Orihiro "Standing" Jelly

The latest in my continuing marathon of reviews of my ZenPop box is a "health" drink/snack from Orihiro. Orihiro specializes in food targeted toward women who are calorie-conscious and up on all the latest food fads that are supposed to keep you younger looking and in the pink. These are the women that keep the price of Manuka honey in the stratosphere because someone told them it'll cure every illness known to man and they believe much in the same way Fox Mulder believes in aliens - they want to believe.

People think wasabi KitKats are part of the "weird" Japan food culture. They've got nothing on this squeeze pouch of mutant gelatin snack. I have to say this one caught me by surprise in multiple respects. The first surprise was when I sqeezed the tube to see what popped out and some juice squirted me in the face. This is less a tube of jelly as it is thick gelatin globs floating in some sort of juice.

You have to make sure it is in your mouth when you squeeze it. It'll be a textural Russian roulette which one you get. My main problem was that I wanted to see what it looked like and get a picture for this blog. My loss is your gain since you won't have to actually have the bottle disgorge anything onto your body in order to know what is inside before you suckle on it.

In terms of how this tastes, the peach flavor is actually very pleasant and tastes a lot like nectar drinks. The ingredients list includes real peach juice. The main problem is that it is insanely sweet and you can taste the artificial sweetener all too well. It's made with both Sucralose and acesulfame K. Honestly, for something that is sold by a company with "health" in their URL, this is not especially healthy. It's a chemical cocktail to satisfy your sweet tooth with a low calorie load, but it's even sweeter than conventional sugar-free gelatin.

I wanted to like this, but it was just too fake-tasting for me, and I'm someone who uses Splenda everyday in hot beverages so it's not a sensitivity to sweeteners. I think they really just needed to dial back on the overall sweetness level and this could have been a nice way to satisfy a craving.

Fist Soybean Flour Dumpling Candy

Sorry for the partial picture. I lost track of the picture I had of the bag before opening and had to crop a shot of it from among a bunch of other things I bought. I'm sure it makes a huge difference. 

I think it's important to say that the title of this post is not my translation of this item. It is the one that is written on the package. It's proof that crummy translation is done even when a big corporation is behind it, in this case, Daiso Japan, and has the resources to do better. I had the feeling that someone plugged the Japanese into Google translate and dutifully just wrote down the first thing that came up.

I bought these not because they have a funky translation, but because they are kinako (toasted soybean flour). It's not wrong to say that going to the Daiso Japan approximately 4 months after leaving Tokyo brings actual tears of nostalgia to my eyes. It's almost like stepping back into a Daiso back home in Asagaya, except that this one has a lot more cheap, tacky figurines than that one and sells food. My local one never offered any snacks as the one in Mountain View, CA does (and I thank it wholeheartedly for that). I paid $1.50 ($1.91) for these at that shop. 

In Japan, I was a fan of pretty much all things kinako and this was the only food item that featured that nutty dusting of food goodness that I came to enjoy. Unfortunately, upon opening the  bag, my affections immediately began to waver. It was like falling in love from a photo and finding that the minute the object of my admiration opened his mouth, he had bad breath. The contents smell very funky, like weird organically produced and fully sustainable glue products. Though scent is not the only important thing, it tends to tell you something about the taste.

Though I was not encouraged, I popped one of the pea-sized morsels into my mouth. From external appearances, I wasn't sure if the texture was going to be hard or soft or chewy or crunchy. They look like little sugar-covered hard candies. The true texture is that of an extremely dense ball of Play Dough, or at least what I think it would be like. I never actually ate my toys as a child, though I do know that some kids did nosh on their colorful balls of putty. 

The flavor is not particularly strong. It does taste like kinako to some extent, but there's a weird aftertaste and the flavor doesn't feel like it is punched up enough. It tastes like bland flour with just a hint of sweetness. This is rather surprising since the ingredients are soybean flour, sugar, starch syrup, sesame, oligosaccharide and salt. That's a lot of sugars for a relatively bland flavor hit. It does all translate into a lot of calories though. If you are so hungry and desperate that you'll eat the entire 110-gram (3.88 oz.) bag at once, it'll set you back 385 calories. I didn't count the total number of tiny dumplings, but I'm guessing each one is between 10-15 calories. Chances are, you'll never get past 50 calories at one sitting as these are far from "more-ish". 

The company that makes these, Takadaya Kinako, recommends that you "gently warm" them in the microwave. I threw three dumplings in the microwave for 12 seconds and, though they did not get particularly hot, they smelled like they were burning. Even though the temperature was such that there was no risk at all of scorching my mouth when I popped one in, one of them still tasted slightly burnt. While warming them did improve the texture slightly, it really wasn't that much better and it had a negative impact on the taste.

These are not good, really. I'm probably going to slowly eat the whole bag over a prolonged period of time because I love kinako so much that I'll consume them out of nostalgia for that particular flavor, but they really need something more than they've got both in terms of texture and flavor. My guess is that they could have used more salt, but even possibly more sugar, or some medical marijuana... something to make the experience of eating them more joyful. 

This is marketed mainly as a healthy candy and the company says you can give this to your children and not feel bad about it. They mention oleic and linoleic acid as well as various vitamins and minerals, fiber, and protein. I'll grant that it may indeed be healthy, but I'd argue with the notion that it in any way resembles candy. If you're looking to substitute something uniquely Japanese for a protein bar or energy bar, this might be your snack. It's got a real similar feel to it as a Lara bar or Clif bar in that it is a doughy clump of protein-based stuff. If you're looking to entertain your taste buds, I'd suggest heading off to more flavorful pastures. 

