Lotte Crunky Baked Cheese Tart

The concept of this bar seems stolen directly from the baked KitKat concept. It's a white chocolate bar designed to be briefly cooked in a toaster oven in order to caramelize the chocolate a little and change the flavor profile.

I tried this both "as is" and baked and it is a night and day situation. When it's "raw" and a normal chocolat bar, it is unremarkable with a somewhat cloying "dairy" flavor from the attempt at cheesecake flavor. It's crunchy and heavy in feel and not especially bad or good.

In my first attempt at baking some of this, I overdid it. The margin between golden brown and burnt is probably seconds wide. Even over-browned and nearly burnt, this tasted really good. The weird dairy flavor vanished and it had more caramel tones.

Like the baked KitKats, you not only don't want to overcook them, but you don't want to handle them while they're still hot or they disintegrate. In general, these are quite crumbly after being baked anyway. The texture becomes almost cookie-like. It's still very sweet and the impact of the little crunchy bits is reduced when the bar is baked.

I really loved this when it was baked. The cheesecake flavor isn't super strong, but it's still very enjoyable because of the caramelization and texture. I didn't mind how crumbly it became, though it was a mistake to try and eat it warm as it crumbled into tiny bits. If you can get your hands on one of these, be sure to wait for it to cool so it holds on to some integrity.

Note: This was part of my free ZenPop cheese sweets box.

Tohato Pai Cro Butter Sugar

I've been seeing Pai Cro at Japanese markets for some time, but I was unwilling to fork over the cash they were charging to give them a try. Much to my surprise, I found this bag at Daiso Japan for a mere $1.50. In fact, it seems that Daiso is upping its food game as of late. They've added in more name brand snacks and diversified their line of chocolates to include more varieties. Of course, I haven't been super impressed by their chocolate so far, but hope springs eternal and the price is right (almost all of the products at Daiso are $1.50).

I snapped up the Pai Cro as well as Country Ma'am cookies (another new item) last time that I was at Daiso. I also got a shoehorn, because they have these super long ones that allow lazy people to more easily put their shoes on without bending down much, but this isn't a review of cheap items blog. That being said, at one point, I considered starting a new blog dedicated to 100-yen-shop finds. When I left Japan, the idea died. It could be revived now that I'm living close to a Daiso. The main impediment is my limited need for plastic junk. It's hard to keep buying stuff you don't need just to be sure that you have something to write about. Also, I'm writing eight posts a week already. What do you people think I am, a machine? ;-)

When we made our way to the cashier, an extremely enthusiastic and gregarious young woman, she told us that everyone in the shop was super excited when the Pai Cro was re-stocked as everyone loves it. This increased my interest in what this was going to taste like. However, my tastes don't necessarily match those of peppy women in their early 20's. After all, they like their men muscular with all of their chest hair waxed off and I like my men on the hairy and meaty side. I can't necessarily conclude that our tastes in other areas will overlap when they don't in this crucial area.

There were two flavors of Pai Cro - butter sugar and apple something or other (custard? caramel?). Since I don't remember the apple one, you may guess correctly that I opted for "butter sugar". Also, the title of this post is a tip-off about which variety is getting reviewed. Attentive readers may have noted that already. Inattentive ones have just looked at the pictures in the post and skipped to the rating anyway and aren't even reading all of this blathering.

Getting to the Pai Cro, as soon as you open the bag, you smell margarine and bread crumbs. Though there is some butter in this, it's pretty far down on the ingredients list. There is a lot of oil though - three vegetable oils (palm, coconut, and rice), butter, and "butter oil". I'm pretty sure the crispness of these comes from their being fried like a potato chip. These are pretty caloric as the nutrition information for 2.47 oz./70 grams says one bag is 2.3 servings at 151 calories per serving.

These are super crispy and light. They have a real sense of being like a sweet buttered crouton, but they're finer than that in texture and much less tough to chew. They shatter apart rather appealingly, but there is definitely a strong flavor of "bread" to them. The bread flavor is not good quality bread, but rather like the crust on common white bread that has been toasted. It really does not bring a croissant to mind, at least not to my taste buds.

