Fujiya Anpanman Korokoro Ball Chocolate

Though these balls are chocolate coated bits of crunchy cookie, they are kin of M & Ms in a way other than being small and a chocolate coated confection. They melt in your mouth, not in your hands according to Fujiya's web site. I'm guessing the fact that the claim is in Japanese will keep them from being sued for slogan theft.

These are fortified with Calcium derived from egg shells so you could claim these were healthy treats, but you'd be a liar because the first ingredient is sugar. Sugar is the great destroyer of nutritional value when it's quantity eclipses all of the others by a large margin.

The ball pictured on the box is about the same size as the actual candy. They're similar in size to a pea. The interior biscuit is the weaker of the flavors in this candy. It's such a tiny amount and mainly is there for crunch, but you can catch a faint hint of it on the first one or two of these that you eat (before your tongue is overwhelmed by the sugar and most of the subtle flavors are cancelled out).

The chocolate on the outside is firm and seems coated with something to help it not melt. It has a nice flavor, but it's not the strongest cocoa flavor that you're going to encounter in a candy. I loved the texture a lot, but I'm big into crunchy things. There isn't a ton of complexity there, but these are still fun to eat.

The boxes for this candy each feature a different pair of friendly characters from the Anpanman cartoon. There is something sweet about their expressions and it's probably a cool little bonus for fans of the show.

Note: These were part of my free sweets box from ZenPop.

Lotte Strawberry Chocolate Pops

This is another form of "dagashi" (kid's snacks) with some cute and inventive design. The pops are designed to look like flowers that are tethered at the base. You snap them apart at the root to eat each "pop."

These aren't actually lollipops though. They're small amounts of chocolate (about the size of a Hershey's kiss) stuck on the end of a plastic stick. There's also a-guitar pick-shaped sticker inside. Mine was a strawberry monkey (monkee ichigo) who wears the top half of a strawberry (with an strangely placed and long stem) as his trousers. Filthy monkey.

The packaging on this is cute, but also smooth as silk to open. There's a tab at the bottom which you peel apart then pull up and it comes off easily and cleanly. This is the sort of thing which is part of Japanese marketing and products which is rare in the U.S. It's an attention to detail which makes the experience of consuming something much better there.

The novelty element of this is high. It's clearly designed more for fun than as food. The sticker, the colorful and cute characters, and the sticks make that clear. I generally have pretty low expectations of these types of things.

You can smell the strawberry element immediately and it actually smells authentic. If you eat it with the strawberry side facing your tastebuds, you get a very present and good, sweet strawberry flavor. It's reminiscent of jam mixed with cocoa in a good way. The texture is soft and it's milkier than some other varieties. It's also fairly sweet, but not cloyingly so. The slight floral and tart notes from the strawberry help offset the sweetness.

For a kid's snack, this is quite amazingly well balanced in flavors with some complexity. Most kid's treats are one-note and too sweet, salty, or fatty to cater to their less developed palate, but this was one of the best strawberry chocolates I've tasted. I could have used a little more chocolate bitterness and it could have been a hair less sweet, but, overall, this was a winner.

This item was part of my free ZenPop Japanese snacks box.

Shimi Choco Corn and Anpanman Pero Pero Choco

I'm headed close to the finish line in my race to review all of my ZenPop box treats before I loose my free time to jury duty (which is coming up on May 2nd). I have to say that it's been quite refreshing to get back in the groove of steady reviewing, though I know that I'll run out of things to review pretty soon.

If aliens came to earth and looked at our food, would they be confused by the fact that we shape our food like humans and then eat them? There are chocolate Santas at Christmas in the U.S. Why would we want to cannibalize a jolly guy who wants nothing more than to give us free toys?

These are the thoughts that occur to me when I look at snacks like the Anpanman chocolate lollipop. He looks so happy, and I just snapped his head in half, took my picture, and then took a bite out of him. If it is any consolation, he didn't taste especially good.

Incidentally, "pero pero" means "lick, lick" which I guess refers to the fact that this is on a stick. However, this isn't really designed for licking. It's barely designed for eating at all because the texture is too soft and the chocolate flavor is fairly muted, especially toward the center where there is more pink chocolate. It's balanced in sweetness. It's vaguely milky, but mostly seems to be too adulterated with vegetable oil to have any sort of pure flavor elements. It looks cute, and it doesn't taste terrible, but this is largely for novelty rather than for flavor. I had my husband sample it and he said, "It tastes like inferior chocolate." That about sums it up.

The other item in this double review is best known for it's tasty animal crackers. The "shimi corn" like is made up of various flavors of a cereal like corn base. It sounds very unimpressive, but it actually was very satisfying. The flavor of the chocolate was excellent and the texture of the star-shaped corn tube was perfect. It was neither too dense nor too crispy. If you like eating sugar cereal dry out of the box (and I do), this is going to be the bee's knees. This was unexpectedly tasty and I wish I had a case of them around for future noshing. It just really played into my tastes.

So, the moral of the story? Cannabalism is wrong in every way. Don't go around eating the heads of fictional characters. It will not be nearly as much fun as you anticipate. The other moral? Corn is always king!

