Glico Cafe Au Lait Collon

My brain works super fast. In fact, it makes lightning leaps over stepping stones that often see me starting in one place and ending up in a completely different one such that I can greatly confuse my husband with my leaps from one topic to another. This cafe au lait collon set off just such a sequence of thoughts. I will ask you to bear with me as I insanely hopscotch from point to point.

First, there is the obvious wordplay joke about "Collon" and "colon" that makes all of us foreign folks snicker like the juveniles that we are inside every time we see "Collon" for sale in a Japanese store. That made me think about coffee being used in colonics and how silly that seemed. Then it made me think about food stuffs being used for colonics which brought on a recollection of something that I read in the book Awakenings. That book, for those who don't know it, was made into a movie of the same name starring Robin Williams. 

In the book, there is mention of one of the comatose patients, a very overweight woman whose head had gone completely bald during her prolonged state of unconsciousness making certain demands upon her awakening. She wanted a quart of chocolate ice cream and an olive oil enema. I remember wondering why on earth anyone would want any sort of enema, let alone one with olive oil. 

At any rate, every time I think of the book or movie Awakenings, I remember one of my first experiences in Japan with movie titles that were different there than they were with America. I went to Japan in spring of 1989 and taught at Nova for two years. The movie was released in 1990 and I remember talking about the movie with student's in the conversation lounge ("Voice") that Nova offered. It was impossible for the students to understand the title as I said it, but I learned that the reason was not an issue with the vocabulary, but the fact that the Japanese title was "Leonard no Asa" or "Leonard's Morning".

So, you can see that this product brought about a lot of links in a chain which set me off on the idea of coffee enemas and ended in Japan. You can see where my husband's confusion is based after that sort of jumping about. Add the fact that this all happens in about three seconds (seriously), and you can see that I'm off like a shot and headed in a strange and unknown direction. I guess I'm lucky that he hasn't had me institutionalized yet (which brings me right back to Awakenings as that is set in an institution).

Getting to the matter at hand - which is neither institutions nor colonic irrigation - I found these at an Asian market for $1.19 for an itty bitty box. I'm pretty sure that they had broken up and were selling a pack that was not meant for individual sale, but I wasn't interested in six or eight of these so I wasn't going to turn them in to whatever retail authority is responsible for prosecuting such infractions.

For those who don't know Collon, it's a delicate crispy shell which is layered and flaky filled with a sweet, dense, cream-like filling that is reminiscent of that which is sandwiched between sugar wafers. The textural contrast is a delight, but they are often far too sweet. This one carries an extremely mild coffee flavor as well as little coffee particles in the cream (those are the black spots that you see in the picture). It's tasty and the filling is nice and fatty, but it's just a little too sweet. There is no calorie information on my box, but Collon generally packs a wallop for each small morsel. It's the sort of thing which you have to exercise restraint with, so getting one small box isn't a bad idea.

I like this quite a lot. I think the coffee added some depth to the flavor and off-set the sometimes one-note sense of the sweet filling. I don't think these are better than the basic Collon, but they certainly are just as good and just tad more interesting.

Tirol Cafe de Brasil Chocolates (product information)

The whole World Cup thing is a bandwagon that I am not jumping on. That being said, it's one which people around me seem to be hauling themselves onto. People who have shown no interest whatsoever in soccer are suddenly watching it. I was sitting outside a cafe in Palo Alto several days ago and a bar across the street was emanating yells about goals and I assume missed goals. I may not be interested in it, but I can't avoid it.

Even in Tirol's news, I can't avoid seeing soccer-related things. They're offering a coffee chocolate in a special soccer-themed box (which you can dump all of the chocolates out of and use two candies to play a game with, or so they make it seem with the above photo). The candy uses authentic Brazilian coffee beans (roasted). You can buy these for 32 yen (about 30 cents) at Circle K/Sunkus for the time being, though I don't know how you're supposed to get one of the boxes without buying up a ton of the candies (or if you can have the box at all).

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. 

Look Hawaiian Chocolate

When I was a very young child, I had a puzzle which was a map of the United States. Each piece was a state and the point was to teach children the names of the states and their capitals. Since it would be very boring design to just have each state with words on it, they also put a picture or a few pictures of representative images for each place on the puzzle piece.

For some states, this was easy since they had very clear industries or famous places. California had Hollywood. Michigan had cars. Florida had oranges. Idaho had potatoes. My home state, Pennsylvania, had the Liberty Bell and coal. Some of the states were represented by rather silly things and those are the states that nobody remembers the position of on the map. Of course, Hawaii was easy. It had pineapples, coconuts, and hula girls. In fact, it also has a good deal more these days as we can also connect it with coffee, and macadamia nuts. In fact, I think more people know Hawaii as a stereotype than as an actual place to live (except the marvelous Marvo at The Impulsive Buy since he actually does live there).