This is a very "junky" snack which has both qualities of being appealing (crispy, sweet, buttery), but also tastes "cheap" (tasting like cheap bread and margarine/oil). This is a blog about junk food, however, so it is to be expected that such things would come up from time to time. This is tasty junk, but I think those who are used to eating a lot of processed food (and I'm not, despite my blogging about Japanese snacks) will find this more appealing than I did. I will slowly finish the bag, and I'm interested enough to try another flavor, but I wouldn't buy this one again.

Furuta Creamy & Crispy Pie

Recently, I read an article on a food news site in which someone was extolling the virtues of monaka. The notion of the ice cream encased in the cone rather than heaped on top of it was just too exciting for them. It's as if the writer felt the Japanese had done something truly remarkable.

The problem is that no one cares that much for a cake cone, and monaka are the equivalent of cake cones bricking up your precious ice cream. They're edible Styrofoam packaging with little flavor and a less than appealing texture. And I have to say that cake cones in the U.S. are actually better than the monaka coverings I experienced in Japan. That's probably because they aren't being sold with the ice cream already in them where it can leech moisture into the cone over time as the hapless confection sits in the freezer waiting for someone to find it appealing enough to buy.

I'm not saying monaka were never good. I found the Jumbo Morinaga one quite appealing, but that was more about the filling than the "wafers" that encased it. My point is that they don't taste like much, but that actually suits Japanese tastes pretty well. In fact, in my experience, the Japanese love things that are on the bland side. It's why I so often heard students complain about food in the U.S. being too sweet or too spicy. Note that they rarely said it was "too salty", but that would be a bit too ironic coming from the land of soy sauce.

When I buy any snacks from Japan, I keep in mind that their tastes are different. A lot of the time, I have to look for subtlety and texture rather than strong tastes. When things are good, there is flavor depth which reveals itself in the absence of a high amount of sugar or spices.

When things are not so good, well, it's rarely actually bad, but is something I tend to be indifferent toward. In general, one of the more popular types of crispy cookie-like snacks that falls into the "indifferent" category are these "pies". When they say "pie", don't think "Hostess fruit pie", think "pie crust". That's my way of saying not to expect a lot of sophisticated flavor.

The cookies smell of margarine which is desperately trying to convince someone that it is actually butter with a faint hint of coconut. The strange thing is that coconut is nowhere in the ingredients, so it must be some sort of olfactory hallucination. The cookies are about half the size of my palm. Each is 48 calories.

The flavor of these is definitely on the muted side. They are lightly sweet with the fake butter and fried flour being the outstanding flavors. Each is light and flaky and like layers of concentric pie dough. There's not a whole lot going on in the front end, but there's a back end flavor which is very reminiscent of the edge of the crust on a pumpkin pie. Most of what you're getting from these is texture, not taste and there's very little in the way of depth. These are a snack that cries out for some sort of addition, whether it's a little jam, a side of cream, or a cup of tea or coffee.

These aren't bad at all. In fact, I think they'd go over well as a garnish on ice cream or even used as a heart-shaped decoration on the side of a frosted cake. In fact, they'd be ideal for the latter since they add a textural contrast and could match nearly any flavor of frosting or cake. At $1.50 (150 yen) per package for 7 "pies" (at least at Daiso), it also wouldn't break the bank to buy them. Mainly, however, these are for people who want a variation from the tea time butter cookie and really aren't much of a taste event.

SKE48 promotion at Family Mart (News)

The truth is that I didn't know what SKE48 was until I stumbled across this news. I could guess based on the existence of AKB48, that it was a group of girls who were being presented as "idols". They're part of the obvious factory-production line of cute girls that are rotated in and out of these groups to appeal to the new breed of Japanese male. You know, the herbivorous type (soshoku danshi) that doesn't date or have sex with real people.

This campaign will include various Family Mart sweets that include chilled desserts and baked goods. There is also a chance to win prizes including what is talked of as a "toy". Given the type of person who is attracted to these groups, I'm wondering exactly what sort of "toy" is involved and whether it requires a bicycle pump to inflate or a battery to assist it in its functionality.

Note that I tend to focus on specific snack news rather than something more general like this, but I loved this picture because it shows the typical proper exchange of business cards in Japan. It's a good capturing of a moment which I relate to well.

Baboon Marzipan Peanut Butter Candy

I think this post should more properly be titled "de la Rosa" marzipan candy, but I couldn't resist using the Baboon distributor name. In fact, I bought a bigger bag of these simply because of that name. There were actually smaller portions available from another distributor, but, you know, "baboon" is too cool a word. Adding monkeys to anything makes them better. Just ask NASA.

