Citrus Golden Blend KitKat

I have whined before that I would not fork over 840 yen ($10.23) for boxes of region-specific KitKats. There is something about standing in an airport knowing that this is the last time I'll be there and have a chance to turn my nose up at these somewhat expensive candy bars that makes me put my nose back down and plunk down my yen. There are lots of regional KitKats around, and many had been for sale just down the street from where I used to work in Shinjuku. With the knowledge that I can no longer go down the street to buy such things in the forefront of my mind, I bought this and another box of regional KitKats for review.

These KitKats represent the regions of Chugoku and Shikoku, both of which grow citrus fruit and I'm guessing that is pretty much where any regional connection is born and passes gracefully away. I say they "represent" because clearly they aren't only sold there if you can buy them at Narita International Airport. The fruit blend is sudachi, mikan (a Japanese tangerine), and lemon. I have seen sudachi before, but thought it was a lime. It's supposed to be zestier than lemons and limes, and I'm pretty sure that I've had it in various Japanese dishes.

The bar smells like a mixture of lemon, orange, and white chocolate. The first burst of flavor is definitely a pretty nice juicy orange task followed by a very mellow lemon. I only ate one small bar (as that would be one serving size), and thought it was pretty good. With any white chocolate candy, I'm mainly hoping that the sweetness doesn't overwhelm and it isn't too cloying. Getting depth of flavor rather than some one-note overbearing taste, is a bonus, and I'm pleased to say that this has that going for it as well.

There are 12 mini bars in one box and each is 69 calories. Breaking down the price, each bar is 70 yen (85 cents), which is not a ridiculous price, but still more expensive than buying regular 4-finger boxes of specialty or regular KitKats. However, this is a pretty tasty variation and worth at least one sampling, especially if you are a fan of citrus white chocolate candy. It may not be the requisite "weird Japanese KitKat" flavor, but at least it's good.

Kan-etsu Mikan Gelatin Dessert

When I first searched for this company as part of my research, I came across a company with exactly the same name and a Japanese domain name which did construction. For a moment, I wondered if this was some mutant food product created from industrial chemicals that usually go into building houses. Perhaps the construction company wanted to diversify their business model by branching out into calorie-free desserts. Fortunately, I came across the food making Kan-etsu, which has a non-Japanese domain name (.com, not .co.jp)

I found this at Peacock supermarket while I was searching for cheese for my husband's sandwiches for lunch. I had been driven to Japanese cheese because it seems all or most of the Costcos in Japan have been shut down since the quake. More than a month after the quake, the Tamasakai branch that we usually go to was barred and denying us access to the Colby Jack cheese and cheap Starbucks espresso beans that we so desperately need. In desperation, I bought 8 small (18 gram/.63 oz.) plastic-wrapped slices for a whopping 278 yen ($3.42), and this 100-gram pack of gelatin for a mere 98 yen ($1.21). There were 4 flavors on offer - coffee, grape, mikan (Japanese tangerine), and grapefruit. The retail price is 148 yen ($1.82), so this was a "bargain".

The first bite has a nice hit of orange (mikan) flavor followed by unpleasant bitterness. I assume this is related to the aspartame and Sucralose that sweetens it. After two or three bites, the bitterness goes away and the sweetness amplifies. Unfortunately, the orange flavor also mellows with future bites. The gelatin, which is made with Japanese agar agar rather than animal products, is shelf stable (doesn't require refrigeration), but quite soft at any temperature.

This is a fairly large serving of gelatin, and though it claims it is zero calories, it's actually 5 calories for the whole 100 grams (3.5 oz.). That probably comes form the orange flavoring which is from fruit juice concentrate. It also has added antioxidants. The whole point of this is to fill a craving for dessert or to fill a grumbling belly when you don't want to eat something more fattening. To that end, it does work, though I believe the sugar-free Jell-O gelatin, which I haven't had for about 4 years but can still recall, tastes a bit better. Both this gelatin and Jell-O brand (sugar-free) have an aftertaste from the artificial sweeteners, but the latter has a more citric acid zest to it which makes it taste more like orange.

If you're trying to reduce your calories, and desperate to quiet a grumbling belly, this will do you. I wouldn't expect too much from it though and I don't think I'd buy it again. There are better calorie-free gelatin/jelly options out there that will fill the bill as well or better.

Pon Juice Orange Mikan Gummy

It's interesting to realize that I've had two "Pon Juice" products, but I've never seen nor sampled the juice itself. In my world, it seems as though the juice is named for an actual fruit, rather than a brand name for a product. One of these days, I hope to stumble across the juice itself and give it a review. In the meantime, I'll content myself with the sweeties made in its image.