I imagine that this offering from Fujiya for their Look line is based on favored stereotypical flavors. The box has all of the images that my old puzzle map used to have, including the hula dancer. Maybe one of their designers had that very same toy as a child.

Of course, there must be pineapple and there's also Kona coffee and macadamia, but the final flavor is pure Japan. That flavor is "blue Hawaii". My first experience with the "blue Hawaii" flavor was when considering a kakigori (shaved ice) treat for the first time. The syrup flavors included that non-descript flavor. We though that it might be blueberry at first, but it turned out to be some weird flavor that we could not figure out. Of all of the options in this box of Look chocolates, that one would absolutely be the biggest surprise as I had no idea what it was going to be.

pineapple: This was very subtle at first and I mainly tasted the bittersweet chocolate. The pineapple hit somewhere in the middle as an acidic burst and then faded away. I don't think chocolate and pineapple are a particularly good pairing in general and this did nothing to change my feeling about that.

macadamia: I had some expectations that this might work pretty well because, you know, nuts and chocolate, but it tasted strangely artificial and funky. It was if it had been contaminated by some bizarre artificial flavoring.There was only a modest nutty flavor mixed with the strange chemical taste.

Kona coffee: I figured this might be pretty good, but it also had a little of that odd flavor coupled with coconut. It had a rich, coffee finishing taste and was the best of the bunch. That is not to say it was fantastic, but it was complex and tasted closest to what one might expect.

blue Hawaii: This is where that strange chemical flavor came from. I wonder if the other flavors were "contaminated" in some fashion by the bubble gum-like flavor of this filling as that same essence is what I detected in the macadamia and Kona coffee to some extent. The pineapple is the furthest physically in the box from the blue Hawaii so it may not have been absorbing the scent/flavor as much. As much as I may feel that pineapple and chocolate are not a natural partnering, bubble gum and chocolate are about as mismatched as it gets.

None of these was terrible. I didn't exactly want to spit them back out, but that is more of a testimonial to how weak the fillings were and how serviceable the semi-sweet chocolate was. I can eat these, but I wouldn't say they'd be my first choice or even my second or third. If I was desperate for chocolate and this was all I had, I'd turn to it, but it's really not great. Maybe I got a bad box, or mine was older and sitting on the shelf caused flavors to coalesce into a mutant entity, but I wouldn't buy this again.

Glico Dororich Cafe (product announcement)

Image courtesy of Glico.

I sometimes wonder if some sort of "assembly" is supposed to make a food more attractive to people or if it just is all about creating a unique end product by not preparing everything beforehand. This product has a layer of "coffee jelly" on the bottom and whipped cream on the top. You're supposed to shake the snot out of it and then some sort of fluffy, foamy beverage that you will be impressed by. Personally, I've never found the notion of drinking thin gelatin mixed with whipped cream through a straw a very enticing proposition. Of course, it's also not something I've ever thought would be offered to me either.

The truth is that coffee jelly in Japan is actually quite good, especially with a little whipped cream on top. However, I'm not sure that I'd like this considering that it's good because you can get the textural contrast between the gelatin and cream as well as the flavor variation between the bitter coffee jelly and the lightly sweet, milky cream flavors. By mixing them together, you're killing at least half of the fun.

Kopiko Cappucino Hard Candy

There were things that I bought in Japan that I loved and for some reason never reviewed. One of those things was a sugar-free coffee candy. In fact, I was so certain that I'd reviewed it that I went back through my archives looking for a link to that review and found that none existed. And now, due to my aging brain and time away from Japan, I can't recall who made it or what it was called. All I do remember was that the drops were smooth as silk and perfectly balanced in flavors and sweetness. There were two kinds in each bag, a milk and espresso version, and both were delicious. They were the sort of coffee candy that both coffee and non-coffee lovers might find appealing.

Kopiko, which appear to be available all over the place in the U.S. as well as by mail order from places like Amazon, is made in Indonesia and distributed by a Canadian company. They're available in both regular and sugar-free versions. I have the regular one and each candy is 17.5 calories. My main desire when it comes to coffee candies is that I sometimes want a cup of coffee, but am too full to drink one. In Japan, the candies were my way of satisfying such cravings.

It was with those hard candies in mind and a desire to repeat the experience that I bought these Kopiko coffee candies. I wanted to compare them to those sublime Japanese drops and hope that they'd come up nearly on par. Alas, my hopes were pretty rapidly dashed. It started when I opened the bag and noted that these are not an integrated lozenge, but a split. That means that the textural appeal is undermined to some extent as this was not going to be the slick, smooth experience I'd hoped for. They're also not as "pretty" as the Japanese ones since they have suffered a few bruises and bangs despite being individually wrapped.