Anpanman Pero Pero Choco:

Shim Choco Corn:

Yaokin Fluffy Softmallow and Dora-Choco

The next step down the path of reviewing food from my ZenPop box (the "Peach Festa") is paved with things for children. Both of these dagashi (kid's snacks) are made by a company that most people know best for their savory corn snack sticks.  I have to admit that I don't recall every having seen the pastel marshmallow barber's pole that is the "softmallow," but I have a hazy memory of the little tiny dorayaki. Since I left Japan six years ago, I imagine I'm going to continue to have hazy memories.

The softmallow looks like something someone would try to recreate on Instagram or Pinterest, and then someone else would try to recreate it and it could be an epic Pinterest fail. It's adorable enough to be snipped into little pieces and be used as unicorn cow pies as part of a cake decoration.

So, the marshmallow has definitely won the remains of my twelve-year-old self's heart in terms of looks, but what about taste? It is indeed very fresh and soft, but soft like a pillow that gives and then rebounds. The marshmallow is lightly sweet and has no other flavoring added, but it is a nice flavor. I'm pleased to say that most of the Japanese marshmallow's that I had in Japan had a strange aftertaste that is absent in this one. The only difference between this and an American marshmallow is that it's less sweet and just a hair more "rubbery," but not in a way which is off-putting.

The dorayaki has an amazing smell that reminds me of freshly-baked cake. The chocolate filling is so similar in appearance to red bean paste that I forgot it was chocolate until I put it in my mouth. The cake is surprisingly moist for a shelf-stable product and does have a more "cake-like" taste than regular dorayaki which tends to be like a pancake which is a bit dry.

In terms of the filling, it's not super flavorful on the front end (the cake dominates), but hits on the back end when you get a little burst of chocolate that falls somewhere between dark and milk. The filling is nicely fatty and adds to the texture to some extent. This was shockingly good for a kid's snack and reminded me of a less cloying version of a Hostess snack cake.

Softmallow:

Dora-Choco:

Oyatsu Box Dagashi Edition (Unboxing & Service Review)

Back when I was still living in Japan, people who read this blog would occasionally ask me why I didn't start a business selling the snacks I wrote about. My answer was always that I'd done mail order before (Japanese KISS collectible items, mainly records), and it's generally not worth it for a low-value commodity like snacks. It was worth it for a high value commodity like recording collectibles because you can get some suckers to fork over $400 for a set of records which is really a pretty Japanese re-issue of music they already have.

At any rate, I am certain that, had I gone into the snack sales market, somebody "in the know" would do what I am about to do. That is, dissect the contents and the value and remark on how "worth it" it is. Before I get to that though, I'd like to say that I do understand the intangible value associated with the experience of getting these types of boxes. I currently subscribe to a quarterly subscription box from The Mysterious Package Company. It's the sort of thing which I do because it is a complete surprise and it represents enjoying the creative output of people both in the visual and literary sense.

These Japanese food boxes are part surprise, and part value of contents. Many services offer them. My intention is to shop around for what seems to be the best experience in terms of three factors:

Service: I measure this by speed, packaging sturdiness and design, response time to issues, presence of any problems, and packaging design/appearance (including how contents are arranged).

Value: This is where I look at how much each item would likely cost in Japan and how that compares to the price. I will also consider the shipping weight and expense as well as packaging costs.

Overall experience value: I would call this the overall "joy" factor. How happy am I after I open the box and survey the contents? How much fun or novelty is involved?

To be fair to the oyatsubox folks, they give you some idea of what to expect by posting the contents of past boxes on their web site. Before I orderd this, I knew it would largely consist of cheap children's snacks (or portions of multi-packs that had been broken up and distributed among multiple parties) because that is what "dagashi" means. Most of what they show from past boxes are items that would cost you 20-50 yen in Japan and mini snacks. The "Dagashi Box" subscription promises 8-12 snacks including a kit for making candy. My box had 9 items.

First of all, the concrete details. The box is sturdy enough and nicely printed with the company's name. It weighs 258 grams and was sent by the small packet rate by SAL, or so it seems based on the fact that it took a shade over 3 weeks to arrive. The company e-mails you when they ship and they ship subscriptions at the beginning of each month. I joined on April 22, 2017 and my box was shipped on May 2nd. It arrived on May 25. This is consistent with the 2-3 week time frame when using SAL. Assuming I'm right about the method of shipping, this cost 380 yen ($3.40) to ship. They say, "free shipping," but obviously somebody is paying and the cost is rolled into your subscription. I don't know what it costs for the company to have these small boxes printed up especially for them, but I'd be surprised if it was more than about 50 yen. It could easily be less.

In terms of service, the e-mail that told me when the box shipped was lost in a "promotions" tab in my gmail and I didn't find it so I contacted the company about this. They told me when the notification was sent and the date the package was sent. Their service was sufficiently prompt and polite. I will say that they have a tendency to send a lot of mailings relative to the duration of my relationship with them. They send promo coupons and advertising. It's not overbearing, but it was a little much.

Getting to the meat of things, however, the most expensive item in the box is likely the Neru Neru candy making kit. These sell for 100 yen. Everything else was definitely 20-50 yen in cost or less. A tiny mini Crunky was likely about 10 yen or less. My best guess of the total cost to the seller of all of the items in my box would be 300-400 yen (likely around 320-340 yen). That means that, if I want to be generous in my estimation, their out of pocket total was around 830 yen or $7.51. About half of your subscription fee goes to costs and about half goes to labor/profit. Of course, I'm assuming they pay retail for their snacks. They may pay wholesale.

