Yawataya Mini KitKat

When I was given wasabi KitKats, I remember having a discussion about chocolate with one of my students in which I mentioned that putting chili in chocolate was fairly common in America. She was shocked, and grossed out, at the idea of this combination. Of course, she thought that including wasabi was also pretty weird, but accepted it as something reasonable as a regional variation for novelty value. This is one of those rare cases when a combination is actually a bit stranger in Japan than in the West. I've been reading about American releases of chili paired with chocolate on other blogs for years.

If you look at the top of this box, you can see that there is an old-timey picture in sepia (because that's how we can tell it's "old-timey"). This is because this flavor is supposed to represent what was popular in the Shinshu area during the Edo period. The origin of the hot pepper that is used is thought to be the Amazon basin rather than Japan. It's a transplanted flavor that is commonly called "togarashi" in Japan. Apparently, we have Columbus to thank for spreading it all over the globe, first to Europe and then to Asia. I doubt that makes up for all of the stuff the Spanish did to indigenous peoples nor does it make up for the fact that he is seen as discovering something which was hard to miss and probably was located by many explorers before him, but, hey, credit where it is due. He spread some hot peppers for us all to enjoy, especially the folks in Nagano (formerly the Shinshu area).

I picked this box of 5 mini KitKats up at the airport on my way out of Japan. I don't remember what I paid, but the retail price according to Nestle Japan's web site is 350 yen ($4.38). As is so often the case with these types of KitKat, it represents significantly bad value for the quantity, but one does not buy these for the volume, but rather the novelty. Each KitKat is two mini fingers (about the size of one and a third regular KitKat fingers) and has 67 calories.

When I opened the packet on these, I smelled a very pleasant bittersweet chocolate smell. I deeply inhaled the scent of the bar to try and detect any spiciness or hint of the chili pepper, but there was really no hint. My first bite yielded a mild, slightly sweet bittersweet chocolate flavor with the usual crispy wafer freshness of a KitKat. Only after this did I get a bit of heat on the tongue. Each subsequent bite was the same. It was a one-two punch with each flavor hitting quite distinctly.

This is a pretty nice tasting KitKat, largely because it is a slightly dark, bittersweet flavor which is not too sweet and pairs well with the wafer's crunch. However, the spicy portion seems almost superfluous. It does not detract from the chocolate, but it seems to add nothing. It's like eating a candy bar and then a little hot pepper alternatively. 

I think this works best as what it is, a novelty. If you're in the area (or at the airport) and want to take something back for your friends to try which won't make them gag, but will surprise them, this ought to fit nicely. The heat isn't so intense that someone will have a burning mouth. You'd have to be extremely sensitive to hot pepper to suffer for sampling this. Though I'll finish this box (slowly), I don't think there would really be any reason to buy this again. 

Dong Won Hot Tuna

My husband and I made a repeat visit to the "Korea town" area of Shinjuku in Tokyo last week and dropped in on a supermarket this time. My husband picked up several snacks, and I couldn't resist this tuna because of the name. I'm sure that it's all pretty tame stuff in Korean, perhaps the equivalent of "Trader Joe" there. To me though, I had to titter at the connotations. Besides, even without the awesome name, I would have considered sampling this since I do like tuna and spicy food. 

Based on the picture on the can, I expected this to be bits of tuna with little hot peppers sprinkled among it. My first surprise was that when I popped the seal and tried to "drain" the tuna, a red fluid ran out. After removing the top, I caught a whiff of that "dog food" type of smell that you sometimes get from canned meat products, even when they are for human consumption.

Looking inside, I could see something that resembled hash more than canned tuna. At this point, I was experiencing some pretty serious buyer's remorse. I wasn't sure it looked like something I'd want to put in my mouth, but I'd already forked over my 240 yen ($2.82) so I decided that I was going to, at the very least, get a review out of it.

It really doesn't look much better in a sandwich, except to the extent that you can see less of it this way.

Tentatively, I dipped my fork into it and speared what looked to be a tiny cube of white potato and gave it a sample. It tasted slightly spicy and modestly flavored with tuna. Actually, it tastes pretty good. Heartened by the sampling, I pondered exactly how I was going to eat it now that it wasn't what I thought it was. I was thinking I'd make some sort of spicy tuna salad by mixing it with mayo, but this isn't that sort of thing. There is a lot of sauce in it so it's not like dry, flaked fish. In fact, this appears to be a salad that is pre-made and canned so I just slathered half of it on a cheese croissant roll I had in the freezer and chowed down.

The tuna flavor is very present, but tamed by the spicy flavors of the red chili sauce and diluted by what look like carrot, onion and potato pieces. You can't really taste the vegetables though because they are very tender and well-cooked as well as well-marinated in the chili sauce. The sauce is only mildly hot and spicy, and slightly sweet. Keep in mind that there was no Japanese translation over the ingredients and I can't read Korean at all so I can't determine anything about the ingredients. That's actually a little refreshing for me since I can just rely on my senses rather than having to do research.