I know that hard candies are the red-headed stepchild of the candy world. They're the sort of thing which kids are disappointed to get in their trick-or-treat bags and that grannies keep in their purses until they turn into lumps of goo and crystallized sugar, but they do have their appeal. Unfortunately, they are so often gotten "wrong" that most people have never had one that has been "right". The Japanese seemed to know how to get them "right" and more often than not, that was by adding fat to them and not focusing mainly on corn syrup or sugar. The way in which these failed me are in being just too sweet.

The coffee flavor is fine in these, it's not as bitter or nasty as some can be, but that's easy to accomplish when something is this sweet. This is a two-note candy and that is sweet and the sort of meek coffee flavor that you get from pouring lots of milk and sugar into your drink. It's not bad, but I'm going to keep looking for a substitute for what I had in Japan.

Tirol Black Coffee and Bear Chocolate (product info.)

Tirol is turning into the king (or queen, if we want to not be gender biases here) of cooperative endeavors with other manufacturers. For a company that sells chocolates for 40 yen (about 40 cents) each as their signature product, this feels weird. It's like the people who make RC Cola or Mallow Cups engaging in joint ventures with Starbucks or Pillsbury. And I realize that many of my readers aren't American, nearly 50 years old, and familiar with old-fashioned and regional products. Just think of whatever dinky small-time product you grew up with starting to penetrate multiple markets by making new and marginally related food-stuffs with bigger name businesses.

The concept of this coffee is rather cute, though not exactly unique. The coffee is just cold black coffee, but it's supposedly designed to be better when enjoyed with a Tirol chocolate. If you don't want to buy a separate chocolate, they have you covered because they put one under the lid (look carefully at the picture above and you'll see a square of "Milk" chocolate under it. The types of candy vary. I've seen some with almond chocolates under them, too. This is being sold at Family Mart for 165 yen ($1.65). My guess is that this is all novelty value over quality, but I can't deny it's a cute concept.

Speaking of cute, Tirol is also released a new chocolate called "Tirol Kuma" (bear). It's condensed milk chocolate with freeze-dried red beans, fruit-flavored jelly, and dried pineapple. It sounds dreadful, to be honest, but if I find one at an Asian market, I'll probably buy it.

Cafe Tirol Lemon Tea and Coffee Jelly assortment

My husband is not a very visually oriented person. In fact, I'll not infrequently point out something design or art-oriented and he'll say he did not notice. However, after I bought this, he picked the bag up and remarked that it was really designed well. We both thought it brought to mind two very famous coffee shops without going so far as to infringe on their copyrights. I thought of Starbucks because of the color scheme and he thought of Tully's because of the stripes. They did a good job of evoking the coffee shop experience while still avoiding being sued. 

In Japan, I imagine this sells for around 150 yen ($1.50) as it is the regular small chocolates rather than premium ones. It's still listed on Tirol's web site, but they don't offer prices for this. I paid $2.19 for it at Nijiya. The only way I could find to buy them online was via eBay for obscene prices ($7.49 and $4.00). Unfortunately, Candysan, which tends to offer some of the better prices on such things, doesn't carry Tirol chocolates of any kind. 

Even the little packages are nicely designed!

The lemon tea chocolate is an interesting blend of lemon and tea with a strong bitter finish. I'm not sure if the bitterness is supposed to represent the bitterness of strong tea or the pith of a lemon. This is not a bad thing, necessarily, but it comes on as a bit of a shock after the mellow tea and somewhat sweet lemons flavors. Inside is a bland little biscuit which adds a nice textural element and perhaps lightens up the sweetness of the candy in general. I like the cookie being put in the tea candy because it has shades of "afternoon tea" with tea and a biscuit.

The coffee jelly has a very strong coffee flavor coupled with some strong sweetness. The top is white chocolate, which is either supposed to represent whipped cream (likely) or milk (less likely). The thing is that, I had coffee jelly on occasion in Japan and this very much captures the taste of that treat. The jelly candy in the middle is soft and easy to cleave and, like the biscuit in the tea candy, adds some textural interest.

I really liked both of these for their strong flavors and textural variety. Though they aren't the most incredible, mind-blowing chocolates I've ever had, they have both high novelty value and are pleasurable. What I tend to ask of such candy is that they have solid flavor strength without being disgusting or overbearing and decent depth of flavor. These score well on both fronts. If you like coffee and tea, I'd say they're worth a try. The only risk is that the packaging will have you craving a latte or frappucino.

McCafe Orange Latte and Babychino (product information)

Image from McDonald's Japan. 

