Glico Kaneeza and Ebeeza Crackers (product information)

Images are from Glico.

Some names of products and places sound like they should be the names of something else. This is something which Dave Barry pioneered when he wrote so often about something or other "being a good name for a rock band." However, my husband and I take this more than a step beyond Mr. Barry's convention. We hear a new name and say it would be a good name for, well, whatever category it sounds like it fits in.

The names of these new crackers from Glico, which are named in accord with the "Cheeza" line, bring a certain type of naming to mind... at least to me. When I heard these names, the thing I thought of is that these would make great names for a couple of alien planets in Star Trek. That would be "The Next Generation", not the original series - I'm sure you were thinking the same thing.

Kaneeza (which also reminds one of a contorted sneeze) are crab crackers. Ebeeza (which really sounds like a city in Egypt) are shrimp crackers. If I run across these, I won't touch the shrimp version as I'm a shrimp hater of long-standing and I wouldn't want to endanger my status. I may give the crab version a shot because I used to like crab cakes and I'm guessing these crackers have about as much real crab in them as the average crab cake. That is to say, not very much - Glico says they're 3% crab whereas the Ebeeza ones are 30% shrimp.

These are what are called otsumami in Japan, or snacks to be consumed with alcoholic beverages. I'm guessing that the amount of real crustacean in their cracker will not be among the highest of priorities.

Rice Cracker Arare Mix

When I was growing up, my mother was the queen of buying off-brand and store-brand snacks. I'm pretty sure that we never once procured a bag of Ruffles or a Lays brand product. I'm certain we never purchased anything from Hostess. For us, "Little Debbie" was the highest rung, on the rare occasions when we got that far up the economic snack ladder. I think that we dwelt more in the zone of "Mrs. Freshley's" - that's the "Dollar Tree" brand for those of you who don't find yourselves mucking about at the lower end of the shopping spectrum.

I imagine Japan has its equivalent of "Mrs. Freshleys" (or in the case of salted snacks, Granny Goose), but we foreign folk don't know the difference between their Lays brand (it's probably Calbees) and their cheap brands as we didn't grow up with advertising and pricing fluctuations. Even after having been in Japan for 23 years, I still just grabbed whatever suited my fancy and ignored the price differences. Of course, the price differences weren't nearly as broad there between the high and low snacking ends.

I mention the branding issue because I believe today's snack is the equivalent of the lowest of the low on the sembei front. I paid only a dollar for this at Marukai market and it's the sort of thing that I tended to completely ignore in Japan. The main reason it didn't appeal to me was that there is no specific flavor mentioned. It's just a generic mix of different flavored rice crackers. The only identifying information is the use of the word "arare". That simply lets you know that they will be hard and crunch little bites instead of puffy and airy things.

My expectations of these were suitably low. They got even lower when I gave the back of the bag a closer look and saw that they were made in China. I don't necessarily think that makes them bad, but it does mean that they are made with only the cheapest ingredients and for the least fussy of Japanese consumers - think drunken old men living on limited pensions who will take the cheapest nosh as long as it's salty and crispy.

I should have expected one thing and that was that the pink crackers would be shrimp-flavored. I'm not a fan of shrimp, so this wasn't the best of news. The seaweed-wrapped ones were incredibly fishy and the ones with little dark specs were mainly soy-sauce flavored, though it was rather mild. The light ones were pretty "plain", but most of them were contaminated to some extent by a fishy flavor. This is one of the risks of any sort of mix. In fact, when my husband bought a mint candy at See's they suggested he bag it separately so that it didn't infect every other chocolate. The shrimp and fish insinuated their way into everything in the bag.

Even though I'm not mad about fish and shrimp flavors, I would have found this far more likeable if it weren't for two things. One, they weren't salty enough. All of them could have used a heavier shellacking of soy sauce or salt. Two, they were slightly stale or their texture wasn't as crisp as it might have been. I can forgive and tolerate the flavors infecting one another, but I can't excuse the poor texture. That meant I couldn't finish the bag, much as I hate to waste any food.

Yaokin Ebi Mayo and Chicken Curry Umai Bo

You can probably tell that the one on the left is the chicken curry since there's a picture of a chicken on the package, but I'm going to tell you anyway because I'm pedantic like that.

Today's items come to you (and me) courtesy of Skoshbox. These were part of the monthly goodie box that they sent me a free sample of and reviewed last week. 

When I was a kid, growing up in a run-down rural area of Western Pennsylvania, my parents used to "go out" in the only manner in which someone could in the area in which we lived. The only type of social experience that one could have there was at one of several little watering holes. There weren't any restaurants in the town, at least not at that time. You could go out and eat frozen, deep-fried food out of a plastic basket lined with paper and have a beer, you could stay home, or you could drive about a half hour to an hour away and look for something marginally better. 