This is actually my second purchase of this candy. I first sampled it when I was spending some time in the San Juan Islands just after leaving Japan. It was distributed there with a pretty generic looking name (same de la Rosa candies inside the packet though) in a section with bagged spices and other Mexican foods. Oddly, despite the fact that most things on the island I was on were more expensive due to their having to be flown or ferried in, this was cheaper there than it was here in California. I paid $2.79 (218 yen) for a package of 7 at Chavez Mexican Market. I think I paid about a dollar for 4 of them on Lopez Island. Go figure. That's a difference of 40 cents (31 yen) per candy vs. about 25 cents (20 yen). My guess is that they're paying big royalties for the use of the whole baboon moniker. Those brand names don't come cheap! Just ask NASA.

Incidentally, candy sellers sell these online through many avenues, and I see them all over the west coast, but they may not be so easy to find in other areas. Amazon offers a huge amount of them. Mexgrocer will let you buy far fewer. 

I didn't really photograph it badly. It's not very photogenic candy.

When I sampled this in Lopez, I was in love. It had everything I adored going for it. It's peanut butter. It's got bits of nuts. It's sweet and has a fatty texture. This is like a crumbly version of peanut butter amped up to "11" on the sweetness scale. When I say "crumbly", I mean it. It is virtually impossible to free a disc of this from its plastic prison without it disintegrating all over the place. It's best eaten from a bowl or plate, or with a spoon. Or you could try to up end the whole thing at once into your mouth and put your sweetness taste buds into shock. I wouldn't advise it though as that may send you into some sort of sugar shock. 

The truth is though that I was less thrilled with this on my second purchase than on my first. Perhaps it was the novelty of something so thoroughly un-Japanese so soon after having so many Japanese things. It also could have been the fact that I was denied peanut butter sweets for so long that this was like a dive into sweet, sweet home. Perhaps I was in a head space where super sweet food sounded more appealing at that time. I found this hard to resist the first time I bought it. Now, well, it's lasting a bit longer.

I enjoyed this, but I think that it's for those who want a particular nibble at a particular time rather than as a "any time" sort of treat. It's good, no doubt, but I think that it went over better after long-term deprivation. Some sweets are for "everyday" and some are best enjoyed in a vacuum... say, after spending 23 years in a country which has neither marzipan nor peanut butter candies, or after spending several months in space. Just ask NASA.

Shouga (Ginger) Sembei

Modern life is fraught with choice. In fact, I've read that psychologists have done studies in which too much choice causes stress and people need to tune out a lot of the options in modern stores because it is overwhelming to them. In Japan, there were often items in the snack sections that my eyes pretty much slid past. I saw them, but there were so many choices and I knew that I couldn't try them all so some were left behind. As the time of my planned departure drew near, I started noticing all of the things, especially in the traditional/granny's snacks areas, that I had never gotten around to reviewing. I regretted that I couldn't get to them all, but I also know that there are vast swathes of food that I never ate back home either.

Next time you're in a market, take a close look at what you reject out of hand everyday because it falls outside of your regular consumption. You may be surprised at how many items you've never put in your shopping basket because they didn't light your fire compared to other items of a similar nature. We tend to form chains of preferences rather than to step far beyond our circle of likes. Part of what people who review food do for you is tell you about products such that you might feel compelled to take notice and buy outside the box, or confirm that you probably would like to make sure that a certain item never gets into your box.

I saw a lot of these little crackers/cookies. They look like the mutant offspring of a fortune cookie and a frosted flake. Part of what made me dismiss them in Japan was that I had been mislead by streaky white stuff on sembei before which looked sweet, but was just coatings of weirdness. However, during my feeding frenzy at the Daiso Japan, I dived in and bought this 90-gram (3.2 oz.) bag for $1.50 (118 yen). I took the presence of such things for granted, but somehow was not punished for my lack of regard.

I've mentioned before that the Japanese call a wide variety of rice-based crispy snacks "sembei". While western folks who are somewhat familiar think of them as savory rice crackers, largely flavored with soy sauce or sesame, there are a number of sweet versions and this is one of them. They're more like a cookie than a cracker, except that they lack the textural elements of a cookie.

