Random Picture #190

Some time back, I reviewed the liquid version of one of the three candies pictured above. These three flavors are super pickled plum (umeboshi), super soda (ramune - like lemon lime usually) and, rather obviously, super lemon. On the first bag, the caption is, "Ah, suppai," which means "sour". It can also  mean "acidic" but umeboshi are quite sour. 

The interesting thing about these intense candies is that the brand given here is "Nobel". The liquid version, which is clearly the same brand as the graphics are identical, was made by Japan Tobacco. I'm guessing JT licensed the flavor for a beverage because Nobel (or "J-bel" as it sometimes calls itself) has been making candy under that name since 1949. 

One interesting thing about the web page for all of Nobel's hard candies is that they have little descriptions under them and one or the other is highlighted to tell consumers what sort of product it is. The options are "basic", "healthy", "handy", and "fashion & casual". These candies are all listed as "basic". It strikes me as a way of marketing which essentially says, "this is our boring" candy, and a very strange way to promote a product. I'm guessing this is one of those cultural differences that I haven't figured out yet.

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. 

Random Picture #164

In Japan, "soda" refers to "ramune", which is an odd chemical concoction which resembles bubblegum at times and club soda mixed with funky chemical sweeteners at others. I think that ramune is to Japan as root beer is to the U.S. While I didn't detest ramune or "soda" flavors the same way Japanese folks did root beer, it wasn't something I'd tend to seek out.

Therefore, I would never buy this "Gari Gari Kun" popsicle, at least not to eat it. I would consider buying it so that I could cut out the picture on the front of the box, punch two holes in each side and wear it like a mask on my face to frighten small children at Halloween. Gari Gari Kun remains the most unappealing mascot I have ever encountered in my life and his visage never does anything other than make me want to turn away in horror at his enormous maw and bizarrely positioned nostrils. Don't even get me started on his codpiece (as portrayed in the previously linked post).

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. 

Calpis KitKat Mini

This is a party which I am arriving very late at for various reasons. The primary one is that this particular mini, which is a collaboration between drink maker Calpis and Nestlé Japan, was available in limited stores (Family Mart was the only place I saw it on offer), it was only available as part of a 13-unit bag, and it was too expensive. Usually, I can get bags of mini bars for 199-250 yen ($2.27-$2.85) and I only saw this for 278 yen ($3.17). And I try to avoid buying a lot of something which is an unknown and of dubious taste value. Let's face it. This is the sort of thing which one could easily find oneself disliking.

Essentially, I was waiting for just the right opportunity to buy this, and one did not come along for quite some time. I don't know if this was one of the very few "under-produced" KitKat flavors or if it just sold so incredibly well that no leftovers made their way to the bargain shops, but I didn't find a discounted one for a few months. Most Japanese KitKat specialty flavors hit the bargain bins in a month or so and seem to sit there for quite awhile.

A new discount snack shop opened on the other side of my neighborhood, and one hot evening I chanced upon it. Bags of these bars were sitting nonchalantly in a cardboard box outside the shop for 199 yen ($2.27) each. The shop owner was very keen to be of service and as I wandered around his empty shop, he tried to foist samples of very familiar bubbly sembei on me. I declined, twice. Though I do like that sembei, I wasn't hungry. The shop also had free cold green tea on offer. I'll have to revisit them soon and see if their solicitous behavior is ongoing or just an opening gesture from a new shop.

Getting back to these KitKats, which are actually less interesting than the service I got at the shop, I didn't quite know what to expect from them considering that I've only had Calpis in its non-original state a few times. Frankly, I was hoping it'd have more of a yogurt flavor than it did. There is definitely a bit of a "soda" flavor going on. I think the powder between the wafers must be made with ramune (Japanese lemon-lime soda) flavor. The filling reminded me of blue "soda" flavored fizzy candies I used to have as a child. I wondered if Nestlé Japan recycled part of the ingredients or formula for the ramune bar it released last summer.

The outside coating had a little bit of a yogurt flavor, but was so much sweeter than it was sour that it just seemed like a relatively generic white chocolate with the vaguest hint of something else. Frankly, the chocolate was quite similar to the Calpis I sampled awhile back; it was like greatly watered down yogurt mixed with slightly tart lemon-lime.

This is a decent candy bar, but nothing to write home about. I'll either slowly eat the rest of the bag when my sweet tooth beckons me or slowly give away the rest of it. I can't say "don't buy this", but I also wouldn't say "go out of your way to buy this." It's interesting, but ultimately not all that incredible. This was clearly a corporate match that was done for the marketing value rather than the potential for a winning combination of flavors.

Plus X Cube Citrus Soda Mint Gum

Lotte looked at gum and decided that it was time to bring it into the future. While most gums are in sticks or in little Chicklet-style rounded bricks, Lotte decided that a more sophisticated form would enhance the chewing experience. They have delivered gum in cube form. I'm sure that it got an exclusive in "Chewing" magazine when it was first introduced.

The "Cube" line of gum has been around for awhile, but I've ignored it mainly because most of the flavors haven't really tickled my fancy. This is mainly because they are pairings of citrus flavors with mint and I'm not a fan of things like "muscat mint", "cherry mint", and "apricot mint." When I was searching for gum to keep my throat moist during the dry winter in Tokyo, I came across this citrus soda mint with the hopes that the "mint" element wouldn't be too much to bear.


Besides being, cube-shaped, this gum is also very unusual because the pieces aren't individually wrapped. There are just 10 cubes tossed into the box. The odd thing is that there is a small pad of Post-It notes tucked into the flap under the top of the box. I'm not sure what the office supplies are for, but I suspect that they may be for wrapping up your used gum. Or, perhaps the notion of a "cube" extends to the "cubicle" and therefore relates to working. I rather doubt this though since most Japanese people work in what is called an "open office plan" and do not have partitions between their work spaces. They all just sit next to and across from each other.