Random Picture #121

Click to see a larger, more readable version.

The name of this energy bar by Asahi caught my eye because it sounds like a noise someone would make when they sneezed, or possibly something you say after someone sneezes (gesundheit). We often say that a sneeze sounds like "a-choo" and the Japanese say that it sounds like "hakushon" (hah-koo-show-n), but neither of these really seems right to me. If I could start my own little trend, I'd encourage people to start saying that it sounds like "gatzun", or "jabarkas", but the latter is a whole other story entirely. 

Returning to the matter at hand, these energy bars are fortified with all sorts of vitamins and minerals so that you don't have to eat actual food to get nutrition. The text under the name says, "this is a cake with cream, a functional food." I certainly wouldn't want to purchase a non-functioning food-stuff. 

Random Picture #108

Click to see a bigger picture. I'm not sure what the soymilk cookies are supposed to reset in one day (appetite?), but I have my doubts about their ability to suppress appetite. 

I think my brain goes in patterns and I'm not even aware of it. On Monday, I reviewed diet warabi mochi gelatin and the random picture that I chose (which wasn't even from the same set of photos, I assure you) is of diet cookies. I guess all of the junk food I'm seeing in the U.S. and the potential temptation has made my unconscious calorie conscious.

One of the things I remember my mother buying when I was a kid was a box of "diet" candy called Ayds. Setting aside the product name which would now remind people of a terrible disease, this product always seemed to me like a bad concept. The idea with Ayds, as it is with these diet cookies (which are rampant in Japan), is that you eat candy, cookies or bars instead of meals. While they may be packed with chemically distilled vital nutrients, I can't imagine that they fill the space in your stomach very effectively. I should note that, in addition to the plethora of these types of cookies made my Japanese manufacturers, there was also a big push for a much more expensive French-made diet cookie in many stores.

Still, Japanese people seem to be far better at "enduring" (gaman) hardship and deal with these meal substitution plans better than my mom did. The Ayds never helped her lose weight, after all. 

Kabaya Salt Charge Tablets

Now that I only do two reviews per week, I feel somewhat obliged to choose more interesting products. I'm guessing this will last a few weeks then I'll go back to reviewing various chocolates and cookies which are not only more pedestrian, but more readily available. While talk of Japanese snacks often focuses on the bizarre, the truth is that not so much of what is on offer is all that strange...at least not after my years of already reviewing various snacks.

In light of my current mindset, which is somewhat guilty at reducing the number of reviews, I didn't hesitate to snap up these oddly flavored sweets. It didn't hurt that they were only 69 yen (90 cents) at Okashi no Machioka snack shop. The fact that they are plum (ume) isn't really all that odd, but the fact that they position salt as a favorable aspect is. The Japanese clearly aren't as uptight about salt as Americans, who are told constantly that salt consumption is a one-way ticket to a heart attack.

This is part of a series of "tablets" Kabaya is releasing to meet various needs. Others include Calcium, grape sugar, and amino acids. The Calcium is to help you not grow old looking like a question mark and the grape sugar is to fuel your big brain's function. Amino acids are to help with muscles. All of them are positioned for people engaging in sports, except Calcium which appears to be for old people who do stretching exercises and mothers pushing babies in prams. I guess the salt charge is to help you replenish precious sodium that you've excreted through your pores during your vigorous workout. Since most Japanese folks I know exercise once a month or so, I can't imagine much demand for these except for those people who think a plum-flavored salt lick is a good time.

Though these are called "tablets", they are balls. I think "tablet" in Japan merely means it has some pressed powdery component, which these do. The outside is a hard suckable candy and the inside is pressed citric acid powder, salt and sugar. Besides supplying you with precious salt, they also offer Vitamin C, B2 and amino acids. The whole bag provides 150 calories and there are 14 little balls in the bag, so about 10 calories each.

In terms of the taste, the outside tastes a lot like the Mintia plum mints that I liked so much. It's both sweet and sour in a fairly balanced way. It tastes funky, but good. The inside, which takes several minutes to reach, is white powder which is quite salty, but also tart. It's not bad, but I could have done without the middle and stuck with the outer shell.

These aren't bad, but they are weird. They're the kind of thing you might find enjoyable in exactly the right frame of mind, but you're more likely to take if you really feel you need the "health" benefits of the additives.

Otsuka Calorie Mate Chocolate

 

Looking at the Calorie Mate packaing, I imagine they have one of the smallest design department staffs in the entire country. Every box of Calorie Mate is the same generic design with only a small variation in color and product naming. It must take all of a minute to roll out a new box when a new flavor is dreamed up by the alchemists who press together these little fortified biscuits.

Since I liked the maple flavor of Calorie Mate that I sampled, I decided to give the chocolate a try as well. Okay, I'll be perfectly honest about this review. It's a leftover from my "week of diet food" lot from long ago. In fact, there were several leftovers that didn't make the cut with only five slots to fill. I guess you can consider the chocolate Calorie Mate the "Miss Congeneality" of the lot from the diet and health foods week. 

In fact, I think that "congenial" is actually a pretty good word for this bar. It's pleasant enough, but rather bland. The chocolate flavor comes across as flat because there isn't enough sugar or fat in the bar to prop it up. Like all Calorie Mate bars, this is a bit on the dry side and is like low quality shortbread. Each cookie is 7 cm x 4.25 cm x 2 cm (2.8 in. x 1.7 in. x .8 in.) and there are 4 of them in the box I bought at Tomod's drug store for 150 yen ($1.62). As with all varieties of Calorie Mate, each cookie is 100 calories and you're meant to consume two cookies at once as a meal replacement.