In the past 6 months or so, I bought 6 bottles of Torani syrup because doing so reduced the price by a fair margin. I was excited at the prospect of sampling a bunch of flavors at once, but the problem was that some of them were not worthy of my emotional energies. In particular, the coconut, which I had hoped to mix with the mango flavor and add to water for a refreshing tropical beverage, was less than inspiring. In fact, it really sucked.

At $4.00 a bottle, I was reluctant to simply dump it down the drain, so I tried to figure out other ways to consume it. The thing that worked was adding it to coffee. This didn't exactly make the coffee better, but it didn't really make it any worse. The coffee was strong enough that there was just a hint of coconut riding on the edge of the bitter waves. I'm down to about 1/6 of the bottle and wouldn't buy it again, but can't say that I hated using it as I have.

I think that coffee is a pretty forgiving beverage, but I would never really think about adding orange to it. In fact, citrus and coffee of any sort would seem to be a bad combination considering that one seems to alter the taste buds in a way that make the other taste funky in my experience. To each their own, but I wouldn't be trying to off-load my orange Torani in coffee (especially because the orange tasted fine mixed with water or my husband's drinks).

In addition to the orange latte, McCafe (which is the coffee arm of McDonald's) is offering something called a "babychino". As a way of introducing infants into coffee culture, they are selling steamed milk with sweet cocoa powder. The "babychino" is a mere 50 yen (about 50 cents), which is probably their way of pricing it as a "gateway drug". Later, they'll be able to hit the grown baby up for various coffee beverages in the $2.50-$3.50 (230-350 yen) range. 

Meiji Lucky Stick Cappucino

I've read that the name "Pocky" came as a result of the sound that is made with the stick is snapped. I'm guessing that Meiji named this "Lucky" because it was close in sound to "Pocky" (sharing the basic "vowel+cky" sound), but wasn't going to get them sued by Glico. In Japan, I don't recall seeing "Lucky" sticks, though this is clearly identified as being a Meiji product and therefore released by a Japanese company. The box says these are made in Indonesia for Meiji Japan and are to be marketed to Canada and Singapore. I'm not sure how they end up in America, but I found them at Daiso Japan for $1.50 (147 yen). They are incredibly international for such a simple thing as is evidenced by their multi-country origins and the presence of 3 languages (French, Japanese, and English) on the box.

I don't recall seeing a product by Meiji called "Lucky Stick" in Japan. Their Pocky rip-off over there (as far as I personally noticed) is "Fran". Fran tends to have more sophisticated offerings than this simple cappucino "cream" on a stick version. The types available at present include macadamia cheese and macadamia chocolate. The cheese one would scare me and I'd never buy it, and the chocolate one would be too boring to sample. Also, I was never intrigued by a product that seemed to be named for a particularly bossy aunt. No, I didn't have an Aunt Fran, but it just sounds like the type of aunt who'd leave a big lipstick smudge on your cheek when she kissed you hello, talked too loud, and probably drank bad coffee and smoked cigarettes.

Getting to the matter at hand, which are the "lucky" sticks and not Aunt Fran's cancer sticks... If you take a moment to smell these, they smell like instant latte powder. I know this because I was given a free box of Nescafe latte instant coffee at Safeway and it was 140 calories of disappointment. These sticks are very reminiscent of that very coffee, though they do have some advantages. They are sweet, but not overly so (unlike that instant latte powder) and they have an excellent crunch factor. The coffee part of this is extremely subdued and comes across more as an aftertaste of coffee than true coffee bitterness. The milkier elements, which taste like fairly decent non-dairy creamer come through more strongly, so these might be a nice alternative if you are a coffee wuss. The biscuit stick itself is very bland, but if you eat the small part which is not coated, it has a floury taste which reminds you of very bland, dry cookies. I actually rather like that flavor, but it comes across poorly to most people.

These are not bad at all, but I can't personally get past the fact that it is so reminiscent of non-dairy creamer and instant coffee. I ate the whole box over time (probably a few sticks here and there over 5 days), which means that I spread the 220 calories over about 5 days. It also means that I wasn't so drawn to these that I scarfed them down or had to stop myself from eating them. While I'm not the world's biggest fan of these coated stick snacks to begin with, this definitely rates lower than even standard Pocky and absolutely pales in comparison to things like "Winter Pocky". I wouldn't buy them again, and, unless you're a fan of powdered coffee-like beverages, I wouldn't recommend them.

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. 

Kinh-Do Tiramisu Cream Cake

When I thought about coming home to the U.S., there were things I thought I'd never eat again and the Japanese-style custard/cream cakes were one of those things. It's not only that they weren't the most appealing of Japanese snacks (they're not), but rather that I expected not to have access to them. Surprisingly, they are quite easy to come by in Northern California. Even more surprisingly, they're often not particularly expensive. And far less surprisingly (3 surprises in one paragraph!), they're no better than I remembered.

