigger version.)

Those who are paying attention to what I write may recall that I don't drink alcohol. So for those who stalk me and ingest every personal detail of my life as if it provided life-sustaining nourishment and those with impeccable memories and lives of their own, it may come as a surprise that I went to a beer museum. Fortunately, this place provides an experience for those of all dispositions be it the young, liver-damaged, or simply too pious for alcohol. Personally, I do not fit into any of these categories. I just think all alcohol smells foul and have no interest in it.

The view down the steps to the lower area, where all of the good times roll.

The Yebisu Beer Museum is located in Ebisu in Tokyo (on the Yamanote line) and is a well-appointed place to learn a bit about the history of beer in Japan and the Yebisu brand in particular. I should note that my husband's favored brand is Yebisu and that was part of what compelled us to visit the museum and its accompanying "tasting salon". That's where the snack part of this sort of comes into play.

A poster showing how Yebisu used to be corked instead of using metal caps.

The museum is located through Mistsukoshi department store in a wide and well-tended area populated by tony shops and restaurants and largely European-style structures. There's also a Krispy Kreme and Burger King for us plebs who can't see our way clear of paying an arm and a leg to go to Joel Rabuchon restaurant. A student of my husband's had dinner there and the meal with 2 bottles of wine was 80,000 yen (about $991, I kid you not). If you're chintzy, you can skip the wine and just eat for 40,000 yen ($495).

Yebisu coins from the vending machine.

The museum entrance has some displays, but the meat of it is on the lower floor which is divided roughly into 5 parts: a lounge for those taking the guided tour (500 yen/$6.25, including beer tasting) in Japanese, a museum with photos and artifacts (with bilingual descriptions so its tourist friendly), a tasting area for tour groups, a souvenir shop and a "tasting salon". The most interesting part for me was the museum itself because I have an interest in how culture and a particular zeitgeist are reflected in cuisine and advertising of the age, and the museum has a lot of interesting things to offer in that regard. However, this is a snack blog and I'm going to focus on the food and drink aspects. If you want to experience the sociological aspects, you'll have to visit the museum yourself. ;-)

The tasting salon is essentially a spacious, stripped down bar with taps. The clerks don't handle cash, so you buy tokens for 400 yen each from a vending machine. Sampling one of their beer offerings is one token, a meatier snack is two tokens, and a lesser snack is one token. My husband opted for a beer which is only available on tap at bars (which he does not frequent in Tokyo) or seasonally by the can. We also chose the cheese plate as our accompanying snack. It came with three types of cheese in small portions. One was a mild cheddar type (though I'm guessing not actual cheddar), another a crumbly, pungent, soft,  salty cheese and the last a cream cheese obviously removed from a foil packet. The last one was flavored oddly and my husband wasn't keen on it.

The tasting salon menu with sausages, salted snacks, Japanese pickles, cheese and tripe. 

Since I don't drink beer, I can't tell you how it was, but my husband enjoyed it. He said that Yebisu is good because it has a very clean "beer" flavor. The selling point of Yebisu is that it is made on imported German equipment and is Japan's attempt to mirror that country's beer. In the past, even the ingredients were imported from Germany, but I don't know if that is still true.

Since I'm not a beer drinker, I availed myself of the vending machine full of Sapporo-produced soft drinks and bought a grapefruit soda. It says it has zero calories, but actually has 17.5 calories for the entire can. The flavor was very well-balanced between the sour/bitter grapefruit and sweetness from artificial sweeteners. I couldn't even detect an aftertaste. I'd definitely pick up this refreshing drink again, though it did make an odd pairing with the real cheese we were eating.

The tasting salon staff were very friendly and professional, and the atmosphere of the entire museum was quite elegant and civilized. You can take pictures anywhere in the museum, including the shop, which is quite unusual. Those who are interested in snacks can find some at the museum shop, which carries Sapporo's Potekaru baked chips, some sembei and nut mixtures, and the item that I purchased, medetai chips. "Medetai" is Japanese for sea bream and these fish-shaped crackers are red to resemble that fish rather than as an indication that they are hot and spicy. They are actually quite sweet and a little bit fishy. The ingredients include wheat starch, sugar, vegetable oil, shrimp and black sesame. I can't taste the sesame, and the shrimp must be the slightly fishy bit I picked up on. They're good, but I probably wouldn't buy them again as they're too sweet for me. They are very nice and crunchy though.

Even as a non-beer-drinker, I found visiting the museum a very interesting and pleasant experience. The area around the museum, Yebisu Garden Place, is wonderfully welcoming, clean and full of trees and places to sit. If you're coming to Tokyo, I'd strongly recommend giving the area a visit and hitting the museum.

Just a gentle reminder that there is a contest running for two weeks to win a few snack and snack-related goodies. If you'd like to enter, the details are in this post.