This wasn't bad. It just wasn't especially good. There was so little chocolate as part of this chocolate cookie bar that I felt there was some lack of truth in advertising. If you're looking for inoffensive bar-type food which has been fortified, you could do worse than this, but I'd personally choose the maple flavor over the chocolate.

Asahi Ultra Fiber + Vitamin C

 I'd been seeing this "ultra fiber" drink in Lawson 100 (where most goods, including this drink, are 100 yen/$1.13) for quite some time and wondered how one gets fiber into a carbonated beverage. I also wondered what it would taste like. Given the color of the beverage, I thought it might taste like orange, but you just never know what evil lurks in a Japanese soft drink.

This is made by Asahi, which is better known for its beer. The marketing information for this talks about how irregular eating habits can cause problems. It isn't overtly stated, but I'm guessing they mean hassles with your plumbing which cause you not to be able to... well, you know what one needs added fiber for. It talks about the "clean sweetness" of the taste and says that besides promoting regularity, it gives you 7,500 mg of Vitamin C.

Before I get to the actual description of this drink, let me say that it has the worst color choices for its label. It's white lettering on orange and hard as hell to read. I had the worst time finding the URL for their web site because it was so tiny and difficult to read. It didn't make the ingredients list a picnic either, but this is a zero calorie drink and had a lot of the expected chemical components like dextrose, Sucralose, and Acesulfame K. The orange color comes to us courtesy of paprika. The flavorings are not specified so I'm flying by the taste buds only.

The smell of this is slightly medicinal. It reminded me of a fruity Alka Seltzer scent. I had a lot of trouble pinning down the fruit it vaguely reminded me of. It's either peach or apricot, but probably closer to the latter. The taste isn't like the juice of that fruit though. It's more like (vigorously carbonated) seltzer water with a few twists of fruit juice and a Vitamin C tablet dissolved in it.

This was just plain weird. It wasn't awful, but it wasn't good. It really did feel like I was drinking some sort of relatively inoffensive medicine. I certainly wouldn't recommend it as something one might drink for the sheer enjoyment of it. However, if your pipes are clogged and you don't want to keep scarfing down bran or you want to try to drink something with a chance of making you feel full for awhile, it wouldn't hurt to give this a try.

Amino Calpis Zero

I knew that I would one day buy Calpis in its "straight" flavor format (as opposed to the grape which I previously reviewed) because there is no way I'm going to get out of Japan without sampling this classic beverage. Well, this isn't the "classic" form since it has been stripped of its sugary nature, but it should be a less tooth-decay-promoting equivalent.

I found this for 100 yen ($1.07) in my local green grocer, Yutakaraya, and figured it was time to take the plunge. The ingredients list is an impressive array of chemicals. The first (besides water) is Erythritol, but there's also Aspartame, Sucralose and Acesulfame K. It looks like no sweetener has been left out of the mix. It's like a party full of women who are beautiful which have all had surgical enhancements. None of it is real, but it has all appearance of being so.

The page for this product promotes it by saying that the amino acids in it will promote your basal metabolism. Amino acids are related to metabolism, and are "building blocks of protein" according to Wikipedia. So, I'm guessing that there is some benefit to this besides increasing the chances that you'll suffer some disease related to artificial sweetener consumption.

When I gave this a sniff, it reminded me of Alka Seltzer for some reason. The second sniff brought to mind a very weak version of Yakult's probiotic drink. The second impression was the one that rang true. This tastes like a partially watered down bottle of Yakult. It has the same sour notes, but they're greatly muted. The sweetness level is not muted or watered down though.

At first, I thought this was too sweet but as my taste buds got saturated and the sweetness grew muted, the yogurt-like tones shone through more prominently. I didn't think I was going to like this much and was ready to give it an indifferent rating, but I liked it more and more as I got closer to the halfway point. If I were in the mood for a yogurt drink and wanted to avoid the calories, I'd definitely go for this again. Note that I think that those sensitive to artificial sweeteners may want to avoid this assiduously.

Asahi Reset Body Bar (chocolate and orange)

Before I make my final review of a health/diet food for this week of such products, I'd like to say that there are tons of things which I didn't review, but many of them are very similar to what I've already mentioned and each other. One of the most common types of these foods which I passed on was granola bars. There was a cavalcade of them in a variety of flavors, including chocolate, vanilla, maple, and various fruits, but they all are essentially the same thing; that is, they are small portions of a standard granola bar fortified with certain minerals and vitamins. I skipped them because I didn't expect they'd be vastly different from any other candy bar parading as health food that you'd buy anywhere in the world.

I chose this bar mainly because it had a goofy name and was made by a company better known for its beer than its health food. Perhaps this is a little karmic balance for the good folks at Asahi. They destroy your liver on the one hand and then try to fix you a bit with a "diet support" bar with the equivalent of a multi-vitamin in it. Note that this is part of Asahi's "Slim-up" line of products.

I picked this up for about a hundred yen ($1.12) at a drug store not too far from my home called Tomod's. Tomod's is a chain so you're not unlikely to see them sprinkled all over Tokyo. They have quite a big display of health food bars including wafer, protein, granola, and meal replacement bars like Calorie Mate. Many of them aren't low calorie despite being marketed overtly as diet foods. I go to Tomod's mainly for the cheap toilet paper, and it was walking past their health food snack display that inspired me, at least in part, to do this week of reviews.

The bar is about 60% the length of its total package size.