Given my low expectations, one might wonder why I even bother to review such things. There are many reasons... nostalgia, hope springing eternal, the unusual flavor possibilities, stupidity... those are just a few of those reasons. Also, it is my "job" to do these posts for less than the wages paid to waiters and waitresses (which is to say, something around $2.30 an hour) and I have to review something. Beyond that, on the package, it says in English, "a first-class cook seasoned these dishes with advanced techniques and highest-class materials." That's some promise! How can I resist finding out just how advanced and high class they are?

Though these are covered with Japanese writing and look for all the world like they were made in Japan (no other language is on the package), they're actually made in Vietnam. Kinh Do Group mainly makes food, but has a few other businesses on the side. They sell a fruit candy which has a pretty cool name called "Crundy". It's not quite as awesome as Crunky (which sounds like a synthesis of "crunchy" and "funky"), but it's still pretty good. This sounds like the shotgun wedding between "cruddy" and "candy". If I ever find any "Crundy", I'm absolutely going to review it. 

I found these on sale at Han Kook Korean market for the bargain price of $2.49 for a packet with 10 individually wrapped cakes about the size and appearance of a small hockey puck. They're about 3/4 of the size of my dainty lady palms. Each cake is 87 calories in Japanese, and apparently 90 calories in English (there are slightly different details in the nutrition information based on which you read). Based on the ingredients, most of those calories are coming from the "tiramisu cream" and the fat included in it. The major ingredient of it is "margarine", so there's some trans-fat goodness in there as well as palm oil and a host of chemicals. Yum, yum.

The cake is rather dry, but ever so slightly oily. It has a strange flavor I associate with shelf-stable cakes in Japan, but don't really connect with similar offerings in the U.S. There is a nice, modest coffee flavor to the cake and that's the dominating feature. The cream filling adds moisture and textural contrast, but doesn't have a very strong flavor. It's like a dollop of softish butter in the center of a dry muffin-like cake, which makes sense considering it's most margarine in there.

As you can see by the cutaway above, the cream is not exactly dominating the cake and the first one I ate actually had about half the cream you see in this one. I think it wasn't that it wasn't properly filled, but rather that some of it was absorbed into the cake through time. These were probably on the cheap side because they were closer to their expiration date than most customers might be comfortable with. One interesting aside about such dates in the U.S. for Asian products. In Japan, no one will touch such products and they aren't even sold in most shops. In the U.S., I regularly see expired or nearly expired products on sale. There's a whole section of Daiso Japan which always carries items past their sell-by dates. Instead of the usual $1.50 each, they're a dollar.

Getting back to this cake, however... This isn't a bad bit of shelf-stable cake at all. It's just not especially good either. If the filling were creamier and had more of a flavor profile, it might even be worth a semi-happy sumo rating despite the dry coffee-flavored cake. I'll finish the package very slowly over time, but it'll be the sort of thing that I eat when I have a craving for cake and there's nothing else in the house or when I have a feeling of wanting to eat some "bad" junk food. That means it'll probably take awhile to finish off 10 cakes. 

Morinaga Coffee Caramels

My brother-in-law is not a coffee drinker. For some, that sounds suspiciously like a form of heresy. For others, that makes complete sense as not everyone goes for what the Tick referred to as "that bitter black urine." He, my brother-in-law, not the Tick (because, oddly, I don't have conversations with fictional characters about coffee... about other matters, perhaps, but that is between me and my psychotropic medication), says that he thinks coffee smells good, but he doesn't like the taste. Of course, Starbucks endeavors to fix that problem for most people by creating blended drinks full of milk and sugar that mask the flavor of the elixir of wakefulness and expand our waistlines. 

When I approach anything coffee-flavored, I think about the appeal from two sides. First, how will "real" coffee drinkers (the kind with hair on their chests and shaking hands) feel about it? Second, how will coffee wusses feel about it? With this caramel, I'm pretty sure hardcore coffee fiends will be left in the dust. It's coffee flavored, no doubt, but it's mellow, sweet, milky, and delectably buttery. One thing I can say about Morinaga's large line of caramels is they never skimp on the fat. That being said, it may distress some to know that the primary ingredient is corn syrup followed by sweetened condensed powdered milk, more powdered milk, and then vegetable oil. It's only late in the list that things like "coffee" and "butter" show up.