Each little bit of sembei is coated with a hard frosting and they smell very strange, almost like some odd chemical is at work. The flavor is very strongly infused with ginger and quite sweet. This is no surprise as the ingredients include sugar, glucose, fructose, and dextrin. All those sweeteners are held together with a little wheat flour, eggs, and margarine and flavored with ginger. Health food, this is certainly not.

In terms of the sugar, this is probably going to be far too much for people who aren't fans of especially sweet food. However, if you like candied ginger, this is like a crispy version of it. Fortunately for me, I am a fan of said version of ginger, but there are limits to how much one can eat at once before the sweetness and intense ginger start to overwhelm. You can look at that as built-in portion control, or as an impediment to finishing the bag before it goes stale. The latter did occur in my case, but I wasn't eating small amounts daily so it would be possible to have a few a day and still have the last one be crispy.

I loved these, but I recognize that they may be far too strong and sweet for a lot of people. I can't rate it for others, but I wouldn't hesitate to buy this again. That being said, I wouldn't want to have it around all of the time or eat it day in and day out. There's really only so much super sweet ginger that I need in my life, but this has an excellent flavor and great crispy texture. Candied ginger fans should definitely seek it out. Others will want to give it a pass.

These are made by a company called Nanao, but it's my guess that any ginger sembei that resembles this will be much the same. It's one of those companies which is small and has little presence in the market in terms of name recognition. You can buy this particular brand online at Pacific Mercantile Company, or the Marukai e-store, though I got mine at the Daiso Japan shop in Mountain View, CA.

Kkul Tarae (honey skein) Walnut and Chocolate Court Cake

Before I get too far in this review, I should state that this is not Japanese, but Korean. One of my students visited Korea for 5 days of sauna, massage, shopping, and luxury hotel enjoyment. This is a very popular course of action for young Japanese women these days since Korea is a hop, skip and a short swim away, though most take a cheap plane flight. It's well-recommended for vigorous rubdowns that slough the top layer of your disgusting dead skin away and brutally hot spa experiences. So, if you want to sweat and then have strangers scrub down your naked body in every nook and cranny, Korea is the place for you.

It's also the place for you if you want to try some unique treats, and I'm not talking kimchi, which is so common these days (at least in Tokyo) that it's absolutely mundane fare. My student picked this up from a street vendor and offered it to me rather apologetically because it wasn't particularly expensive. This sort of behavior, both gift-giving and then feeling obliged to express regret about the price despite the fact that the thought really does count more than anything, is something I will always associate with Japanese people and a culture which strongly encourages generosity and modesty.

The box provides a bilingual explanation including a story about how this is a "court cake of ripened honey and malt". In the past, it was supposedly presented to the king and guests of sufficient distinction that they deserved a treat that included 16,000 strands of honey. The box goes on to say that the strands suggest prayer for longevity, health, luck and wish-fulfillment. It also says it is good cold or frozen and then enjoyed with tea.

Because I can't read Korean at all, and the web site of the manufacturer is composed largely of graphics which can't be translated by Google's translation facilities, my ability to understand the ingredients or other information about this treat is extremely limited. This makes for a "purer" experience when sampling this food because I have to rely on sensory experiences rather than on what I read, but does limit my ability to provide meaningful information to my readers. I don't even know if the "honey skein" on this is actually honey. It sure doesn't look like it.

The outside of the candy is quite firm, but not brittle. When you bite into it, it yields like soft plastic and as you chew it, it becomes more pliable and chewy. Though the box claims it doesn't stick to the teeth, it does. In the end, it takes on a consistency similar to taffy. The outer "skein" doesn't have much flavor, but lends a delicate sweetness and a lot of texture. Most of the flavor comes from the mix of crushed nuts and seeds that are on the inside. They have a nice, meaty mixture of flavors including some very marginal bitterness with a warm, walnut finish. Though the box says "walnut and chocolate", I couldn't taste any chocolate at all.

This is an unusual treat which is very hard to describe because of the "honey skein" exterior and the combination of flavors inside. It's an interesting experience, but not necessarily a "great" one. However, it definitely is not a bad one either. In Korean drinks and snacks, I have experienced very creative use of nuts and walnuts in particular. I like it, but it's not the sort of thing which is easily accessible to all palates. If you're the type who just wants some sweet which won't challenge your texture and flavor perceptions, this will likely disappoint. However, if you're looking for something a bit more interesting, I'd heartily recommend giving this a try.