I don't find this to be exorbitant given that I know what would have to go into making this happen. Somebody has to run the web site, maintain subscriptions, print shipping labels, assemble and pack boxes, shop for the items and sort them out, and then take the boxes to the post office or manage a pick-up with them. If they don't have a ton of subscribers, it's pretty labor-intensive for not much money. If they have a ton, then it's likely a pretty good money maker. And while I don't find it unreasonable, I will say that it's a far worse deal than if you have access to an Asian market as their mark-ups are generally no more than 50% and sometimes less. However, a market's selection would be much more restricted as well and not everyone has access to such stores.

In terms of the "joy" factor, I was pleased to see the box and relatively happy with the contents. Some of the items are ones I've had before. In fact, I reviewed the Apollo strawberry chocolate in the past, albeit in a different package. That was actually the only item I'd reviewed before, but I'd be stunned if I'd never sampled Caramel Corn or the Kokeiya corn snack during my time in a Japanese office when such snacks were regularly passed around. I will be reviewing the items in the box individually in future blog posts so I'm looking forward to that.

I can't help but think that my copious experience in Japan makes this less thrilling for me than it would be for someone who had only been there as a tourist or who had never been there at all. There is a sense of things being novel and really "cool" when you open up a package of colorful snacks with foreign characters on them that you can't understand which can't be re-experienced once you're familiar with them. I used to talk about this situationwith my students in Japan. They told me that it was interesting knowing Japan through my eyes because so much of it was so mundane to them that it was essentially invisible. Now that I'm back in the U.S. again, I understand all too well what they meant.

If I were not me, I think I'd be pretty happy with the experience of getting this for only $15 a month as a purchased "experience." That's a pretty cheap subscription rate for nearly any box you might be interested in and there are enough items to allow you to slowly consume a few items a week without running out before the next one. That being said, because this is dagashi, much of the thrill needs to be in the unusual nature as kid's snacks are notoriously not very good quality or especially tasty compared to those for the more general or adult markets. These are more vibrant and colorful, but the tastes are likely to be sweeter, saltier, and less complex than other snacks.

My only complaint is that including just one tiny Crunky and one Hello Kitty marshmallow seemed a bit too cheap. Given that these items are parts of multi-packs and likely cost so little, I think either including more of those types of items of another brand or type or putting in a couple of these snacks would have represented a more generous package without costing much more at all. It would also be better business sense in that it would allow the recipient the possibility to share these tiny snacks with others and possibly increase the chances that someone else might want to subscribe after having some small samples from a friend's box.

My plan is to see what Oyatsu Cafe has to offer for their other, more expensive box, the Oyatsu Box which promises 10-14 "full size" snacks and one vending machine toy ("gachapon") for $25. I changed over my subscription and should see that box some time in June. One of the nice things about the Oyatsu Cafe subscription access is that you can alter your type of subscription on the fly so you can switch off between types if you want to change from time to time for different experiences. You can also cancel from the account page if you'd like to stop. Their interface is clean and easy to work with and that's certainly a plus.

I can't rate services the same way I rate the snacks, so I'll just give my subjective evaluation on my three criteria.

Service: Excellent
Value: Adequate
Experience: Good

Worth it? Yes, but only if you are interested in kid's snacks for the novelty and colorful nature rather than for the quality of snacks.

Note: I am not promoting Oyatsubox. They did not provide me with any free samples. I paid as anyone else would for my subscription. They don't know I'm a Japanese food blogger or that I would be posting about them.

McDonald's Happy Set Toys (product information)

I occasionally read advice columns to see what sort of problems people feel they need third-party assistance with. Often, it's something along the lines of someone has been invited to a wedding that includes a shake-down for cash rather than allowing them to just buy a gift and do they have the Agony Auntie's permission to not pony up some dough. Of course, all of them say "there, there, you don't have to capitulate to this emotional blackmail for money."

At any rate, one of the more interesting letters was from a woman who ran a playgroup and had a nanny who was stopping a little boy from playing with the "girl's" toys like dolls, plastic ponies and unicorns, and, er... tampons, or whatever little girls play with these days. I wasn't a girly girl when I grew up so I'm not sure what they tend to pay attention to. At any rate, the playgroup's organizer wanted to tell the nanny to stop being so gender-biases and let the little boy play with whatever he wanted to fondle. When I saw these two starkly different sets of toys, I was thinking this is exactly the sort of thing that would get those two women fighting.

The gender lines for these sets is pretty clear. Boys are supposed to be drawn the Ultraman set on the left and girls to the Aikatsu goods on the right. The colors alone tell the story of what little boys and girls should choose, but the dainty, frilly accessories also indicate clearly that the Aikatsu junk is for the set which will one day be sashaying around an office trying to attract a suitable breadwinner for her family. After all, what is all that plastic jewelry for if not to draw attention to oneself?

The boys, apparently, are supposed to content themselves with superhero torsos on little plastic bases. I think they'd actually have more fun putting on the headbands and singing into the microphone. How can you role play superheros when they don't have a pelvis or legs?

These items became available on April 18 (duh, as you can see by the ad). If you'd like your kids to either embrace or reject gender lines, get out there and buy them some Happy Sets and collect suitable plastic crap.

Random Picture #208

What is pictured above is called "educational confectionary" according to its  maker, Kracie. I call it "playing with food", but I'll run with Kracie's description. On the left is a donut decorating kit and on the right is a candy bento one. This leads me to believe that Kracie is thinking Japan's children need to be educated in the ways of food service. I guess if your dream is working at Mister Donut, then the donut one would help set you up nicely.