Random Weekend Picture 24

Today, I offer this shot of three beers with strange and somewhat suggestive names. "Style Free" is ubiquitous happoshu (low-malt beer created to escape the high taxes applied to beer in Japan). I've never understood the naming convention since it implies that you want your beer without any style. "The Straight" next to "Hard and Clear" are names which I leave up to your own lewd interpretations.

Random Weekend Picture 7

My husband saw this amusingly named "beer" at one of our local markets for about 110 yen/$1.16 per can (about 660 yen/$6.98 for this six-pack). Beer is divided into two categories in Japan. One is "real" beer and the other is "happoshu", which is cheaper because it has a lower malt content and can escape the tax category of real beer. A similarly sized can of actual beer costs about twice as much as this beer.

I don't know why this beer is called "Strong Off" because that would seem to indicate that it has less alcohol or is less potent, but the "off" part refers to a reduction in carbohydrates (60%). The alcohol content is actually slightly higher than usual beer at 7%. As part of the promotion for this new happoshu, this 6-pack came with a little insulating sleeve for you to keep your hand's warmth from warming the beer can as you drink.

I don't drink alcohol of any kind, but my husband has one can of beer with meals several times a week. Usually, he buys a version of happoshu called "Style Free" or drinks imported beer that he gets at Costoco. He said that he felt this was actually better than the usual happoshu. Note that beer connoisseurs wouldn't be caught dead drinking happoshu. They rather despise it.

Sapporo Draft Beer Caramels

Drinking beer is a serious past-time in Japan. Given the emphasis on emotional control in the culture, it is seen as a lubricant for expression and saying or doing something which is normally scandalous while inebriated is often forgiven. The notion of alcoholism as a disease that society needs to deal with and treat is rarely present in Japan. Drinking beer is just what people do to relax and nearly every adult does it to some extent or another.

As someone who has never liked alcohol and in fact has never had more than a sip of it, I'm seen as some sort of peculiar sort of being. Of course, being red-haired and blue-eyed pretty much makes me weird anyway, but Japanese people cannot quite see why I wouldn't find alcohol attractive. I don't need alcohol to help me open my big mouth and offer up my feelings. I can do it quite well without any external substances.

And, no, I'm not religious. I don't have some sort of objection to other people drinking or enjoying themselves. My main problem is that I hate the smell of alcohol. Every time the notion of sipping a bit of wine or beer when my husband infrequently partakes crosses my mind, one whiff will put the thought right out of my head. It may not surprise you to learn that I did not buy these caramels. My husband purchased them out of curiosity.

These caramels are offered by a company Merushi-ML1 (メルシーML1) which appears to be the marketing arm of a company named JOD Co, Ltd. In my research, I couldn't find out much about them except an URL for their on-line shop and the fact that they are a small company located in Aichi prefecture with only 300 employees and they sell a vast range of products including clothing, kitchenware, bedding, cosmetics and assorted foods. I couldn't locate these beer caramels on their web site, but searching it for a particular product is like hunting for a needle in a haystack.


There are 18 caramels in the box. Each is firm, but easy to bite into and chew. The color is pale gold and you can see it representing a candy form of beer by color alone. The ingredients are starch syrup, sugar, sweetened condensed milk, vegetable oil, beer (draft beer Sapporo Black Label), flour, vegetable protein, salt, sorbitol, flavoring, safflower coloring and and a soy emulsifier. A note on the box states that the candy is .1% alcohol.

Given my feeling toward alcohol, I figured it'd be a good idea to both include my impression and my husband's. Note that I have, on occasion, included beer in cooking, so I know the general taste if it is diluted and the alcohol has been cooked out of it.

My husband:
He said they didn't smell like anything in particular to him and that they tasted like weak butterscotch to him. He said that he couldn't detect any beer flavor in them. After getting his impression, I knew I had no choice but to subject myself to them as well since he clearly has a weaker sensitivity to alcohol smells and tastes than I.

Me: They smelled vaguely of the yeasty smell of beer. The taste was like like beer that had gone very stale and had been mixed with sugar. There was something about the level of sweetness mixed with the beer flavor that made it really awful (as opposed to just plain bad). I could taste the beer very well, and it did nothing to endear me to the idea of becoming a beer drinker in the future.

I found a Japanese review of these and the person indicated that anyone who for some reason wanted to give up beer might want to enjoy these as a substitute. Given the total acceptance and saturation of alcohol consumption in Japan, I can't imagine a Japanese person (short of one with serious liver issues) choosing to abandon beer. However, even if you did want to give it up, I have to imagine this is a poor substitute. Either the taste isn't potent enough for beer drinkers (as was my husband's impression), or it's a poor approximation (as was my impression).