When I opened the package, this smelled like a brownie with a chemical mixed in with it. It smelled good for a brief moment, then not so great. I think what I detected as "chemical" may have been the orange flavoring. I noted that the packaging is incredibly misleading in regards to the size. The calorie information also is for one of the two bars, not for the whole package. I think this is meant to make people think they're going to get more for the calories than they do. The size is about the width of one finger of a KitKat bar, though this is a bit longer.


Unsurprisingly, this has a cocktail of sweeteners and chemicals. The first ingredient is flour and the second is Polydextrose (a sugar substitute). Shortening, Erythritol, and Maltitol also appear high in the list of ingredients and Sucralose makes a guest appearance near the end. The only surprise is "coconut milk powder", though I didn't taste or smell any coconut.

In terms of taste, it's okay. It's like a low quality chocolate brownie with orange mixed in, though I did experience a strange metallic aftertaste in my mouth after eating one bar. The main problem is the texture which is tough and chewy. It reminded me of the evil spawn of an unholy coupling between a Tootsie Roll and a brownie. It was just weird and brought home the fact that this was something no one would ever eat for pleasure, but only in some vain attempt to get nutrition from some food-like substance. Of course, if you're an Asahi beer customer and are drunk enough, you may not be able to tell the difference.

TopValu Light Meal Konnyaku Jelly (Lychee)

Some time last year, I started to notice more and more zero calorie jelly (what we call gelatin) products for sale in convenience stores. This "light meal" nutritionally balanced drinking gelatin is something which has also been around for years, albeit not in as many zero-calorie forms. I wanted to sample it for my week of diet/health foods, but I'm a bit squeamish about the prospect of a drinking jelly.



I squeezed some of this into a glass, and what I saw didn't encourage me. You can't see it from the picture I took, but there are little wispy shreds of clear jelly suspended in a yellowish liquid. They resemble amoebas with a thyroid disorder. Of course, you're not supposed to squirt this stuff into a glass and drink it. You're supposed to suck it out of the tube at the top. This is good because it's very difficult to squeeze out. The packet is designed to keep it from spilling out. It works like a steel can of evaporated milk that only has one hole pocked in it. There's not enough of an exchange of air to allow the free flow of the jelly.

This is made with konnyaku jelly, something which I have been far less than keen on in the past. I tend to dislike the texture of it when it's put in stews and other Japanese dishes. If you don't want to read the Wikipedia entry, I'll tell you that it's jelly, often in a mottled gray block form, made from a plant (konjac). Konjac is a "corm", which is similar to a tuber or yam, but doesn't have the same properties. It is consumed for its texture, and its high fiber, which fills the stomach and aids digestion. In Japan, it's usually salty and used in traditional dishes, but it's popular in Asia in jelly drinks as well. People sometimes choke to death on it, but I can say that there is little risk of choking on the soft konnyaku in this beverage. It's too wispy for anyone to get lodged in his or her throat.


I chose the TopValu brand because it was cheap. I paid 98 yen at a local supermarket for this 180 gram pouch. There are a plethora of other choices, and I'm guessing most of them are roughly similar to this one in consistency and in having a huge list of added nutrients. Clearly, this is meant to fill the belly of dieting people who want to feel full, get nutrients, but consume no calories. This packet was fortified with B vitamins, D, E, Folic acid, and Panthothenic acid. It contains a pretty hefty cocktail of artificial sweeteners including Erythritol, Acesulfame K, and Sucralose. It also contains kale, which is popular in Japan for its nutritive properties. You can buy powdered kale and dissolve it in water to drink; it tastes as good as it sounds.

In theory, this is a great idea. The big question is about how it works in practice. The texture isn't nearly what I thought it would be. It's not slimy, but rather like drinking super soft tapioca bubbles. I have never had bubble tea, but I imagine this is a distant cousin to it texturally. The smell is rather fruity, like a cross between an apple and a peach. The taste at first is very sweet and like a fruit gelatin. I rarely eat lychee, so I can't know how faithful the flavor is to the fruit. It's not an impressive flavor, but it's unoffensive. The main drawback is that there is a bitter aftertaste after you've sucked down (literally) some of it. The only other drawback is that I feel goofy as an adult suckling on a tube like a baby with a bottle.

This type of food isn't meant to be some fantastic and tasty snack, but rather as a palatable health food to stop you from snacking on things that aren't good for you. I can say that it is inoffensive, and the sweetness is initially quite gratifying if you're hungry. I can also say that, without a doubt, it made my stomach feel full and that I would recommend anyone who counts calories and struggles with hunger give this a try. I don't know if it would actually replace a meal, but it would certainly help you stave off a case of the munchies between meals and I'd buy this again. In fact, I wouldn't mind keeping one on hand when I'm having one of those days when I just want to eat all day. Note that these last for months.

Yakult Fermented Milk Drink

I've watched all of Michael Palin's travel shows and in one of them I recall that he drank fermented yak's milk. That sounds rather scary, but people in Japan drink Yakult on a regular basis and it's fermented cow's milk. Somehow seeing Mr. Palin drink from a bowl he's handed by a man who looks like a professional sherpa makes one feel more stand-offish than buying a tidy little bottle of liquid in Japan.

I've been aware of Yakult since my early days in Japan when I first saw Yakult ladies cycling around the city with insulated boxes full of bottles of their freshly made products. They trundled to various offices in the area I worked in and peddled their wares to health-conscious office workers. I never really looked into what the deal was with their drinks, until I decided to review Yakult. Note that this product has been around since 1935 so it has a long history and most people know about it.