However, this isn't about food purity. It's about taste and texture and Morinaga generally does a very good job turning out a smooth and tasty blob of sticky goodness. Sometimes they fail on the flavor front, but this is not one of those times. If you like lattes, frappucinos, or other sweet coffee beverages and aren't going for a pure coffee experience, these should be in your pocket for a sweet fix. If you're the kind of person for whom black is the only acceptable color for your coffee, you'll probably be disappointed in the coffee flavor intensity, but still enjoy the fatty richness and sweetness on the whole. 

I got this candy courtesy of Sakura Box (that means "free") as part of their "monthly candy bag" which I reviewed the Friday before last. 

Cherie Dolce Oishii Soy Latte

I know my readers sit around believing I live the glamorous and fast-paced life of a small-time snack food reviewer. While you may believe that I'm showered with freebies from companies who are grateful to have their products displayed on my puny blog and that I'm sitting around in an evening dress and heels delicately ingesting delicious tidbits, the reality is quite different.* I am constantly torn between my desire to just eat what I buy and the need to take pictures of things and write a review as I enjoy something. Because of this, I often take a few crappy pictures (ample evidence of that on this blog), enjoy my food or drink and then place my garbage in a discreet location until I'm actually ready to write something. I have to keep the packaging until the review is done in such cases because I may need to refer to it. Also, it reminds me that if I want to stop attracting flies and roaches, I'd better get a review written before too much time passes.**

I found this for 160 yen ($2.02) at Sunkus convenience store. Cherie Dolce is their line of fresh snacks and drinks. It's something which I have little experience with because I tried some cheesecake type sweet from that line a long time ago and there were tiny little stale croutons at the bottom of it. I'm not exaggerating.*** This caught my eye on one of the many sweltering days we've been experiencing. I thought a cold coffee sounded good and was won over by the fact that a 190 ml. cup has only 106 calories. That makes it similar to what I'd make at home on the calorie front, though quite a bit more expensive.

This was quite sweet with a good strong, but not overbearing coffee flavor. The soy flavor seems fairly indistinguishable from milk-based lattes offered by other companies. Only at the end of a sip could I detect it rather slightly. All of these coffee drinks in Japan (and there are a lot of them) are either unsweetened or very sweet. This one was made with both maltodextrin and sugar as well as "creaming powder", soy milk, and coffee (of course).

I'd buy this again, though not often. This isn't because I didn't like it, but mainly because I tend not to buy cold coffee or tea beverages much and this wasn't spectacular. The packaging on these really makes me feel guilty, though you'd think that anyone in my line of low-paid work (snack reviewing) would be better at quelling her cognitive dissonance about the waste created by consuming processed foods. This is a decent enough cold coffee, but I wouldn't recommend anyone go out of their way to choose it over any other.

*That's all a lie. I know no one thinks that.


**That's also a lie. I have to wash trash before I can throw it away so it's actually clean.


***Really, I'm not. They were actually regular croutons like you get in a salad and they were stale.

Nestcafe Home Cafe Latte and Chocolate Latte Syrups

I mentioned in a previous random picture post that marketers are gearing up to make it easier than ever to endure the heat in Japan due to higher air conditioner settings and reduced use to keep power consumption down while the Fukushima situation continues on. One of the things that is showing up all over the place from a variety of manufacturers are packages of liquid-creamer-style tubs of syrup to add to milk for instant lattes. Though these have been around before, the variety is greater this year, the prices are fairly low, and syrups with low calories rather than sugary powders seem to be the new cold coffee order.

The Japanese describing what this is translates as "potions". That conjures (no pun intended) up an image of magical transformation. No, I'm not fooled either. I think "syrup" is a much better translation, but I'm guessing the use of "syrup" often applies to sugar-based things (honey syrup, for instance) and brings up the wrong idea to Japanese consumers. So, "potion" it be.

The coffee latte mixed with milk.

When I saw bags of these syrups on offer for a mere 85 yen ($1.06) each at Seiyu supermarket, I figured I'd go ahead and take a bite... or a sip as the case may be. There are 4 servings in each bag, so it's only about 21 yen (26 cents) per serving, though that doesn't include the 180 ml. (a bit less than a cup) of milk that you use. It's still going to be a lot cheaper than a Starbucks latte, but then that isn't going to taste like some sort of instant coffee. And that is rather what the coffee version of this tastes like. It's not a bad version of instant coffee, mind you. It's actually pretty palatable and makes for a serviceable "coffee-flavored milk".

The "chocola" latte mixed with milk. 

The chocolate latte version of this mixes up a lot lighter and tastes a lot like you added Hershey's syrup to your milk. The coffee part is extremely subdued, but makes more of an appearance as you drink more. It's as if it needs a build-up in intensity to manifest. However, you really would be just as well off adding about a half teaspoon of instant coffee and a tablespoon of Hershey's chocolate syrup to your milk. It'd cost less.