This is one of those rare items which is actually available at Amazon. You can get the bento one here for an exhorbitant price and the donut one here for an even higher price. If you buy one, let me know if you learned anything. ;-)

Glico Bisco Caramel Cocoa

One of the first things I learned about feeding babies, a task I was never destined to actually carry out, was that Cheerios were a "safe" solid food when you were trying to wean them off of an all-liquid diet. I learned that from one of my aunts, who had recently had a baby pass the point of needing to suckle a bottle all of the time (my mother's family weren't about to breast feed - to them, it was barbaric). She had Cheerios stocked up and I asked her why and I learned something new.

When I took home economics, the teacher felt that we needed to be indoctrinated into the ways of baby-rearing. Since I'm 49, I grew up in an age where birthin' dem babies was considered my lot in life at least to some extent. Considering my utter lack of maternal qualities, this education was just short of an utter waste of time for the likes of me. I did, however, score some brownie points for knowing that Cheerios was one of the first solid foods that were safe for infants to eat.

At no point in my limited education did anyone suggest that sandwich cookies were a part of a baby's diet. Glico puts a happy baby on the package of its "Bisco" cookies, but I'm not buying that these are for babies. In fact, they seem more suited to calorie-conscious mothers looking to lose those last few baby pounds while keeping a sweet nibble on hand, ostensibly for their young child. One of the nutritional benefits of these, supposedly, is that they put lactic acid bacteria (the good bugs in yogurt) in the cookies and it's supposed to help with digestion.

I've reviewed these tiny little packets of Bisco before and I really liked them. Note that the regular version (vanilla cookie with white cream) is in a bigger box. The limited edition flavors come in tiny little five-packs. They're definitely well-suited for carrying in ones purse. Each packet has five extremely dainty little cookies that come in at 20 calories apiece.

If you sniff these, the caramel flavor is pretty intense. There is just a small amount of cream in between two cookies which are a hybrid between a cracker and cookie and are therefore pretty crispy and a little airy. The caramel flavor is the stronger first wave flavor when you bite into the cookie. The second wave is a bit of a floury, grain-like quality followed by extremely weak, nearly anemic, cocoa flavor. It's only on the second bite that the cocoa builds up to fairly discernible levels.

These are actually pretty good. They wouldn't be my first choice for a Bisco cookie, but I still liked them and I'm not a fan of caramel. It should be said that the caramel is very artificial tasting. I think it's only decent because there is such a small amount of cream filling that it is relatively diluted. The bottom line is that I'm good with having bought these and will eat the rest without reservation, but I can't see buying them again because of the strongish artificial caramel flavor.

Izumi Seika Mugi Mugi Cocoa Cereal Snack

When I was a child, my mother used to buy "Popeye's" puffed wheat and rice cereal. It came in plastic bags with a picture of Popeye smiling his bizarre grimace in the middle. Both of these cereals had several things in common. One factor was that they were very simple types of cereal. There were no heart-, clover-, or star-shaped marshmallows. They didn't turn your milk funny colors or leave a sugary sludge in the bottom of the bowl. They didn't even crunch. The primary reason my mother bought them was that they were insanely cheap. While they were also very low calorie (about 50 calories for 1-2 cups).

The Japanese aren't much for cereal. In fact, they have the puniest cereal sections you're likely to see in any developed country. I've spoken to many Japanese folks about what they eat for breakfast and why they aren't fans of cereal. Mainly, I'm told that it doesn't fill them up. You know what? They're right. Cereal doesn't fill me up either and I rarely eat it. My husband loves to eat it as a late-night snack, but I tend to just avoid it altogether.

Though the Japanese aren't eating their puffed grains cereal for breakfast, they do sometimes eat it as a snack, especially if they're still among the short pants wearing set. Enter this puffed wheat snack, which doesn't have Popeye's ugly mug on it, but it has an apparently animate stalk of wheat that is interested in enjoying a cup of cocoa.

Unlike the spinach-loving, muscle-bound sailor's puffed wheat cereal, this stuff is not low calorie. A 40-gram serving has 170 calories. It's not only the carbohydrate goodness adding much need bulk to your fat cells, but the ton of sugar and vegetable oil they add to the recipe. Not to worry though, this also includes your RDA of Sucralose so that it's sweeter without adding in more calories.

As for as snacks go, this is, essentially, chocolate cereal. The back of the bag shows that you can add milk to it or sprinkle it on ice cream. However, it's also intended to just be eaten out of the bag as a somewhat crispy, somewhat soft snack. It's lightly sweet with a mild, but appreciable cocoa flavor. It's sweet enough without being cloying so that you won't have that "icky" overly sugary feel in your mouth if you do just eat it out of the package. It also has a nice "wheaty" kick to it that adds some depth to the flavor. I like that sort of whole grain flavor, even when mixed with chocolate and sugar.

The strange thing about this product is that the manufacturer seems to have very recently terminated its confectionary division. That means that this may well have been their last foray into making chocolate cereal treats. Given that this is nothing special, I wouldn't be surprised if sales weren't over the top spectacular. The company's main deal seems to be simply selling wheat.

I liked this fine, but I wasn't over the moon about it. If I was still a kid and eating cereal, I'd be all over this compared to my bland, boring Popeye options. Since I'm not a child anymore, this is okay, but nothing to get excited about.