You can do a search on Google and you'll get plenty of hits on the health benefits of drinking Yakult. The thumbnail version of it is that it is full of active bacteria cultures that aid in digestion. Mainly, that means that Yakult will put good bugs in your intestinal tract to fight bad bugs. One of the benefits of it is that it can survive your stomach's gastric juices and make its way to the places where it can help the most. This is unlike some supplements that claim to accomplish the same task, but burn up in your stomach before its little buggies can get to where they need to go.

The two bottles that you see at the top are very tiny. The packaging is like a milk jug, cloudy but clear so the color you see is the color of the drink itself. There is only 65 ml. of drink in it. Consider that the average can of soda has 350 ml. and you can get a greater sense of how small it is. The price reflects the tiny size. I bought mine out of a vending machine next to a Yakult distribution center. I had to buy 2 for 80 yen (89 cents) so it's 40 yen (44 cents) a bottle.

After peeling off the foil cover, I gave it a sniff and I couldn't smell much of anything. The first sip revealed intense sweetness coupled with intense yogurt-like sourness. It really is like drinking hyper-concentrated yogurt which is nearly as thin as water. The ingredients include sugar, powdered skim milk, and water. It's not bad at all, and I like yogurt so it certainly wasn't offensive to me, but those who dislike yogurt may find it rather unpleasant.

Here's the thing about health foods and beverages like Yakult; if you have a problem with your digestion, they are invaluable and, if you don't, you're essentially not gaining anything by drinking them. This is full of sugar and you can ingest the beneficial cultures through other means (including probiotic yogurt) without the sugar. This is simply one of the easiest and fastest ways to get them into your body and it's such an old and established product that you can be nearly certain it'll live up to its health claims.

Though I found the taste pleasant enough on the whole, it's not the sort of thing I'm going to be drinking for fun because of the sugar. Sure, it's only 50 calories, but I don't need a sugar shot of good bugs on a regular basis and if I want yogurt flavor, I'll eat yogurt. If I have a stomachache or gastrointestinal problems, I'll probably pick 4 or 6 of these up and drink them for awhile. One of my students told me she likes these as a good wake up elixir. The strong sour yogurt flavor and sugar are likely to pep one up, but, I'm not likely to buy it again unless I develop gastrointestinal problems.

Otsuka Calorie Mate Maple

Click on this picture to see a bigger one that will allow you to read all of the ingredients clearly.

Calorie Mate is one of those things which nearly everyone who has been in Japan is aware of, and thanks to a video game appearance even those who are not in Japan may have heard of it. I'm not so sure that everyone who has seen it has tried it. I know that I had no inclination to sample it until I started this blog.

I've never been 100% sure of what the point of Calorie Mate is supposed to be, but I've always guessed that it is meant to balance people's bad eating habits by offering them a couple little fortified blocks. One of the reasons I never saw the appeal was that they aren't low calorie as a snack at 100 calories per cookie, and I eat fairly decently anyway and don't feel the need to eat this type of thing to balance my life nutritionally.

The Calorie Mate web site emphasizes nutritional balance and even provides a chart of the number of calories, amount of protein, fat, vitamins, etc. that an adult needs to maintain weight and health. For the record, the calorie count that Japanese men require according to the site is 2,650 and women need 2,050. I believe that the bars are supposed to be considered possible meal replacements if you are trying to cut calories in addition to being used as supplements if you feel you need more nutrients.

Calorie Mate is often sold in convenience stores and drug stores in Japan for around 150 yen ($1.67). I got mine from a huge display of health food cookies and bars at Tomod's drug store. Most of the other items were variations on granola bars and whole grain cookies.


There are quite a few flavors of Calorie Mate available including fruit, cheese, chocolate, and this maple version. I chose maple because I wanted to buy a variety that my husband would be willing to try. Each cookie is 7 cm x 4.25 cm x 2 cm (2.8 in. x 1.7 in. x .8 in.) and there are 4 of them in the box. They smell strongly of maple and, well, general cookie smell. The cookies are very dry and crumbly and have a decent, though rather artificial, maple flavor. They're like a poor quality shortbread cookie. Occasionally, there are fragments of what appear to be nuts in the cookie which isn't surprising since almonds are one of the ingredients.

For what they are, these are pretty good. I wouldn't be doing cartwheels over them or selecting to have one rather than a real cookie or an authentic treat. That being said, if you want to have something cookie-like which is healthier or at least less unhealthy, these are enjoyable both in texture and in taste.

Note that there are a lot of Calorie Mate commercials on YouTube featuring Kiefer Sutherland. Since "24" is so popular in Japan, they love to show him in his headset being frantic about something or other and then having some Calorie Mate product. Here's one commercial:

Kokunaisan Yuzukawa Candied Yuzu

I've sampled plenty of yuzu treats up to this point, but haven't eaten anything which contains much more than a speck of real fruit. Considering my enthusiasm for all things yuzu thus far, I jumped at the chance to sample this candied yuzu when I found it at Seiyu supermarket for about 120 yen ($1.33).

For those who don't remember or know, yuzu is a Japanese citrus fruit which tastes like a cross between a lemon and a grapefruit. It has the sour notes of lemon and some of the bitter notes of grapefruit. This makes it ideal for candying. It's no surprise then that the second ingredient, after yuzu peel, is sugar. Despite this, this 35 gram (1.2 oz.) bag only has 124 calories, so you don't have to feel too guilty about eating it all in one go.