This was surprisingly good right out of the can and didn't betray much of the "canned food" taste that some of these sorts of foods have. I'm guessing that has to do with the tuna and chili sauce having strong flavor profiles. At 190 calories for the whole can (and one can offering two servings for the likes of me), this was a surprisingly tasty and low calorie lunch option. The only problems with it are that it's slightly expensive and  that I can only buy it at Korean supermarkets and they aren't exactly frequently dotting the landscape. That being said, I'd definitely pick up a can if I was in the area. It's a nice novel taste experience and a tasty quick meal.

Bourbon Petit Chili Tomato Crackers

In the wake of quake-buying frenzy, I've found that my snack options are somewhat limited. That is not to say that I don't have many options, but rather that they aren't quite as "limitless" under current conditions. At the moment, I'm at greater risk of not having something to wipe my behind with than running out of snack blog fodder. Frankly, for a country that is mad about washlets, I don't understand why they need so much toilet paper. Getting back to the point though, sembei or rice crackers tend to be pretty popular purchases right now as it is good for hoarding, but Bourbon recently released several additions and revamps to their line of "Petit" snacks and my local supermarket had refilled their supply on a day in which I was especially jonesing for salty snack goodness. I chose several interesting looking new specimens and revisited an old favorite, Cheese Rich arare.

The Bourbon Petit line offers sleeves of small snacks, usually around the diameter of a 100-yen coin or American quarter. They offer both sweet and savory options that sell for about 100 yen per package, though these were available for a mere 78 yen (96 cents) each. I love these snacks to pieces. I wish that a similar type of thing was sold back home because they are cheap, easy to handle and store, and provide a lot of flavor options. Most of the snacks whether savory or sweet come in around the 200 calorie range so you can eat it all without feeling it's a major pig-out, though usually half a sleeve is quite sufficient for me. If I were still working in an office, I'd want to keep a couple of these in my desk at any given time for snacking. In particular, I recommend the kinako wafers (which are sweet and delicious).

The chili tomato crackers package provides 38 itty bittycrackers and 192 calories. The crackers smell peculiarly fishy, but that could just be my confused olfactory senses as a result of allergies. The ingredients don't indicate anything fishy going on, but rather include cheese, chili, and tomato powders. The flavor is decidedly heavy on a tangy tomato flavor with extremely subdued chili notes. If you're a "chili wuss", these are definitely the cracker for you. The crackers are crispy and a bit hard and not as flaky or fine as some offerings. Ritz crackers, these are not, but that doesn't mean they're bad.

I enjoyed these because they were flavorful and I love tomato flavor. These have a slightly "ketchup" thing going on because they're also a little sweet, and I dislike ketchup in general but these were fine regardless. That being said, I could have used some spicier (read: hotter) chili flavoring and a little more salt. I would, however, buy them again despite these desires. These would be great as an accompaniment to certain types of soup or as a midday snack when you're in the mood for something savory. While not a "must have", these are certainly a "will enjoy".

Sakeru String Cheese (Togarashi Flavor)

I'm a fan of the idea of string cheese. The notion that you can have a bit of cheese which won't melt or leak oil at room temperature and that is high in protein and therefore makes a more nutritious snack is quite attractive. I also like the calorie counts on a fairly generous amount of cheese. Most sticks of string cheese are about 100 calories.

The main problem with string cheese is that it often lacks flavor, at least in its American and Japanese incarnations. It's usually some low quality mozzarella that tastes like nothing. It's also somewhat expensive in Japan. Two 30 gram (1 oz.) sticks are about 178 yen ($1.96). When I saw this togarashi (chili pepper) flavor string cheese, I figured it might show a bit of promise.

I can't say that the string cheese itself is better than what I'm used to, but I can say that this has a nice hit of Chinese chili pepper to help enhance the flavor. I wish there was more depth to the flavor. In particular, I wish it had more buttery or cheesy notes to it, but this isn't bad at all as a snack. If you have a bland cracker or some pretzels and want some cheese to go along with it, this would make a decent pairing.

I'm not doing cartwheels over this. It is string cheese, after all, but I would buy it again. The hot pepper addition makes it just enough of a cut above plain string cheese to warrant a happy sumo rating.

Yuzukoshō Gourmet Cheetos

Cross-cultural differences are usually recognized mainly when they are broad and obvious like the fact that Japanese people bow and Americans shake hands. One of the reasons I continue to be interested in Japan (or other cultures for that matter) is that I want to know and understand the subtle differences. I think that the aggregate of those types of differences paints a more detailed and vivid portrait of a different culture than the most obvious differences.