I found the gummi candies at Okashi no Marche discount snack shop. It was only 99 yen ($1.15) for a 36 gram (1.3 oz.) bag. There are 9 candies in the bag and each is 13 calories, so it's 112 calories if you put away the whole thing.These are made by a company named "Sakuma Seika" and this is the first time I haven't reviewed their products before because they mainly make hard candies and those types of products are a small portion of my reviews. Their motto is "basic and gourmet".

When you open the foil packet, you can smell a lovely, sweet orange juice scent. The gummies themselves are two-tone and semi-translucent. They have little bumps on them to resemble real oranges, though I wasn't fooled. I knew it wasn't an orange because I've never seen one this small... not even in Japan!

The texture is typical gummi, though it's important to note that these were fresh and relatively soft. It had just the right amount of pliability coupled with chewiness. The flavor is like a sweet, juicy orange. Both orange and mikan are ingredients as are oblaat (the stuff used to make capsules for medicine) and gelatin.

These are quite tasty and seem like "adult" gummies. If you're a fan of gummi candy and orange, you almost certainly can't do better than these. I give these "only" a "happy" rating (rather than "very happy") because I'm not the hugest gummi fan in the world, not because they weren't damn tasty.

7-11 Mikan Bar Ice Candy

Sometimes I wonder what inspires a particular business to consistently stock something. For instance, why do Natural Lawson's stock a lot of Fuwa Fuwa marshmallow treats? Why does Family Mart stock a ton of kid's candy? Well, okay, it is called "family" mart, but I'm not sure that anyone takes it literally. I see plenty of people in there who are too scary to have ever married, let alone produced any offspring. This question is on my mind because 7-11 seems to stock sherbet-based frozen confections and no other shop appears to do so (at least not in my area). Previously, I got the yummy yuzu sherbet (that sounds like a brand name, or the name of some cartoon fruit mascot, "Yummy Yuzu") and now they have these mikan "ice candy" bars.

The thing that really draws my attention to these sorts of things, besides the fact that they are sherbet and I can't get it in many places, is the low calorie count per bar. At 62 calories per 60 ml. (2 oz.) bar, they're a very modest treat. The price is also very reasonable at 198 yen ($2.14) per 5 bars. It's the sort of thing that is nice to have around as the temperatures start to do their usual May fluctuations between cold enough for a comforter and so hot you're sweating in the sun.

Orange treats often have a distinctive scent, even when they are fake, but these didn't smell like much of anything other than a generic ice pop (Popsicle) scent. The bars are similar to the "cream bars" that I reviewed previously in that they have a hard ice pop outer shell with a softer interior. At the top of the bar, the shell is very thick, but it is much thinner through most of the center and it's easier to concentrate on the sherbet as the shell easily shatters when you get to the middle. The sherbet center has the sort of texture you'd expect and is sweet and tangy with classic orange sherbet notes. Note that this uses 40% mikan (a Japanese orange that is sweet and flavorful) juice.

This bar is a little sweeter than I'd like, but really quite good. I can say wholeheartedly that I'd buy this again because this review is actually of the second box that I purchased. I hope 7-11 keeps these around for awhile because I'd like to be able to keep buying them throughout the summer.

Akagi Mikan Ice Pops

When I was a kid, my mother used to buy enormous boxes of Popsicles with a variety of flavors in them. I recall there being at least 4, possibly 5 flavors - grape, orange, cherry, and lemon or lime. The only thing I know for sure is that the kid-preferred first choice was grape. Once grape was gone, orange was second. Grudgingly, cherry came third and whatever that last flavor was was only consumed in absolute Popsicle desperation.

As an adult, I favor orange over grape, though I hadn't had anything resembling a Popsicle for decades before buying this box of Japanese tangerine (mikan) ice pops. I was drawn to them both because the box was entirely made up of orange flavor and each pop only has 48 calories for a 63 ml. (2.1 oz.) bar.

These bars are made by Akagi, a company which I was unfamiliar with until I did a little research on the web about them. Their web site has an extremely annoying flash-based interface which my Mac was a bit flaky with, but I tunneled through it nonetheless. They also have an extremely obnoxious-looking mascot named "Gari" that dances all over their web interface with his huge maw gaping at you like some deranged pervert. Anyway, Akagi makes a wide variety of frozen confections similar to these mikan pops. The best known is likely their pop version of the chocolate milk beverage, Milo.


There are five ice pops in the box and each is a good size for a frozen treat. They're neither too small nor too big. Really can't smell much from them if you give them a sniff, but you can see pulpy bits of tangerine embedded in the bar as darker orange spots. The fruit flavor is quite subtle and realistic. The first ingredient is tangerine juice and the second is "fruit". This is followed by grape sugar (which is essentially fructose) and sugar. The fact that juice and fruit are listed as greater components than any of the sugars is probably why these aren't sickly sweet and have such a refreshing real fruit flavor.