Candy Japan (service reviews) and Fueramune Blue Soda Whistle Candy

My package from Candy Japan. Note the pretty flower tape at the top.

Today's review candy, Fueramune Blue Soda Whistle Candy, comes courtesy of "Candy Japan". They contacted me and asked if I'd like to receive a few samples and, of course, I said I absolutely would. I'm not the sort of person to turn down free food, especially not free Japanese candy!

Before I get to reviewing the first of the two candies that I was sent, I would like to talk a little about "Candy Japan". They are a subscription service that sends "mystery sweets" twice a  month for a fee of $25. This service includes as much candy as will fit in a standard Japanese envelope sent directly from Japan by SAL. "SAL", for those less well-versed in postal jargon than me, is "sea air land". It's a "between" option for sending packages which is not nearly as slow as seamail, but not quite as fast as air. My experience with it was that it takes about 2-3 weeks and is usually closer to two if you're on the West coast of the United States.

The service includes a nice bonus of mailings that tell you about the product that you're getting in English so that you aren't dealing with a mystery. In fact, they did the work for me in terms of researching the items I was sent. With the Fueramune Blue Soda Whistle Candy, they offered the followed information along with this photo:

Also known as Coris whistle candy, these are soda flavored whistles which you can also eat after you are done whistling with them. There is a small random plastic toy included as well. "Ramune" flavor comes from the popular soda pops sold in Japanese festivals.

This is a kid's candy which I never tried while in Japan and I noted that it also included a little box at the bottom which had a propeller in it. I think that the idea is that you buy multiple packages of the candy and each may include a different plastic part. When it is assembled, it is likely an airplane like the one illustrated on the box.

The candy itself is very interesting because it is a pressed powder candy which becomes soft and dissolves very quickly in your mouth. It seems like an enormous disc, but it becomes a burst of "ramune" (lemon lime soda) flavor that is brightly sweet, but not cloying, in very short order. And yes, the disks do function as a kind of low-rent whistle if you blow through one of the holes. The sound they make isn't loud enough to be annoying, but is close enough to fulfill the promise of a "whistle". I loved the textural elements and the way the flavor just lets loose in my mouth, though I wished that each disc had lasted a little longer before melting away in my mouth.

The company that makes the candy, Coris, has a variety of children's candies including this and the next item from Candy Japan that I'll be reviewing on Monday. The Fueramune is one of their best and longest selling products since their start in the late 1940's. They specialize in fruit and ramune candies and tend to focus more on options which will not melt in the heat of summer like gum, pressed powder candies, taffy-style candies (chews), and gummies. It makes sense that Candy Japan would choose offerings from Coris at this time because the summer in Japan has been pretty brutal. They aren't going to want to send anything which will be likely to melt in transit.

I'd definitely buy this type of candy again if I were in the mood. It's a very "homey" feeling candy for someone who has lived in Japan for quite awhile and I don't think there is anything quite like it being sold in America (though I could be wrong as I'm not up on American kid's candies).

In terms of Candy Japan's service, they  have a very professional way of managing their subscriptions and I love the way they send out packages twice a month. Unlike some other services, they are sending directly from Japan so you are guaranteed to get something which comes straight from the source. You have no choice about what items you receive, but part of the point of it is that you're going to be surprised and try new things rather than choose from within your personal comfort zone. The cost for two mailings per month is $25, and that value includes the cost of the product as well as the shipping, handling, and management of the service.

As I've said before, I did not do this sort of thing from Japan despite the fact that many people asked me about doing it because I see it as a very low margin business given the time and effort involved. Readers will have to consider the value of such a service based on their own tastes, wishes, and desire to have something truly unique in their mailbox a couple of times a month. As someone who used to live for what showed up in the post for quite a few years of my life, I can speak to the unparalleled delights of such surprises once you get accustomed to the idea of having them. 

Ramune candy and kid's gum (round stuff)

This post is a review of three items that are unified in two ways. All of them are round and I got them all as part of the Sakura Box monthly candy box. Note for my readers, November is KitKat month and they're offering 5 unique KitKat flavors. I mention that not because they sent me free candy (though they did), but because I know many people are especially interested in Japanese KitKats.

This is part of the selection I received in the October candy box and these are the types of small things that are very common in the kid's snacks section in Japanese markets. I am familiar with all of these things, and I once had the little boxes of gum with fruit illustrations on them, but it was so long ago that my aging brain lost the memory. Well, it's either my age or the fact that one isn't exactly stowing away such memories as if they were precious and not to be forgotten. It is, after all, only bubble gum.

Marukawa Fusen gum (upper right in the picture) is one that I saw around for pretty much the duration of my 23 years in Japan. It was often sold in multi-packs that included all available flavors, but also as individual packs of one flavor. I also often saw enormous tubs of it as prizes in UFO Catcher machines. I'm not sure who would want such a huge amount of these little pellet-shaped bits of gum, but I guess someone out there really loves it, especially little kids.

 See? It is all round stuff!

The orange tastes a lot like Bayer's orange baby aspirin in the U.S., except with a bit more tartness and sweetness. The grape is your typical grape gum flavor. The melon is probably the weirdest one because it tastes strongly of quite sweet cantaloupe in the initial burst of flavor. In fact, it's rather too strong and my taste buds rebelled at first.