Plecia Great Mont Blanc

All things mont blanc draw me to them. The Pied Piper would have nothing to offer me, but the Hamlin baker could lead me to my doom with a lovely mont blanc. Something which resembles a small mont blanc pizza with only 318 calories, scarcely more than a real pizza of the same size (14 cm. in diameter). Of course, I'm not sure if this is a "proper" mont blanc, because it doesn't have mountains of piped chestnut paste lying on top of it. However, according to Wikipedia, it just means that there is pureed sweetened chestnuts and whipped cream, so even this flat version should qualify.

I found this for 275 yen at Inageya supermarket while my husband was inspecting the beer options. There's a section next to the butter which offers "fresh" (as in not designed to have a long shelf life) sweets which often lures me to it with its wiles but rarely pries my hard-earned yen out of my wallet. The problem is partially the cost, but also the calories. Most of the treats are fatty delights, filled with rich pudding, whipped cream, and small amounts of cake. Also, frankly, there are a lot of cake shops around Tokyo which offer fresher, prettier options with less environmentally wasteful packaging.

This is a simple thin layer of yellow cake smoothly covered with a whipped cream base and with some ribbons of chestnut cream on them. I didn't expect too much, really, but I was incredibly impressed in the end. It's not too sweet, has a much better chestnut flavor than I expected based on the chestnut to cream ratio, and had a serviceable sponge cake at the bottom. I found it incredibly delicious, and ate the whole thing at once when I'd originally planned to just eat half of it.

This is my second product from Plecia, which specializes in these types of refrigerated cakes and sweets. They draw me because they have tasty lower calorie treats with a lot of whipped cream, and that is something I find hard to resist.

Meiji High-C Lemon Tablets

Like the yogurt tablets that I reviewed previously (which I liked, but a commenter amusingly likened to something you'd be given at a dentist's office), these candies are touted as something which are healthy for you. Instead of healthy bacterial cultures and Calcium, they are going to fill with Vitamin C. So, if you have a cold, these are the pony you make your bet on. If you have a stomachache, go for the yogurt tablets.

Like the other tablets, these are similar to a sophisticated version of the kid's snacks in the U.S. called SweeTarts. They are pressed powder and mainly composed of sugar. The first ingredient is sugar followed by grape sugar then lemon juice. These tablets smell a lot like the type of lemon juice that people who rarely cook buy in green glass bottles and keep in the refrigerator for eons. That is, like stale lemon juice.

These are rather grittier and less smooth than their yogurt counterparts. If you suck on one, it starts to degrade more rapidly and fall apart more rapidly. The lemon flavor is very tart and pleasant though it has a bit of a strange aftertaste (it's that stale lemon thing whispering back at me). While it's in your mouth though, it's good. I'd just recommend having a drink handy to wash out that aftertaste.

These are quite nice. I could see buying them again if I was in the mood for lemon or felt under the weather. The lemon bite is nice. They're not too sweet and the texture is good for this type of sweet. I'm not over the moon about them, but I do like them well enough. Like the yogurt tablets, they're a good thing to just buy and toss aside until you have a craving or desire. They'll keep well and for a long time.

Incidentally, this product and the yogurt version have one of those annoying nutritional information inconsistencies that drive me crazy in Japan. For the yogurt tablets, information is given for the entire box but for these tablets, information is given for a third of the box. I think they do this because the entire Calcium level (300 mg) is only impressive if you eat the whole box of yogurt tablets, but you get 333 mg of Vitamin C from eating only 6 of the 18 tablets in the box. It's clearly done differently to present the most positive nutritional profile, but it does obfuscate the calorie information. These are 6 calories each.

Meiji Yogurt Tablets

Though I am old (all of 46), I'm not old enough to have first hand experience with those old cigarette ads in which they extol the health virtues of smoking. These ads came to mind when I was considering the history of advertising for products which say that they carry some health benefits when clearly those products are anything but healthy. It's amazing what a company will tell you in order to help you silence the cognitive dissonance that comes along with doing something you know isn't good for you.