I don't know if this is supposed to be marketed as a health food or not, but I do believe it's supposed to be a nutritious snack. It has vitamin C added to it, which is fairly common in Japan for many snacks as both Calcium and C are not abundant in traditional Japanese cuisine. There is a fair number of little firm bits of candied rind in the bag. They don't smell like much individually, but the whole bag takes on their citrus scent.

Unsurprisingly, they taste like yuzu, which is to say a little bitter and a little sour. The bitterness is a bit more prominent than the sourness and the sweetness level is pretty spot-on. It's just enough to balance the harsher flavors. The texture is pretty much as you'd expect for this kind of thing. They're solid, but easy to bite through. They're not as chewy as dried fruit because of the candying.

I really liked these, though clearly they don't fall into the category of a candy or salty treat in terms of the pleasure one can extract from them. If you enjoy fruit snacks and want something different, I'd recommend giving this a try. I wouldn't hesitate to buy it again, though I have to say that I'd have to be in the right mood to eat it.

Kracie Muichaimashita Chestnuts

There are two ways to look at natural food like raisins or dried cranberries. You can consider that they are merely meant to be components of some more complex dish or you can see them as snacks unto themselves. In the case of the aforementioned items, they clearly fall into the category of being both. In the case of today's product for review, my sense of whether or not this was meant to be a snack is rather muddled.

On the side which indicates "snack", I look at the fact that this is sold in quite a small foil pack (35 grams/1.2 oz.). There's also the fact that the chestnuts are next to preserved foil-packed chunks of sweet potato that I have bought and eaten as a snack on occasion before. I think these things should be in snack happy shape simply because of their size and presentation.

That being said, I think that both the sweet potato and chestnuts are meant to be used as a garnish on rice or as a component in a more complex dish. The web site for this product features various recipes, some of which portray this as a garnish and others that show it as an integrated component. That being said, I think I can treat these as a snack just like I did the sweet potatoes and would regard other types of nuts. You can decide for yourself if this is misplaced or not. I like chestnuts, and I wanted to give these a chance as a healthy snack. They only have 66 calories and have 1.4 grams of protein.


I got these for 100 yen ($1.11) at a local convenience store. I'm guessing they are so cheap not only because the portion is small, but also because they are from China. The web site says that they are organic and are baked and roasted using "infrared" techniques. I'm not sure what that means. I had never heard of this type of cooking before, but apparently it's all about reaching high temperatures quickly. It's supposed to be good for dense foods, but carries a risk of burning or charring. Since chestnuts are cooked in their shells, this is probably a safe, quick method for dealing with them.

The chestnuts themselves seem pretty bland and not too dissimilar from raw chestnuts, though the texture is much more palatable. When I lived in Pennsylvania, I used to pry open and eat raw chestnuts when I was a kid so it's a familiar flavor to me. Whatever the cooking method used for these, it didn't seem to impart much added flavor to the chestnuts. Their texture is fine, slightly firm, but crumbly. They are dry in the same way that a sweet potato is dry. The flavor is subtle and earthy, and screams for enhancement with sugar and vanilla or brandy.

These were fine, but completely a flat experience. They didn't work at all as a snack, but I think they'd be good if crushed, mashed, or chopped and added to oatmeal, rice pudding, etc. They just aren't going to work as a snack by themselves.

All Cranberry VE Plus Cookies

My husband operates from a mindset that would seem to be pretty logical, but doesn't actually work, when it comes to food and how bad it is for you. His notion is that if the food isn't that tasty, and especially if it isn't that sweet, it can't be all that bad for you.

When we first came to Japan, he used to buy Tohato's All Raisin cookies in accord with that type of thinking. They had raisins, which are a sort of dried up fruit and fruit is good for you, and they weren't very sweet. They had no creamy filling, icing, or sugary topping. It turned out though that All Raisin cookies weren't exactly the epitome of healthy eating despite their lack of food fun quotient, and he stopped eating them.


Fast forward to the present and I run across a small bag of All Cranberry cookies made in the same fashion as the All Raisin ones which I haven't sampled for well over 15 years. I love cranberries so I decided to revisit Tohato's healthy-sounding cookie now that it was in a flavor I liked far more than raisin. This packet of ten 3-cm (1.1 in.) square cookies was 98 yen ($1.03) at a local drug store. The VE Plus, incidentally, is for a whole slew of added vitamins including A, D, E, and 4 different B-vitamins and Calcium.

The cookies smell like cranberries, unsurprisingly. The texture of the cookie is rather crispy with some chewiness from the cranberries. The cookie itself doesn't have much of a flavor. It's more of a generalized biscuit flavor than anything else so you're getting the strongest flavor from the cranberries. Besides the vitamins, there are a lot of healthier grains in these including rye and spelt flour and oats. Sucralose is also used as a sweetener to cut back on the sugar added. Each tiny cookie has 16 calories (the entire bag is 155 or so).

I really liked these and would have given them an even higher rating except I though I detected a slight "plastic" aftertaste. I wonder if storing these cookies for 3 weeks in the summer (before opening them) on top of my refrigerator caused some of the plastic bag's chemicals to leech into them. If so, that's an unappetizing thought. It might also simply be some preservative or processing aftertaste from the cranberries that I was detecting. Since I don't like too sweet foods and I liked the texture of these a lot, I would recommend them to anyone who wants something a bit healthier to nosh on.

Note that Tohato has expanded their line of "All" cookies a lot since I last checked into them. In addition to raisin and cranberry, they also carry peach, apple, adzuki, coconut, mango and pineapple. The mango and pineapple are "dessert" versions so they're probably not as "healthy" as the raisin and cranberry versions. Unfortunately, I haven't seen any of these exotic flavors in my usual haunts, but I'll be certain to sample them if I run across them.