Fortunately, or unfortunately, all flavors of this gum have a very short half life on the flavor front. Within 5 minutes, pretty much all of the flavor is gone and you're left with some pleasantly soft and pliable bubble gum and a generic sweetness. Incidentally, I chewed all 4 little gum balls (each is about the size of a large pea) at once. I can't imagine that anyone would chew one at a time. As bubble gum goes, this is fine. It's nothing spectacular, but if you were a kid and wanted to stuff your maw full of a big wet blob of it and blow a bubble that would explode all over your face, this would do the trick.

The "tsuppai (sour) lemon" gum, which contains three larger gum balls but the wrapper said it was only 2 servings, is made by a company called "Meiji Gum". I should note that both Marukawa and Mei specialize in gum, which seems like an odd choice, but I guess it's what a lot of companies do in America as well. You just never think about someone saying to himself (it's usually a "him"), I think I'll start a chewing gum company. In the case of Marukawa, that was said in 1888, apparently. That's some forward thinking.

As promised, this is sour lemon gum. In fact, it was a bit too intense for me and I had to spit it out after a short chew. That doesn't mean it's bad. It just means I'm a sourness wuss, or that it didn't go over too great after chewing the sweet tiny little gum balls.

I give both types of gum an indifferent rating because they are pretty much just kid's gum in approachable flavors. The main benefit of them is that they have a good texture and carry an intense candy-like burst of flavor at the start. The main drawback is that the flavor doesn't last long and that once it drains away, you're left with sweetness (or sourness) and not much more.

 Finally, I tried the ramune candy which comes in the plastic blue-green soda bottle in the upper left of the picture at the top of this review. It is made by confectionery powerhouse, Morinaga. If you don't realize it, they're the folks that are delivering HiChew to the world. These are pressed powder candies like SweeTarts, but they are looser and softer than those American sweets. If you bite down on them, they quickly dissolve into a soft blobby bit in your mouth. If you let them dissolve on your tongue, they yield slowly and release the flavor of bubble gum. They're sweet, but not overbearingly so and have a fresh flavor which is hard to pin down.

I actually like powdered candies like this more than the average adult. I'm not sure that I'd keep a stash around the house, but when I happen to buy one or are given one, I enjoy them more than I might expect and that was certainly so with this ramune candy. 

Variety Friday: Happy Meals in Japan

The offerings for Happy Meals toys in Japan at this time cater to both cute-o-philes and car lovers. All images pilfered from McDonald's Japan's web site. 

There has been a lot of hand-wringing and teeth-gnashing in the United States over the past decade or so about nutrition. The devil in most cases is luring you beneath the yellow arches and trying to convince you to inflate your belly and clog your arteries with his salty, fatty patties and starchy fried sticks of death. Nowhere is there more concern than when it comes to what is marketed toward children and what their parents purchase for them. Won't somebody please think of the children!

In America, the way in which the children have been thought of has encompassed a variety of changes at McDonald's including offering sliced apples instead of fries and soda being replaced by milk (low-fat, naturally). For reasons that I'm sure are logical to people who actually have children, they also decided that toys had to be taken out of American Happy Meals. Perhaps, they want to be sure that kids aren't nearly as happy as they could be about a Happy Meal and are therefore less likely to want one. Certainly, no one thinks that the toys are making kids fat, do they? Well, maybe they do. Sometimes the logic of some people escapes me and, for all I know, plastic crap made in China may be transmitting contact calories.

I had several discussions with various Japanese people with children about food at McDonald's and the "Happy Meals" in particular. Incidentally, "Happy Meals" are called a "Happy Set" in Japan. By no means are the people i spoke with a representative sample of parents and their opinions of McDonald's food or the inclusion of toys with said sets. However, the fact that the toys were displayed prominently in front of my local Mickey D's for years would seem to be an anecdotal indication that there wasn't a public outcry against using them to market fast food to innocents. 

As for what my conversations seemed to reveal, not one person felt that toys were the proverbial apple leading children out of the gustatory Eden of traditional Japanese cuisine. While they did believe that the toys may make kids want to buy the meals in order to get the toys, they said that it was the parents responsibility to make a choice about what to do. In fact, they said that, if they wanted the toys for the kids, they could simply buy the food to get the toy and throw the food away if they were so worried about the nutritional content of fast food. Indeed, many of the parents felt the kids weren't all that interested in the food in many cases anyway.

Menu options for a "happy set" in Japan. Click to see a larger, more legible version. 

The usual "happy set" in Japan does not offer the same "healthy" options as American "Happy Meals". In fact, it arguably offers less healthy options as you can choose from among a hamburger, cheese burger, chicken nuggets of small ("petit") pancakes as the main part of the meal. I can only imagine the cries of protest if pancakes were to be an option in America. As the side dish, one can choose fries or sweet corn and the drink options are any small beverage including soft drinks, tea, milk, juice, and milkshakes. Of course, you can also choose a toy option. Currently, people can have "Hello Kitty" toys or "Voov" miniature vehicles. The 15-second promotional commercials for these toys are very stereotypical in that only little boys are shown with the cars and mainly little girls are with the kitty-chan toys. You can view these commercials on the lower right hand side of the "Happy Set" page at present (but I'm sure they'll vanish in the future after this promotion ends). 