Across the top of this candy, which is loaded with sugar (first ingredient on the list), it tells you that it has healthy yogurt cultures and calcium. If you consume the whole box, you'll get 300 mg. of Calcium, but you'll also need to make a dentist appointment after chewing 18 tablets of mostly sugar. For the record, this isn't an insubstantial amount of Calcium to get from a snack since most adults require about 1000 mg. per day. Each tablet is a mere 6 calories.

The tablets are kept from getting moist by being kept in two handy blister packs. They're slightly rough on the outside, but not as chalky or powdery as a SweetTarts (the closest American cousin to this). The flavor is sweet and mildly sour with a really nice, smooth mild yogurt flavor. You can suck on one, or bite into it. Both are pleasant experiences, but biting into it releases a larger sense of the flavor and floods your tongue with a rather sugary textural sense which I found gratifying.

I really, really like these and will definitely buy them again, but I'm not fooling myself into thinking I'm doing it to fill my stomach with healthy bacteria or to get Calcium. I just like the taste and texture. They're a great sweet to keep in your desk or whatever bag you carry around for when you want a nice sweet pick-me-up because they won't go damp or stale. If you enjoy yogurt, there's a very good chance you'll like these.

Imuraya Cinnamon Rusk

I didn't think I would be taking part in the whole rusk fad that is still raging out of control in Japan, but cinnamon treats of any kind are relatively rare here. For those who don't know what a rusk is, it's essentially a dried out piece of bread like zwieback or melba toast. The fad in Japan has leaned largely toward dessicated bits of French toast slices coated in copious amounts of sugar. I was given one and found it relatively vile. It was like a sugar-coated crouton slice.

The thing that compelled me about this rusk was not only that it was cinnamon, but also that it is made with Portuguese cake, castella, instead of bread. I've had castella in Japan before and it's not my favorite because it's sticky and relatively bland. The texture is a bit strange for cake as well as it has a unique crumb that I personally do not care for, but I can see how it may be appealing to people of different tastes.

This is my first time to review something by Imuraya, a company which produces a wide variety of more traditional Japanese foods including jellies, youkan (blocks of sweetened bean paste), and, unsurprisingly, castella. A lot of what they sell is the sort of stuff which newcomers or those with little experience with Japanese food might shy away from.

Since rusk is dried out, the usual textural components of castella almost certainly weren't going to apply so I gamely picked up this bag at Inageya supermarket for about 130 yen. There are eight 7-gram pieces in the bag. Each is about the size of three jumbo croutons stuck end to end and individually wrapped. There are 30 calories per rusk.

When you open the packet, it smells like cinnamon and coconut though that is not one of the ingredients. My guess is that some preservative or flavoring that is giving off a coconut-like scent. The first ingredient is eggs followed by sugar then flour, sugar water, and cinnamon. The texture is very even and crispy. It is perfectly dried out and easy to bite into. It isn't as hard as a bread-based rusk.

The cinnamon flavor is admirably strong and this is sweeter than usual for castella. It is a lot like eating a very finely made, sweet crouton and has hints of sweet sopapillas or the type of cinnamon and sugar coated fried flour tortilla bits that you get from places like Taco Bell. Of course, these aren't nearly as bad for you or as decadent. Mainly, it's the sweetness, cinnamon, and crunch that they have in common.

The back of the bag recommends you eat these with jam or by dipping them in milk. They are already so sweet that I don't think that jam would be a good idea. I tried dipping them in milk and coffee but they sucked liquids up like a sponge and practically disintegrated. The texture is too fine for dipping. They don't turn to mush, but rather practically turn to nothing so that was not a good way to enhance the experience. 

For a rusk, these are pretty good, but ultimately nothing spectacular. I will slowly and enjoyably finish the bag, but I can't see buying these again. It's not that they are bad at all. They are pretty nice. They're just not really all that exciting or impressive.

Morinaga Rare Cheese Dessert

There are two words that should serve as red flags to anyone seeking a snack treat. One of those words is "drink". If you find something which is called "orange drink" or "grape drink", you know that qualitatively you're going to be getting something which is closer to a lollipop in flavor and nutrition than the fruit the drink is based on. The other word is "dessert".

You'd think I would have seen this red flag, but I must have been colorblind and seen green instead when I picked up this box of "rare cheese dessert" at Yutakaraya for 189 yen ($2.22). I think that I was paying more attention to the 79 calories per serving rather than the product name. I was thinking "low-calorie cheesecake," rather than cheesecake-like substance. Silly, silly flower girl. Incidentally, "rare cheese" is what the Japanese use to describe New-York-style (unbaked) cheesecake.