My sister and I were too young to go out with our parents, and I imagine it would have been a colossal bore if we had; no kid wants to sit around a dark, dank, smoky room while a bunch of men and a handful of women get either quietly or noisily drunk. The highlight of my parents going out was that they'd often placate us for sitting at home with a babysitter who we hated (and we hated all of them) by bringing back tiny bags of Wise potato chips. I remember being happy when my mother would hand over 1 oz. bags of barbecue chips, and annoyed when she'd pony up plain ones.

For me, Wise brand potato chips are indelibly linked to my childhood. It's not only because they were something that I only ate as a kid, but also that they are associated with the region I grew up in. You can't get them in California. I'm guessing that, similarly, Japanese kids might connect their youth with Yaokin's umai bo. It's a salty snack "stick" which is made of puffed corn, comes in a variety of flavors and costs about 10-20 yen a stick, depending on whether you buy them individually or as part of multi-packs.

The fact that these are designed for kids is clear based on the colorful cartoon designs on the outside as well as the fact that no calorie or nutrition data is included. Kids, after all, do not have to worry about calories, right? That doesn't mean they aren't good for adults, though. It's not like there aren't people of all ages out there who are still eating Cap'n Crunch. 

Sorry for the blue cast. My photo taking situation is a bit odd at present.

The ebi mayo (shrimp mayonnaise) stick was the one I started with because I am not a fan of shrimp and I wanted to get the one I was least likely to enjoy out of the way first. I gave it a sniff, twice, and my suspicion that this was going to be very "fishy", or perhaps more accurately, "seafoody" was confirmed. I was encouraged, however, by the large amount of red powder on the outside. I associate that with "hot" and "spicy", but, on second thought, I figured that it is also a color that may be associated with, well, shrimp.

Though this smelled incredibly strongly of shrimp, the actual flavor was more balanced than I expected. The mayonnaise aspect was much more present than the shrimp. It had a nice savory undertone and was ever so slightly sweet as well as salty. Even though I hate shrimp, I really didn't have a problem with this. While I wouldn't seek it out, I wouldn't turn my nose up at it either.

The chicken curry was something I was actually looking forward to as I love both flavors. Just as was the case with the shrimp mayo version, the animal product portion of this was muted next to the other flavoring. Curry is definitely the dominant flavor. In fact, this tasted very much like Japanese curry roux. That is not to be confused in any way with Indian curry, but it is a nice flavor. This has curry flavor on top with a savory undertone and a little sweetness. 

The "umai bo" series of snacks is not meant for adults, but is marketed toward children. To that end, these are not snacks with serious flavor depth or intense or strong flavors. They are still very, very tasty and have a nice, almost fresh, corn flavor with good crunch. I like how airy these types of snacks are. They're giving you texture and the illusion of volume, but are not especially filling. 

I like these, even the shrimp one, and I hate shrimp. This is the sort of thing which I will always associate with life in Japan and a childhood there which I didn't actually experience. They're light, tasty, crispy, and portion-controlled. They're pure junk, of course, but a little junk now and then is unlikely to send anyone to an early grave.

Glico Komekko Barbecue Flavor Snacks

It probably seems like I just toss these reviews out without putting too much thought or effort into them, but the truth is that I try to do at least a little research on every product. If I'm lucky, I just go to the manufacturer's corporate web site and click on the products button and find the food I'm reviewing listed somewhere. Sometimes, I'm not so lucky and can't find the product and then I have to start chasing down information in some other way.


In the case of this salted snack, which I picked up for 100 yen at a local convenience store, I Glico seems to be hiding it somewhere deep in its pages rather than listing it on the main products page. I guess it's not high profile enough to warrant being listed along with the glamorous likes of salty treats like Cratz. When I finally found the right page, it was woefully devoid of meaningful content, so I can't tell you any fun facts about this or provide a link to a desktop picture showing it's happy little salty mascots. This is one of Glico's lesser children.

When I bought this, I did so very impulsively and didn't pay attention to what the box said. I saw "baked", "chicken", and "barbecue". I also checked the calorie counts and saw that one 30-gram (1 oz.) packet (there are two in the box) has 140 calories. That didn't sound too bad. What I didn't see was that one of the flavors is shrimp, and I hate shrimp.


These smell mainly like shrimp and the first bite tastes like the same sort of shrimp flavoring that is so often applied to salted snacks in Japan. This does not bode well for the likes of me. Fortunately, after you eat a few more, the shrimp flavor becomes muted and a tare (Japanese sauce often used for grilling) flavor starts to really kick in. I love tare, so that helped balance out the experience. The tare flavoring starts to grow more and more pronounced giving these an authentic Japanese barbecue flavoring.

I was very surprised to find that I genuinely enjoyed these. The texture is light and crispy and you get a lot of these in the bag for 140 calories. They're satisfyingly salty without starting to burn the corners of your mouth. I would certainly consider buying these again, particularly if I wanted something nicely savory, not too expensive, and not too fattening.