What does this have to do with something as pedestrian as Cheetos? Well, this bag of Yuzukoshō (a fermented spicy seasoning made with Japanese citrus fruit like a lemon and chili peppers) salted corn snack has as a selling point that it contains 100% dark meat pork extract. It fascinates me that this point is so appealing that it's put on the front of the bag in fairly prominent letters. The Japanese clearly value the origin of their pork extracts more than I do.


My husband quickly grabbed these Cheetos, a 70 gram (2.5 oz.) bag, at our local 99 yen store while snapping up other interesting-looking goodies. He didn't pay much attention to what it said. The skewers of grilled meat pictured on the package suckered him in. If he had known it was yuzu and chili, he wouldn't have bought it.

When you open the bag, the strongest scent is of the chili, but also black pepper. The Cheetos look to be liberally sprinkled with it. The flavor is very intense in four layers. There is the sourness of the yuzu, the heat of the pepper and chili, salt, and also sugar. The mix of sweet and salty with sour is actually quite nice, but the sweetness component (which is actually the sweetener Stevia) is amped up a bit too high for my tastes. In general, I like very strong flavors, but this tastes a bit too close to a spice bomb for me. My husband also felt the flavor was too "sharp". These would probably be better if the flavors were at about 70% of their current intensity.

In the end, we'll eat the whole bag (386 calories) because they're not bad at all. I'm guessing they'd be better with a drink of some sort close and hand or as an accompaniment to food so that you could give your taste buds a rest.

Kameda Seika Yuzukoshoo Sembei

I sometimes wonder how my approach toward snacks would be different if I knew more about the finer points of Japanese cuisine. I'm certain that plenty of traditional spices and flavors are used in the foods I sample, but I don't even realize it because I lack the proper culinary context. In the case of these sembei, I discovered a new seasoning, yuzukoshoo. It's a fermented seasoning paste often used for things like soup and sashimi.

Because I've turned into quite the yuzu fan, I couldn't pass up this sembei, so I snapped this bag of 12 crackers up at Family Mart for about 150 yen ($1.65). For those who are new to this blog and don't know about yuzu, it's a sour Japanese citrus fruit which is similar to grapefruit in flavor. It's used in many sauces in Japan.


These smell of citrus, sembei, and something which is hard to pinpoint (possibly the chili aspects of the seasoning paste). They smell good in a way that an interesting savory meal might smell while it's cooking. The flavor is a perfect blending of savory elements including the yuzu's citrus, chili, baked rice, and other spices like onion and garlic. There's also something which is ever so vaguely fishy. The texture of the sembei is fresh, light and crispy. Each is 29 calories, and I ate far too many of them at once.

I found these to be a sublime joy and I would definitely have them again. They're one of Kameda Seika's convenience store-only offerings so you'll have to find them at one of the big name conbini. Their web site says that these will only be around for 4 months so run out and get them soon.

Karamucho Hot Chili Potato Chips

I like hot (as in spicy) food so these chips appeal to me more so than the average bland, plain chip. They're also the only regularly-available hot chip in Japan and one of the first types I tried so many years ago when I first arrived. That being said, I have only eaten them about 4 times in 19 years. I decided to revisit them and see what it was that kept me from going back more often. I wondered if a big part of it wasn't that they were bad, but rather that they were too different from American chili and barbecue chips.

These chips smell mostly like regular chips despite having a visible dusting of red powder. On first taste, you are hit by paprika, garlic and onion flavors. The quite mild heat of the chili hits a second wave. The blend of flavors seems designed to make sure the actual potato taste isn't buried in the spices. These aren't exceptionally salty chips and I think that's why they don't produce as strong a burn. That being said, there is a very slow heat build up and by the third chip, I was feeling an irritation in my throat and a few extremely vague and short-lived little burn spots on my lips from the spice.



The chips are mostly medium size and most of them do not have dark spots on them. There is a lot of air in the bag and almost no smashed chips at all. They are nicely crunchy, not overtly greasy, and of average thinness. Personally, I prefer chips that are cut in this way rather than those which are extra thin or thick cut.

I bought this small bag(28 grams or just under 1 oz.) in a 99 yen shop where a variety of salted snack foods in small packages were being sold at a price of 2 for 99 yen (94 cents so 47 cents for this one small bag). The entire bag will cost you 154 calories, 9.5 grams of fat, and 168 mg of sodium.

If you like things that are just a bit spicy but not painfully hot, these are really quite nice. Personally, I prefer quite a bit more of a burn factor from my spicy chips, but I believe these pack a much nicer flavor profile. Really hot chips are mainly giving you the neurotransmitter rush as your brain deals with the "pain" from the burning. These actually taste good and have a well-balanced mixture of chili and other spices.