The gum has a slightly crunchy exterior and hits you with a burst of "soda" (ramune) and lemony citrus flavor as you bite into the cube. This makes the gum seem sugary, but it's actually made with artificial sweeteners (including Sucralose). The pieces are quite small so some people may feel better chewing two at once. The mint element of it is fairly subdued but discernible. The initial strong flavor goes away at about the same time as the granular, gritty portion of the exterior starts to fade away and the flavor steadily mellows and fades away. I'd say the flavor lasts for about 10 minutes of chewing.

This is by far my favorite gum in Japan because I love the texture. The crunchy outside is very satisfying. It's almost like eating a piece of candy at first. I actually sampled one of the other flavors, apricot mint, because I was so pleased with the texture of this one, but the flavor combination really didn't do it for me. I hope that Lotte puts out more flavor variations, preferably some without mint. For now though, I'm more than happy to buy this again when I'm in need of gum.

Fanta Zero Cider

My husband has been a fan of Fanta flavors since before he came to Japan. I, however, grew up too poor to buy the fancy Fanta fruit flavored drinks. My family always bought the sort of store brand sodas that you could find for about a dime or less a can. When Fanta flavors started showing up in Japan, my husband got excited and I just sort of shrugged my shoulders.

At present, Fanta grape is stocked in most stores as is the odd orange. Neither of these come in the "Zero" calorie-free variety. Recently, a lemon zero -calorie flavor showed up which my husband has become a big fan of and I think is pretty good, but it's not the sort of thing I really crave. Since we had good experiences with the lemon flavor, I decided to try out this zero variety of "cider".


I should make one point clear, however. I did not expect this "cider" to be actual "cider". In fact, I had a suspicion based on the bottle design that this was going to be one of the ramune flavors that makes the rounds every summer. The fact that the soda is completely clear is a bit of a tip-off to the fact that there are no apples in it.

When I gave the open bottle a sniff, it smelled like bubble gum. In fact, it was very much like the ramune KitKat from an olfactory viewpoint. The first taste was actually pretty good. It tasted like bubblegum-flavored candy in liquid form. There was a bit of a weird aftertaste though. Unfortunately, the aftertaste grew in strength the more I drank. By the end of half a bottle of it, I was finding it hard to ignore what I believe is the erythritol flavor. Since this is the first ingredient, that's not much of a surprise.

I went from having a "happy sumo" rating in mind after the first sip to an "indifferent" one by the end because of the artificial sweetener aftertaste. I wanted to like this more than I did. In fact, I wanted to find it appealing enough to revisit it since there are so few zero calorie sodas in Japan. While the bubblegum flavor is nice, the aftertaste kills it.

Ramune KitKat Mini

My husband and I were perusing a discount snack shop and they had a sign up that said that the next KitKat flavor to be released on June 16, 2009 will be "ramune" flavor. Ramune is a Japanese "soda" flavor which has a distinctive bottle that has a marble in it. It comes in different flavors but was originally a lemon-lime flavor mix, but there are actually a variety of flavors which are sold as ramune.

When I first came to Japan, I thought of ramune as "weird blue" flavor since it seemed a lot of the "soda" flavor candies and drinks were blue. It's not a bad flavor, but it's not really that great either. My guess is that most of the ramune that I've sampled is artificially flavored and therefore not the best quality.

The interesting thing is that, like many "Japanese" foods, ramune is actually something brought to Japan by a European person. In this case, a Scotsmen. One thing that sometimes irks me is that I'll see people talking about recipes for "Japanese bread" or "Japanese cheesecake" or whatnot. Prior to various Europeans introducing certain types of food culture, Japan didn't have a culture which included traditional baking with wheat (or almond) flour. There really is no such thing as "Japanese bread" or "Japanese cake" which is put in an oven and baked. There are only European recipes which are popular in Japan.

At any rate, ramune is actually a phonetic approximation of "lemonade". Le = Ra (ラ), Mo = Mu (ム), Nade = Ne (ネ). This may not make sense just looking at the spelling, but keep in mind that Japanese uses phonetic characters which, for the most part, are consonant vowel pairs and not single letters and "lemonade" doesn't use a "lee" sound, but a "lay". There are some sounds in English that the Japanese can't reproduce because they don't exist in their language.


At any rate, it is a logical choice for a summer KitKat release to choose a beverage that is so linked with the change of season in Japan. The choice Nestle Japan will make in terms of flavor is also an interesting one. Given that there is variation in ramune flavors in sweets and sodas, they had some flexibility.

When you open the package, the first thing you smell is bubble gum. The bars are pale bluish-green and about half the length of the usual KitKat finger. I paid 30 yen (about 30 cents) for one mini bar at 7-11. You can buy big bags of these for about 300-350 yen ($3-$3.45) and get 20 bars at once, but I preferred to pay more and get less for an unknown candy.

The first bite of this is of distinct and clear, but good, bubble gum flavor. Despite being a white chocolate-based KitKat, it's not overpoweringly sweet. The finishing flavor is like fizzy sour candy that you had as a kid. You know, the sort which you got for Halloween and put in a glass of water sometimes to see how it dissolved and then if you were really brave, you drank the water.

I thought this was pretty good and my husband loved it. In fact, he's considering buying a whole large bag of the mini bars to keep around as a sweet at work. I'd definitely buy these again, though I probably won't have the chance given how short-lived these specialty flavor KitKats seem to be these days. If you can sample this, I'd recommend you do unless you really dislike bubble gum flavor.