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.

Mintia Summer Powerful Plum

Beavis and Butthead is coming back to MTV, and this may seem like a strange association, but I sampled this Mintia in honor of their return. If you weren't around during this particular era, the dynamic dimwits used to hawk Mintia in Japan. I'm not really much of a mint fan, which is odd since I've become such a gum fan and the two tend to go hand in hand and I never tried Mintia before this. However, I do like Beavis and Butthead, and you can reach whatever conclusions that you like about me as a consequence of that admission. I'm secure enough in my intellect not to feel that liking really dumb comedy reflects poorly on me. Really. I'm not insecure. Nope.

I chose this flavor because it's about as Japanese a flavor as one is going to get. There are little blobs of what look like umeboshi (pickled plum) dancing over a Hiroshige-style wave. The little banner on the right is reminiscent of those that hang outside of shops, particularly when they advertise Japanese shaved ice (kakigori). I found this at Family Mart convenience store for 120 yen ($1.54) and snapped it up in a rush before heading back to work.

Plum can be a bit of a risky flavor in Japan, as I learned when a student once gave me a hard candy flavored with "ume". It was a horrendous mix of sour vinegar flavors and sweet sugary flavor with harsh plum. When I popped the top on this, it smelled funky, but also familiar. I recognized it as a scent reminiscent, but far from identical to umeboshi. This was worrying, but I gamely tried them anyway. Each mint is extremely tiny. In fact, I'd wager they are 1/3 to 1/2 the size of a Tic Tac. I had to eat about 3 at once to get a sense of the taste.

As for the flavor, it has the slight tang and sour flavor of pickled plum with a decent level of sweetness. It's an odd combo, but it works. In fact, it worked so well that I rubbed a sore spot on my tongue sucking on these things repeatedly. They're pressed powder and a bit abrasive so if you stupidly overdo it, like I did, then you're going to regret it. I was surprised at how much I loved these, but they may not "work" for everyone.

Yotchan Tiger Brothers Plums

One of my students told me a story awhile ago about a friend of hers. When the friend was a child, she wanted to have some more "umeboshi" at dinner. Umeboshi, or pickled plums, are like pickled green olives back home. They're small and salty and are generally eaten in small quantities. Her mother didn't want her to have more because they have so much sodium and too many are bad for your health.

My students friend had a bout of night eating on the evening that her mother said no to her umeboshi desires. She sleep-walked to the kitchen and ate an entire jar of them. Her mother took her to the hospital the next day because she was afraid all of that salt might kill her. She was given fluids and lived, and her mother decided not to deny her second and third helpings on the pickled plums anymore.

One wouldn't think something which is equivalent to an olive would be something kids would go for, but I found this pack of 3 pickled plums in the kid's snacks section. It was next to the marble choco and curry corn snacks. This pack was 21 yen (25 cents) and is made by a company called "Yotchan". They make a lot of very cheap kid's snacks that could be included in these two weeks of weird because most of it is gnarled seaweed, plum, and various bits of contorted, dried out bits wrapped in plastic. Note that these pickled plums are dyed and the company also sells a version which is grayer and less colorful which are not visually enhanced.

Since I've been in Japan for a long time, and I've been in my share of restaurants, I've had umeboshi before. The truth is that I rather like the ones I've had. They're sour and sometimes mushy and somethings a quite firm (almost hard). They have a distinctive smell which is hard to relate to anything one has experienced back home. It's mainly a combination of the plum scent and a quasi-vinegary smell, but these are not made with vinegar.

These pickled plums are the firm type, and they have a pit inside of them. They're very hard, like an unripened peach. They're sour and salty like most umeboshi, but they also have a weird sweetness to them which I haven't encountered in these before. One of the ingredients is Stevia, and I really don't think it's doing anything for these.

Even though I like umeboshi, I didn't like these because of that strange sweetness. I'm also more of a fan of the softer pickled plums than the hard ones, though I generally find the harder ones okay as well. I wouldn't buy these again, and I don't plan to eat the rest of them.

If you're interested in some desktop wallpapers with Yotchan's mascot, you can download some here.

If you'd like to share your experiences with weird foods and enter a contest for a chance to win a silly prize, please read this post and make a comment. 

Pure Plum Gummy

I love the line of Pure gummy candies. I've reviewed a few of them in the past, and have sampled a few that haven't made the blog. The introduction of an ume (plum) version intrigued me because I'm generally a fan of sour Japanese plums and thought there was good potential in the sweet and sour combination in Pure's gummy candy.


These Pure gummies are made similarly to all the other types. They are firm gummies that are slightly tough and covered in citric acid powder. They're both sweet and sour at the same time. With flavors like lemon, blueberry, orange, etc., this works very well. With plum, it didn't work quite so well. Strong plum flavor isn't pleasant. It's like over the top banana flavor in that way. There is a reason that you don't find many people spreading plum jam on their toast or drinking plum juice.

These were okay, and I enjoyed the same sour and sweet mixture that is used in all Pure gummies, but I simply didn't find the plum flavor very pleasant. There's nothing wrong with these, and someone else might find them more pleasant than I. I think I'll stick to more conventional flavors from now on.

Ume (Plum) Soda KitKat

In summer in Japan, it's common for people to make plum wine (ume-shu) by themselves. I'm guessing that part of the motivation in choosing this as a summer flavor is related to the fondness people feel for their refreshing tipple of ume-shu. Another part of it though is that Nestle Japan did a survey and this flavor came out as the third most popular. There's nothing like a little market research to help churn out yet another KitKat flavor.

My husband picked this bar up at New Days convenience store in Shinjuku. It was released on July 13, and I was at a Family Mart at exactly that date scoping out new limited edition KitKats and came up empty. This seems to be slow in hitting the shelves, or it may possibly be only available at New Days. I can't be sure.


The back of the box says that the white chocolate outer coating is mixed with plum flavoring. The cream between the wafers comes with plum and what is essentially a kind of quasi-sour "soda" powder. The flavor is like a fizzy soda candy that you may have bought as a kid. It's tart, and has an Alka Seltzer quality on your tongue. Two fingers have 99 calories.


This bar smells and looks a lot like the KitKat Muscat of Alexandria. It's a generic fruity smell. It does taste like green plum soda though. The problem is that it's too sweet and the slightly sour plum flavor with chlorophyll overtones followed by a small soda-like bite just doesn't work as a combination. I think this would be a lot better with more of the soda powder in the filling to add more tartness to it. In fact, I only detected the soda powder on the first bite. It faded fast and vanished on the second bite.

I didn't find this offensive, but I can easily see other people disliking it rather intensely. This is definitely one for the more tolerant types out there. I don't think I'll be finishing the rest of it because I would prefer not to waste the calories on something I don't really enjoy.

This is also reviewed at Jen's KitKat review blog here.