Each tub contains what can best be described as cream-cheese-flavored gelatin. It's not quite as firm as American Jell-o, but it's also not the least bit creamy. The flavor is right on though. It does have all of the taste of the filling of cheesecake, but there is something which seems very "wrong" about it. Until you eat something with all of the flavor and none of the texture of cheesecake, you don't realize how integral the velvety, fatty goodness is to the experience. This tastes good, but ultimately doesn't satisfy. It is like semi-liquid sweetened cream cheese.

I don't mean to regard this product unfairly by giving it an "indifferent" rating. Morinaga did a very good job of approximating the flavor of cheesecake filling without the fat, calories, and crust. This was likely no small feat. However, I'm not sure the world really needs cream cheese gelatin, and I'm certain I won't buy this again.

Ki-bidango (millet dumpling)

 I have been farming the kid's snacks bins of various odd snacks or things which are difficult to tell the nature of merely by looking at the package and its shape. This little bar, which is about the size of a Snickers candy bar, caught my eye both because of its graphics and the fact that I'd never heard of bidango before. I found it for a mere 28 yen (33 cents) at Okashi no Machioka, but these are the types of things that tend to show up in the kid's treats areas of supermarkets like Seiyu.

There is no information on the package about the calories or size, but it can be guessed at by comparing the average as offered on the Calories in Japanese foods site. I had to weigh it myself and it's 45 grams and that would appear to be about 140 calories for the entire bar. If this is the same composition as that on that aforementioned site, ki-bidango is rich in copper and carbohydrates.


When I unwrapped this, I wasn't sure what I was going to get. The Wikipedia page on this type of thing shows little white balls which resemble traditional dango or mochi. What was revealed looked like a block of youkan wrapped in edible plastic.

This doesn't smell like much of anything. The texture is chewy, though not tough. It is slightly reminiscent of gum without the elastic properties. In terms of taste, it's rather hard to pin down. At first, it reminded me of brown sugar or molasses, then it took on more of a red bean flavor. The taste is actually quite subtle and it's mildly and pleasantly sweet.

The ingredients include sugar water, red beans, sugar, flour, powdered mochi, vegetable oil, honey, and salt. Of course oblaat is also an ingredient because it is the edible wrapper on the outside of the sticky bar. It was actually quite difficult to cut with a knife to get this shot.

This is an interesting snack, and it's not bad at all. The taste is pleasant. The texture is interesting, and it's pretty satisfying. That being said, though I'd eat this if it was offered or given to me as a gift, I wouldn't buy it again. It's not that it's bad in any way, but rather that it's not the sort of thing I would "crave" as a sweet treat. It feels more like actual rice-based food that has been modified to become a sweet. I guess that's part of the reason that it is on offer for children. It's probably seen as more wholesome than the average chocolate bar or salty treat.

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. 

Sequoia Chocolate Milk Bar

Some products come across as the "poor man's" version of a better-known brand name item. Drinks like RC Cola or Shasta cola come to mind as Coca-Cola wannabes. The Sequoia chocolate wafer bar comes across as the poor man's KitKat, though I don't know if it actually came before everyone's favorite chocolate-covered wafer. The company that makes Sequoia, Furuta, has been in business since 1952, but Furuta doesn't have a full product history on its site so I can't give them credit for being first if credit is indeed due.



You can buy Sequoia bars in 3-packs for 99 yen ($1.16) or as single bars for about 40 yen (47 cents). The multi-packs are available only in certain types of stores. A single Sequoia is about the size of 2.5 fingers of a KitKat, so they cost quite a bit less.



Since I last tried a Sequoia chocolate bar, they seem to have changed. I remember them being coated in thing chocolate which had little flavor and was rather thin. I recall the wafers being very brittle and overly flaky. To be fair, this was 18-19 years ago so they may have changed a long time ago and I just took a long time to revisit one.



The bar now is covered in relatively thick, solid chocolate. It is covered in typical Japanese milk chocolate (marginally bittersweet) which includes cocoa butter. When you look at a cross section, it seems to have a layer of a different sort of chocolate above the top wafer, but I couldn't taste any difference in texture or taste. This is unlike the caramel Sequoia which had a rather softer bit of caramel above the top wafer which yielded easily when bitten into.