Green Tea Coke Plus with Catechin

You'd think that living in Japan would mean I'd be right on top of every new release, but the truth is that one would have to make it a priority to stroll through every aisle of a convenience store on a daily basis to see new items or keep an eye on the news of new releases in Japan. I'm too busy for the former and too lazy for the latter. The truth is that I was completely unaware of this new green tea Coke until Marvo at The Impulsive Buy brought it to my attention. It's because of him that I sauntered down to the local Family Mart and bought three bottles (one for me, two for him) and that you're seeing this review in such a timely fashion.

I didn't realize it when I first looked at this, but this Coke is meant to appeal to the type of people who will buy junk food that has been "enhanced" to make it healthier. It's "Coke Plus" for starters, not "Diet Coke" or "Coke Zero". Coke Plus is the ugly stepchild to the other calorie-free Cokes. It has vitamins or minerals or some such crap added to it such that it has a weird aftertaste. I tried Coke Plus once, and decided that I'd never allow it to darken the doorway to my taste buds again.

The "catechin" is supposed to be the "plus" in this whereas the "plus" in the more commonly available Coke Plus is Vitamin C. Catechin is supposed to reduce your chances of developing cancer or hardened arteries. I'm guessing that you'd be lucky if the catechin in a bottle of this canceled out your chances of developing cancer from the artificial sweeteners in it.


The first ingredient in this is green tea extract followed by caramel flavor and then another type of green tea acidulant flavoring (which adds a sharpness to the flavor). Other ingredients include both of the artificial sweeteners aspartame and Sucralose. You'd expect it to be bursting at the seams with green tea taste given the ingredients list, but taking a whiff of it doesn't really reveal much except an off-brand cola smell. The first several sips also didn't overwhelm me with tea flavor, but as I drank more, there was more and more of a sense of the grassy flavor that comes along with green tea. Halfway through the bottle, it became increasingly more pronounced. It's as if I had to build up a sensitivity to the flavor to detect it more clearly.

The sense I got from this is that it carries the basic flavor of green tea, but without any trace of its trademark bitterness. This gives it a strange flavor which seems reminiscent of Stevia. It's like a grassy, malt flavor. I'm not sure that a green tea aficionado would recognize what this is as actual green tea taste, but I'm pretty sure a Coca-Cola fan would recognize that something was not quite right with it.

This certainly was not bad at all. If I were in the market for a calorie-free Cola and couldn't buy regular Diet Coke or Coke Zero, I'd buy this without fear that I would find it unpalatable. I'd take this over the Coke Plus with Vitamin C for certain. However, I don't see this as particularly special or appealing and it'd definitely be second to a regular plain old Diet Coke. Unlike Pepsi's weird flavors, Coke seems to be attempting to make something more subtle and palatable.

Note that there is currently a contest going on with all Coca-Cola beverages where numbers in the cap can be used to win J-League (Japan Soccer League) shirts and other bits of flotsam if you're inclined to fill your life with useless possessions. You have to go to the contest web site and enter your numbers and manage in Japanese, and you have to care enough to bother.

This is also reviewed at the Impulsive Buy.

Kellogg's All Bran Shortbread (Caramel and Chocolate)

There are entire sections in markets and convenience stores with tiny packages of "healthy" snacks. I usually ignore these sections because they are mainly full of dried out cookie, cracker, and cake items fortified with vitamins, minerals, and artificial flavors. It's not so much the fact that the flavors often taste like esters cooked up in a chemical lab that puts me off as the tiny, tiny portions for a relatively big price.


These cookies are brought to us by Kellogg's, which is well-known in the United States, but not so much in Japan. The Japanese don't go much for breakfast cereals because they want something with greater substance for their morning meal. They have learned what we have not (about cereal) in terms of its longevity in satiating hunger. That is, that you eat it and feel hungry two or three hours later. Most of the Japanese folks I speak with about breakfast have rice or toast with soup of some kind. There are Kellogg's cereals in Japan including variations of Special K and some sugary kid's stuff, but you don't see much compared to American cereal aisles. There are several healthy cookies stocked near the cereal, and the "All Bran" brand has been parked in these sections for quite awhile. Their main selling point is, of course, fiber.

Each package contains two foil packets with three tiny cookies in each. When I say "tiny", I mean it. They are 3 cm. (1.2 in.) by 2.3 cm (.9 in.). The nutrition information says that there are about 150 calories if you eat both packets (30 grams/1 oz.) and they are fortified with 7 vitamins and calcium. There's quite a bit of sugar in these on balance with the fiber. The sugar content for the chocolate version is 14.6 grams compared to 4.3 grams of dietary fiber.


The advertising for these sells them as "moist" cookies. They are crumbly and dry, but infused with enough fat to make them less brittle than you'd expect given their texture. Both varieties have the same texture, but drastically different flavors. The caramel smells strongly of artificial caramel and tastes overwhelmingly of it. The first bite is especially unpleasant due to the strength of the faux caramel. There is coconut in with the caramel, but that isn't enough to salvage the flavor. This was so bad that I couldn't eat more than one tiny cookie.


The chocolate cookie smells pleasantly of cocoa. The chocolate taste is a bit weak for my tastes, but that is saved by the presence of coconut. It's not bad, but does have a strange artificial finishing flavor. It wouldn't really satisfy a cookie craving, but it might do in a pinch for a quick breakfast on the go with some tea or coffee. This one is definitely more palatable than the caramel one.