My lukewarm-sounding review to these cold beverages isn't to be taken in a negative way. The truth is that I enjoyed both of these, though the way in which I consumed the chocolate version after the first sampling was not as one might expect. I like to have a frozen banana drink composed of skim milk, frozen banana, and crushed ice with a dash of vanilla. I put this in a blender and blend it is smooth and thick. Pouring the chocolate coffee syrup into this concoction was incredibly delicious. In fact, I'd wager the plain coffee would work pretty well in this drink, too.

I'd buy these again if I wanted a cold coffee beverage and didn't have the time to chill espresso, or if I wanted to vary my frozen banana drink. They're cheap and will keep for awhile. In fact, I'd think they would be ideal for the office if you have a refrigerator and can keep a carton of milk in there. Still, don't expect much in terms of a quality coffee experience or you'll be sorely disappointed.

Random Picture 69

My husband and I dropped by a market designed to sell products in bulk to restaurants and people with big freezers and little cash to pick up a jumbo pack of their smoked chicken. We don't have a big freezer, but we do have fairly little cash. The market also sells a lot of "off brand" items at discount prices (39 yen for some generic cola when cans of Coke retail for 120 yen). The canned coffee pictured above caught my husband's eye because of the message printed on it.

I'm sure it is meant as a gentle promise, but to me it comes across as a command. The impulse to look obediently at the can and say, "yes, master," was hard to resist.

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 Picture 63

Sometimes I find it nearly impossible to believe that certain funny English naming conventions are merely coincidental. In fact, I imagine that there is some foreign guy who is a native speaker of English working in the marketing department who has the most impeccable poker face in the world lobbing ideas at his Japanese compatriots that have sexual innuendo implanted into them. I can believe that "creaming powder" is just a Japanese English way of talking about non-dairy creamer, but the fact that the brand name is "Rising" stretches my sense that this is mere coincidence. I also wonder if this may be a subliminal message plant by the Japanese government in the hopes of boosting Japan's dismal birth rate.

Maxim Cafe Menu (Oreo, Mont Blanc)

When I lived back home, I used to buy General Foods International Coffees. I didn't have any moments to 'celebrate', but they made adequate sugar-free instant coffee. At that point in time, I was a coffee wuss and couldn't stomach the real stuff. Those flavored coffees are like training wheels...okay, perhaps more like tricycles that your parents are holding onto the back of while you ride around tentatively. They give you a thimble of coffee, a ton of fake flavor, a lot of powdered milk and gobs of artificial sweetener. I'm guessing one has no more than a smattering of coffee beans worth of actual coffee...okay, perhaps no more than a smattering of coffee-flavored chemicals.

Since "graduating" to "the hard stuff" (aka real coffee), I haven't bought many flavored instant coffees. Part of the reason for that is that I live in Japan, where sugar-free versions of such things don't exist so a small serving of instant coffee brings with it gobs of actual sugar instead of chemicals that are meant to fool you into thinking you're having sugar. Another reason is that such things are expensive for piddly amounts of warm, brown liquid.

I was strolling around Peacock supermarket when the Maxim Oreo cafe latte mix and I couldn't resist. The Mont Blanc was hanging out next to it so I decided to toss it in as well. Each box cost 158 yen ($1.94) for 5 servings of the Oreo flavor and 4 of the Mont Blanc. I don't know why one has more than the other, but I think it's because one is more elegant fake coffee and the other low-brow junk food fake coffee.

I didn't take a picture of the coffee after I made it because it looks like coffee. There was really nothing to see so I justified being slack about the pictures. Imagine any of the billions of images of coffee out there and visualize one. There, you got it.

Both make a small amount of coffee. You add 130 ml. of hot water to the powder in each tube. I tried the Mont Blanc first and it didn't taste like much of anything. If you added a teaspoon of regular brewed coffee to reconstituted powdered milk with just the barest whisper of chestnut, that's what it is. It isn't particularly sweet, which is either a plus or a minus depending on how you like such things. I tried it with a little sweetener to see if making it sweeter would bring out more of the chestnut, but it just made it sweeter which totally drowned out the minimal coffee and whispery chestnut flavor.

The Oreo flavored coffee was a different kettle of fish, which is not to say that it tasted like fish. It did, however, make a strange crackling noise when I added in the powder. I think that if you were trying to create some sort of faux witches brew situation for Halloween with accompanying sound effects, this would do it for you. Though both of these are labeled "latte", the Oreo version was a lot darker and had a stronger coffee flavor as well as what tasted like essence of cookie crumbs mixed into it. That may not sound too bad, but the problem is that bitter chocolate Oreo cookie crumbs without the sweet creamy filling doesn't work so well. If you add bitter (coffee) to bitter (chocolate cookie), you get a strange combination. It's not bad, but it's not good. At least this tastes like something though, which is more than I can say for the Mont Blanc version.