I really liked these and will definitely buy them again. They are a very adult version of a Popsicle and relatively healthy for a frozen confection. The only reservation I have about them is that the pulpy parts can be a bit distracting if you like to suck on the bars instead of bite into them. Once you run across the fruit pieces, you really have to bite into the bar and that shortens the pleasurable experience. If you like mikan, I wholeheartedly recommend giving these a try.

Mikan Fruit from an 8,000 Year-Old Tree

Mikan is a variety of mandarin orange that is grown and quite popular in Japan, but originated in China. It's very popular in the winter and is used as part of a traditional decoration (kagami mochi), topping two balls of mochi (rice cake). Around this time of year, they are cheap and available everywhere. I'm pretty sure that most people don't actually have to buy them as they seem to be given away in great quantity. The particular mikan I'm going to write about today were given to me as part of a "first meeting of the new year" gift.

Very few snacks are more common in Japan in winter than mikan. Japanese folks have been known to just sit around the kotatsu (a low heated table) and eat whole bags of them. They're small and relatively mild for a citrus fruit. They're smaller and less fragrant than oranges and less acidic. Usually, they're a little sweet, but there are variations in both juice content and sweetness levels.

Three mikan for size comparison. The biggest one is average in size. The tiny one is about the size of a crab apple or 1.5 strawberries.

The area of Japan most famous for mikan growing is Wakayama and the mikan I was given are from that area. I was actually given two types. Some of them are somewhat smaller than average and the others are absolutely tiny. The tiny ones are the special ones. They were supposedly grown on an 8,000 year old tree in Wakayama or from one of the trees that sprouted from its fallen branches.

How does the fruit of an 8,000 year-old tree taste compared to that of those of a lesser pedigree? It tastes pretty darn good. Of the three mikan above, the tiny one has the least pith and is the sweetest. The largest one has the most pith, is slightly sour, and is the least juicy. (It was not among the fruit I was given as a gift, but part of a bag I bought at a 99 yen shop for comparison.)

The Japanese tend to make a big deal out of the origin of produce or various dishes and how certain foods are a specialty of one area or company or another. I always think that's a bit silly, but I must say that these are very nice little pieces of fruit. I don't know what they cost if you have to buy them, but I'm told you can only buy them at Sembikiya fruit shop in Ginza if you're shopping for them in Tokyo. I'm betting they're not cheap.

Mikan Pocky

Mikan are small Japanese citrus fruits that resemble a tangerine or mandarin orange. They're easy to peel, have no seeds, and you can buy somewhat big bags of them ("big" by Japanese standards is about 8-12) in the winter. Some of my students have told me they can sit down and eat entire bags of 10 or so at one go. They're not incredibly juicy or sweet and have less of a sour or tart flavor than an orange.

My husband and I like mikan and add them into the rotation of affordable fruit we buy when they're in season. "Affordable" fruit in Japan at any given time is a pretty small pool to choose from as it's common for an apple, peach, orange, or grapefruit to cost $1 each for a small to medium-size one. The value of a bag of cheap mikan goes up in light of the cost of other fruit options. Unlike many Japanese folks, we can't eat a whole bag very quickly. One a day tends to be the limit.

Mikan has a distinctive flavor so, when I saw these mikan Pocky, I was rather skeptical about how well the flavor could be reproduced in the coating on a Pocky. Between the bland pretzel and a thin, mild orange-flavored coating, I thought these might be a bit of a dud in the flavor department.


The coating on each stick is extremely thin and translucent. You can see the pretzel marks through the coating in addition to little bits of orange. These Pocky are part of a temporary flavor campaign that boasts "pebbly" (tsubutsubu - つぶつぶ) varieties. Both the mikan variety and a strawberry variety have little bits of fruit in the coating. They state the percentage of real fruit in them on the box cover. The mikan variety has 20% and the strawberry 28%. If you look closely, you can see that even part of the box design has a pebbly surface on it. It's exceptionally detailed design which is so subtle that you only notice if you're paying close attention.

The sticks are only mildly sweet but have a very pleasant orange flavor (which really tastes like tangerines). The flavor balance is perfect. It's not so intense as to be overwhelming, but also not so mild as to be bland. Unlike some of the other sweeter Pocky, there is no artificial sweetener in these. There is "mikan juice powder" which may mean dehydrated fruit juice, but I can't be sure. The oddest ingredient is paprika coloring, but it does fit in with the oft-stated notion that the Japanese don't like artificial coloring so they use coloring derived from nature (beet juice is another coloring agent).

The sticks are light and crunchy and it's very easy to just eat a whole pack at once. Each box contains four 5-stick packs so you get four servings for around 150 yen ($1.40). Each serving is 67 calories so it's not too great an indulgence as long as you can stop at eating one pack.

This is also reviewed here by badmoodguy in paradise, Gigi Reviews, and at the Japanese Snack Food Review blog.