(Warning: Subjective conclusions and editorial commentary ahead!) One of the things that I concluded about living in Japan is that overall food culture as opposed to specific aspects of that culture is extremely powerful in shaping the health and bodies of the people and that the causes of the lifestyle problems in the U.S. which relate to lifestyle diseases (heart disease, diabetes, etc.) are not the result of the presence of unhealthy or fast food. There is a load of equally unhealthy food in Japan. When Americans try to fix childhood obesity by offering kids apples instead of fries, milk instead of soda, and taking away their toys, they're fixing a broken finger by putting a band-aid on a stubbed toe. Sure, they're both on the body, but one doesn't fix the other. The problem isn't the presence of empty calories being marketed with things kids will nag their parents to get them. The issue is an overall food culture that sees the frequency and volume as such things as being much higher than can support a healthy body. The Japanese, at least for the time being, are still in a place food culture-wise where they don't eat too much of such things too often. Parents don't care about the contents of a Happy Meal/Set because they care about food otherwise. They're not looking at taking their kid's to fast food places often enough for it to be an issue. They're looking at the whole day and entire composition of their children's diet. That's not to say that they never will care, nor that obesity rates aren't increasing in Japan, too (they are). However, for now, the kids can keep their toys, their fries, and even have pancakes if they want them and no one is going to scream "won't somebody please think of the children!"

Taishyo Ame

As I grew increasingly bored by the sweets on offer in usual venues (convenience stores, supermarkets, snack shops) in Tokyo, I started to look further afield for interesting items. During my last year in Japan, I happened to work near not one, not two, but three shops specializing in regional sweets. One of them sold items from Hokkaido, including the Guarana soda I reviewed previously. It was at that very shop (in Shinjuku, near the Southern Terrace exit), I found this little bit of candy for 50 yen (about 60 cents).

I like old-fashioned packaging, and often was drawn to candy merely by such packaging. Unfortunately, what lured the foreign snack review blogger didn't necessarily draw in the jaded locals, who often saw such candy as something their parents or grandparents ate. Let's face it, this is not the sort of thing that people are going to be loudly shouting about in television commercials. It's far more likely to be welded to the bottom of your granny's pocketbook after being forgotten over a hot summer.

The company that makes this is called Kibidango and they make a relatively small range of traditional treats. I reviewed their "millet dumpling" awhile back with limited enthusiasm. They make the sort of stuff that most foreigners would shun based on the inability to determine what is inside. Even if you bought it based on the packaging, it might scare you away once you saw what was inside. Let's face it, this looks like it may have gone moldy with the little black specks embedded in the whiteness.

Inside the wrapper is a flat little block (18 grams or about half an ounce) covered in oblaat, an edible wrapper which is similar to the types of coatings on (medicinal) capsules. The ingredients list is very short and is only malt syrup, sugar, sesame, and oblaat. The little slab is rather tough and hard to bite into. It's like taffy or hard nougat that you have to fight free from the larger piece in order to take a bite of it. Think of yourself like a dog that is trying to wrest the rag free from your master's hands as you attempt to tear off a bit. After you manage to bite off a piece, it'll slowly become more pliable and taffy-like in your mouth. It'll stick to your teeth like nobody's business and threaten to rip out your fillings.

The question is, is it worth the chewing? The answer is a less than resounding, "yes". The reward is a very nicely flavored bit of black sesame taffy which is has a good, but not cloying or overbearing sweetness. Mind you, I recommend only eating about half of the small portion at once as the sweetness does build up as you eat more. However, I did like the flavor of this quite a lot, but I didn't care for the texture much at all, especially in terms of trying to tear a bit free of the entire smallish piece. I'd say this is worth a try if you like taffy and have good, strong teeth. This gets a "happy" rating, but only barely.

Random Picture #92

Christmas tins, tubs and boots are out in force in Japanese supermarkets. Most kids get only one Christmas present in Japan, and I guess this might be one of them. I have an odd fascination with these things. There's something neat about the large volume of snacks settled in these things, though the truth is that most of the food in them is pretty low-rent stuff and the whole is not worth the sum of the parts. These canisters, which are made of plastic, are probably supposed to be used for some other purpose when the snacks are consumed (possibly a trash can?).

Though I kind of want to try one of these, the truth is that I don't like that cat and I can't bring myself to spend 1000 yen (about $13) knowing I'm contributing to its continued presence on this planet, no matter how alluring a barrel full of random snacks is to me. 

Yaokin Vegetable Salad Umaibo

Some time ago, I bought a variety pack of Yaokin salted snacks which included 5 varieties of "umaibo". "Umai" is "delicious" and "bo" means stick. I figured that this would cover pretty much all of the umaibo I'd ever want or need to sample. These are very cheap kid's snacks, and tend to be a bit greasy, nicely crispy, and fairly flavorful. Their main appeal is in the texture, which is a large airy corn puff, and their relatively strong natural corn flavor. Though they come in different flavors, but are generally a similar experience with a backbone of savory flavors like garlic, onion, chicken, beef and pork with another flavor layer added into the mix as the dominant one. Their main appeal, frankly, is that they are incredibly cheap and come with sometimes amusing package designs.

The reason I find myself reviewing another umaibo is not that the package is claiming that they have added more deliciousness (umai uppu!), but rather that my husband was handed a magazine in a plastic bag that also included this umaibo. Free snacks! All you have to do is be on the right street corner when someone is handing out a magazine which is almost all advertising and almost no actual content. If you want to buy one for yourself, they'll set you back about 10 yen (13 cents) at most supermarkets or snack shops.