The main point of these types of foods is that they want to fool you into thinking they're good for you. It's true that they are probably "better" for you than eating, say, an Oreo cookie, but they're probably worse for you than something like a homemade oatmeal cookie because they're full of chemicals and vegetable oil. From a purely sensory based point of view, I can't recommend these, but if you have really bad eating habits and want to eat vitamin enhanced junk food, I could condone the chocolate ones in a pinch.

Lawson VL 24 Vegetable and Fruit Juice Blend

There is a particular variety of jam that I love in apricot flavor. On at least 5 occasions, I have accidentally purchased orange marmalade in the same brand because the illustrations are nearly identical and I was in a hurry and didn't read the label. Today's review is brought to you by the same type of rushed carelessness that has seen me waste about $20 over the years on marmalade (which I hate).



I was at a local shop and hustling to get some milk when I decided I'd like some juice. I'd bought a Lawson VL (Value Line) citrus blend from this same shop before so I grabbed the carton you see above large based on the prominence of the orange, lemon and grapes. I got home and only when my sunny yellow juice ended up being fluorescent orange did I realize something had gone horribly wrong. Still, I wasn't going to let good juice go to waste because I made a stupid mistake, even if it did look a little radioactive.

The 24 fruits and vegetables pictured on the carton.

The juice blends grape, orange, and lemon with a plethora of vegetables in an attempt to add more nutritional punch to the mix. The primary ingredients are the first three juices, but there's also 2 types of carrot, sweet potato, asparagus, 2 types of green pepper, 2 kinds of cabbage, cauliflower, broccoli, pumpkin, lettuce, kale, parsley, celery, and radish. There are a few more in there, but you get the idea. The Japanese love drinks and juices which offer tons of healthy ingredients. I guess it's the "kitchen sink" approach to beverage blending and consumers lap it up. I'm not sure if this sort of approach ends up in a tasty beverage, but I guess it is supposed to be about carrying a big nutritional punch. My previous experience with a blended beverage was not one which I recollect with fondness, so I approached with caution.

The juice doesn't have a very strong scent. Mainly, you smell the orange component with a hint of lemon. The juice itself tastes a lot like a muted version of orange juice. It has a citrus feel, but is clearly diluted with something unexpected. While there isn't really an aftertaste, there is definitely a secondary hint of something vegetable-based. I swear I can detect the green pepper taste in it, but none of the other vegetables make an individual taste impact. I think this is certainly palatable, but I wouldn't go so far to say it is as enjoyable as a pure citrus blend or even straight ahead orange juice.

The carton has 700 ml, which is probably enough for 3 reasonably-sized servings, 2 big ones, or 4 small ones. The juice has added alpha and beta carotene and is 36 calories for 100 ml so it's not too high in calories, though certainly not low. If you'd like to drink something which may carry more nutrients per sip, this would be just fine. You're taking a cut in pleasure, but it's still a pleasant beverage and it may be worth it for the healthier mix of juices.

TopValu 16 Hato Tea Blend (16 ハト茶ブレンド)

Back when I was working in a Japanese office, my (Australian) boss used to buy 2 liter bottles of tea called "ju-roku cha". "Ju-roku" in Japanese is 16 and "cha" is tea. I'm not sure why 16 is the magic number for these types of tea blends, but I fondly remembered working with him when I saw this bottle of tea. Incidentally, "hato" means "dove" in Japanese. I don't know if this is supposed to be "dove tea" or if the name carries some other meaning, but there's no reason for doves to be connected to the contents of the bottle. Well, let's just say I hope doves are in no way a part of it.

When my boss was drinking this tea, he offered me a taste, but I turned him down because it smelled very "earthy" to me. In fact, I jokingly used to call it his "dirt tea." The brand he drank was bottled by Coca-Cola Japan. The brand I decided to buy is clearly a direct knock-off and is made by TopValu. TopValu specializes in making cheap versions of popular items. Most notably, they make a KitKat copy for about 28 yen (27 cents) less than the real deal. This 500 ml bottle of 16 Hato Tea Blend was 78 yen (77 cents). A similarly-sized bottle of the brand name ju-roku cha would be at least 100 yen ($1).

The tea is a blend of many other teas including barley (Hato barley), 2 kinds of green tea, and oolong. It includes brown rice, persimmon leaf, ecommia bark, jiagolan, wolfberry (all three Chinese herbs used in traditional medicine), shiitake mushroom, orange peel, vitamin C, kelp and "herb tea". It's quite the potpourri of earthy elements. It's no wonder I called it "dirt tea".

When I opened this bottle, I mostly smelled the mugi-cha (barley tea) and oolong elements. This sort of tea is marketed mainly at the health and beauty market and it is so for good reason. It tastes as good as the mixture of ingredients sound like they might taste together, which is to say not particularly good. The tea is unsweetened (the whole bottle has only 6 calories) and no effort has been made to really do much about the flavor. While you drink it, it's not so bad, but once you stop and your tongue has a moment to process what has just passed its way, it is a little bitter and tastes like you stirred a glass of oolong and barley tea with a dirty mushroom. In fact, I think the tagline for this tea should be something like, "mushrooms you can drink!" Honestly, I think it tastes like water that has been wrung out of an old, dirty sock.

If you're really interested in Chinese medicine or are willing to adapt your palette to a new flavor (or are a serious fan of mushrooms), this may be for you. If you love mugi cha, you may find this more appealing. Personally, I couldn't finish the bottle though I really did try. After choking down half of it, I had to throw in the towel.