Neither of these coffees lit my fire, and I definitely wouldn't buy them again. At about 65 calories per 3/4 cup serving, I'm not inclined to waste my precious snacking allotment on these. I'm not even sure that I'll finish these two boxes. They don't have to be bad to get stuck at the back of my snack basket and collect dust. They just don't have to be good and these are incredibly so-so.

Look Italian Dolce

"Look" brand chocolates by Fujiya are something that I largely ignored up until I was given the Baskin Robbins chocolates and found them surprisingly good. In retrospect, I'm not sure why I avoided them, but I think it was because they have the typical Fujiya candies look of pretty much all of their chocolates. That is, a chocolate shell with a creamy filling. I think seeing so many of them with the Fujiya girl's big head and protruding tongue  on a plethora of sweets packages turned me off to anything offered by Fujiya, but I'm softening on the maker whose mascot is a  mutant girl with perpetually dry lips. 

So, instead of waiting for someone to give me this particular release, I forked over my own 100 yen coin ($1.20) for these selection of Italian sweets based chocolates. As with all Look brand chocolates, there are 3 very small pieces (think about half of a bite size) of each of 4 flavors and there is a slightly bittersweet chocolate shell encasing a soft flavored filling. Each candy is 21 calories, but so small that to really get a good sense of the flavors, you need to let it rest on your tongue and melt a bit.

From left: tiramisu, marron cream, espresso, limone

Tiramisu: This was like mild coffee and chocolate, with none of the mascarpone cheese flavor of tiramisu. That doesn't detract from the pleasantness of the flavor, however. I enjoyed this because it didn't carry the sense of acidity that real strong coffee can carry.

Marron cream: This was nice, though it felt more like a well-rounded milk chocolate with a mild coffee-like undertone than a chestnut one. I think the chestnut boosted the chocolate flavor rather than shone through strongly on its own. Still, quite enjoyable and you can detect the chestnut flavoring to some extent.

Espresso cream: This had a much stronger coffee flavor with a real sense of instant coffee powder than the tiramisu one. It is the weakest of the bunch, but not "bad". I was indifferent to it. It wasn't really espresso in that none of the dark-roasted notes came through. If you like Nescafe coffee, then this might float your boat.

Delicia Limone: This was the most distinctive one with some strong, slightly tart lemon flavors, and incredibly tiny bits of cookie in the cream filling to add texture. I usually don't go for lemon and chocolate, but I did like this.

I liked these just fine, but was less "wow'ed" by the combination of flavors than I was with the Baskin Robbins Look chocolates. I think I would have been happier with a whole box of Delicia Limone rather than 3 variations which each really came off a lot like variations on coffee. Still, they are nice textures and flavors, and I enjoyed them. I could see buying another box in the future, but only if there isn't something newer and more interesting to catch my eye.

Lawson VL Marron Latte

There are always a lot of appealing looking coffee beverages on offer in Japanese convenience stores. Unfortunately, they're all also usually full of sugar. While I'm fine to eat a little sugar, I have a problem with drinking it since liquids spend a lot less time on the tongue that solids. Nonetheless, the idea of a marron (chestnut) latte drew me in and I decided that it was worth 158 calories to give this cold coffee drink a try.

This 300 ml. (10 oz.) cup cost 100 yen ($1.20) at a Lawson 100 shop. the ingredients include brandy, coffee, dextrin, sugar water, and sugar. The ingredients list didn't include "kuri" or "marron" (words for "chestnut") that I could find. I'm guessing that the chestnut part came under the catch-all umbrella of "flavoring". It did smell like both chestnut and coffee, but the chestnut had the same olfactory presence of the types of syrups that get squirted into your coffee at upscale coffee houses.

I tried to peel back the top to get a picture of the coffee, but the plastic inner seal thwarted me. Trust me when I say, it  just looks like regular coffee and nothing special.

This had a unique flavor blend. The strongest element at first was the sweet chestnut flavor followed the the brandy and then the coffee. The three flavors come together very well to create a unique beverage. All of them are strong, but not overbearing. This tasted nice, but really is a bit like liquid candy because it is so very sweet.

I liked this quite a bit, and felt that the way in which all of the elements were balanced "worked". That being said, this isn't for coffee fans so much as for people who want an aspect of Mont Blanc, a dessert which has a heaping pile of chestnut paste that includes sugar and brandy, flavoring mixed in with coffee. If that sounds appealing, by all means, give this a try. If you're big into coffee that tastes greatly like coffee, this probably won't work for you.