Though this claims to be "vegetable" flavor, it smells rather fishy. I'm not sure why that should be because it doesn't taste fishy. In fact, it's hard to pin down what it tastes like at all because there is a general melange of spices. The ingredients list includes cabbage, onion, bell pepper, potato, and garlic seasonings. It tastes pretty good in the way that things that are very, very bad for you can taste. There is so much oil on the exterior that placing it on a tissue to take a picture left an oily spot on it.

Since I didn't buy this, I can't really speak to "buying it again", but if someone gave me another one for free, I'd certainly eat one again. All of these Yaokin snacks are economical salted snack niceness. There's no nutrition data on these, but I imagine they're made with damaged fats and have little of redeeming value. Still, the portion size is smallish and the texture is good and they are flavorful. Next time someone gives you one for free, I recommend taking it.

Glico Bisco Banana and Strawberry

Bisco is one of those things I've seen for decades but never expected to sample. This is because the front of the package depicts a baby and I assume these are biscuits for teething children. My view on this matter did not change, but was rather changed for me when I bought a small package of Collon for review. I didn't heed the signs very well and when I got to the check-out counter, I was told that I needed to buy three of the small packaged snacks for 100 yen ($1.24) so I rushed over to the rack and grabbed two of the first things in the general vicinity of the Collon. They were these two packages of baby biscuits.

So, now that I've spent all of 66 yen on these, I'm going to review them no matter how silly I feel eating food marketed for little kids. Based on the image on the package, these are pretty darn close to being teething biscuits... not that I'm embarrassed or anything to be gnawing on something designed for people who have no teeth. I probably will, one day, also have no teeth, though with no hope of new ones coming in.

Each little cookie is about half the size of an Oreo with a smidge of cream filling inside. The machines that make these aren't particularly careful about how they assemble them. The bottom of the cookie is sometimes the top (as you can see by the one on the right above). Each smells a bit of the fruit it is supposed to be. Both are comprised of the same fairly bland, cracker-like cookies sandwiching a modestly sweet filling with good, but not overpowering banana and strawberry flavors.

I liked these, to be perfectly honest. They're certainly not an Oreo or Nutter Butter or super sweet sandwich cookie, but I really liked the flavor of the outer biscuit. It has a real sense of being an old-fashioned baked cookie which wasn't formulated to get people addicted to eating tons of them. They're made with wheat germ which brings in a somewhat earthier flavor than usual for a cookie. Each packet has only five cookies (approximately 20 calories each, about half the total size of an Oreo) stacked on top of each other. They pair well with tea.

Would I buy these again? Absolutely. I might not buy them a lot, but if I was at work and wanted a little packet of cookies to have as a snack, these would suit me better than some sugary alternatives. That being said, I'm not sure they're going to be that appealing to people who aren't very keen on whole grains and less sweet biscuits.

Random Picture #70

This picture was taken during cherry blossom viewing season at Ueno Park. It illustrates something about eating in public in Tokyo and that's that the birds are bold and opportunistic when they encounter someone snacking in public. Pigeons are the usual moochers, but there are often signs telling people not to feed them. Fortunately for this big, black crow, no such prohibition is made on them. Shortly after this picture was taken, the little boy shared his caramel corn with the crow... or dropped some of it to distract that big beak while he made a getaway.

Toy Story Kaputchyo Chocolate Caramel Corn Snack

Cereal isn't very popular in Japan as a breakfast food or snack. My husband and I once had a Japanese guest in America who we offered a plethora of cereal options to for breakfast, and he turned up his nose at all of them. He said that it wasn't enough food for him and that he needed eggs, soup, and rice for breakfast. Of course, this was a young, adult male, and he wasn't prepared to actually cook any of that for himself. He expected that it'd just magically appear in front of him, much as it did when he was at home and his mother just served up a fortifying meal for him.

However, cereal is popular in Japan as part of snacks, however. Mugi-choco, which resembles chocolate-covered puffed wheat cereal is available in a variety of sizes, price ranges, and quality variations. There is also the rice puff and corn puff snacks with a sugary coating that are especially popular during the doll's festival. Though they wouldn't recognize this fact, Japanese people would be very comfortable eating dry, sweet cereal out of the box like some Americans do if they realized that it is little different than what they're already doing.

This Toy Story chocolate-covered, caramel corn snack is little more than a corn puff cereal. In fact, with it's relatively light sweetness and somewhat strong caramel flavor, it'd probably be right at home in a bowl in front of a hyperactive child enjoying Saturday morning cartoons. That's not to say I'm encouraging anyone to buy it and douse it in milk. I'm guessing it hasn't been engineered not to go soggy in milk like real cereal is. The whole cup has 163 calories.

I got this as part of my New Year's fukubukuro, but this is part of Lotte's line of "kaputchyo" line which uses popular cartoon characters to market these types of sweets to children. They're all sold in 30-some gram (about 1 oz.) plastic cups with colorful designs and a "toy prize" (a sticker) inside. That brings the kid's cereal analogy closer to full circle. There are also chocolate and strawberry versions with Doraemon and Rilakkuma on their labels respectively.

If you're the type of person who likes to eat sugar cereal dry out of the box, this might float your boat, but I wasn't exactly doing cartwheels. I'm not a fan of cereal in particular anymore. This tasted decent enough, but it is a kid's snack and therefore lacking in depth of taste. It's sweet, rather strongly caramel with a hint of cheap chocolate, but that makes it inoffensive, not good.