The bar smells faintly of cocoa and has a fairly strong, but somehow flat flavor. Some chocolate has a nutty, milky, or fruity flavor, but this doesn't. It's like a strong cup of hot chocolate made with cheap cocoa powder. It's quite sweet, though rich and slightly bittersweet and that helps offset the sugary nature. The wafers are crispy, but you lose the sense of them in the firm chocolate. I think that the KitKat formula works better to reveal the nature of the wafers because it's softer and yields as you bite into it.

In my opinion, this bar could do with less chocolate coating and more wafer and with a softer chocolate coating, but it's fine overall. The portion control is pretty good. One bar is 131 calories and it feels substantial enough that you won't want another. I think this is a resistible bar which wouldn't be bad to keep in your desk or kitchen for times when you really, really want something sweet. I'd buy it again, but only if I were trying to make it easier on myself not to indulge and intentionally bought a less than optimal bar. So, I can only provisionally offer a "happy sumo" (would buy again) rating.

Kubota Pudding Mochi

Mochi, or pounded rice cake, is a fairly common component in many traditional-style Japanese treats. It doesn't tend to show up that often in the more "glamorous" snacks that are familiar to English-language speakers. Nestlé Japan has made KitKats with "mochi puffs" (that taste like mothballs), but has never made a real "mochi" KitKat. When mochi gets used in chocolates, such as Tirol's mochi sweets, it tends to really just be a bit of a gummy blob and not actual mochi. I believe this is because the texture is delicate and it can go hard, tough, or moldy easily.

Real mochi has a very fine textural element that you can't easily incorporate into things like mass produce chocolates. It's soft, slightly chewy, and delicate when used as a shell to wrap some other filling. It's a bit like a fine dough. You can see why many Japanese people prefer wagashi, traditional sweets made with a variety of indigenous ingredients including mochi, over other types of sweets because the ingredients are used in a way which maximizes their appeal rather than bastardizes them for mass production.

Since I can buy wagashi at many places in Tokyo, I have less of an impetus to buy mass-produced mochi sweets. Frankly, the same applies to Japanese people so the market shelves are not overflowing with a wide variety of them. I've only reviewed two sweets (Yukimi daifuku, yuzu mochi) which used traditional-style mochi. I found this latest entry at Seiyu supermarket for 198 yen ($2.24). There are 10 pieces in the bag and each is about 44 calories for a blob which is about 3.5 cm (1.4 in.) in diameter (that's an average since they're not circular).

These are made by a company called Kubota, which is yet another one of those small snack food makers which squeezes an occasional product onto market shelves and of which I have never heard. Annoyingly, they don't have a web site. I'm guessing their target customer is at an age at which this new-fangled "computer" stuff might seem to only be accomplished with the aid of ghosts or demons in the metal box.

The ingredients for these include barley sugar, sugar, mochi powder, gelatin, eggs, and carotene (for coloring, no doubt). The fact that the list starts with two kinds of sugar should clue you in that these are pretty sweet. When you open a packet, you don't smell anything as mochi is really just rice so it has little smell. After you cut it open, you can smell the rich, eggy pudding inside. If you've had flan or custard, you know what it smells like. I expected this to mainly be a nice textural experience. This is not only because of the soft, chewy mochi, but also the marshmallow lining around the little soft pools of custard pudding.

It was, indeed, a very nice mixture of textures, but it also tasted very good. The pudding itself was more flavorful than expected and the sweetness made up for the bland mochi. You can also actually taste the soft marshmallow. In fact, this is impressive because every component can be detected on the tongue. Everything was soft and seemed very fresh. My feeling about these after sampling one was that these would make a great souvenir for folks back home because the flavor is familiar and palatable to all but the pickiest types, and they remain uniquely Japanese because of the mochi.

The only caveat I can offer to someone before buying this is that they are rather sweet and won't suit those who are sensitive to such things. That being said, these are truly lovely to have as a little treat with a cup of tea. The fact that they are packaged in such a way as to remain fresh over a longer period of time allows you to have a wagashi-like experience without worries about them going hard or stale rapidly. You can keep a bag around for awhile and sample at will. Note that I bought these on July 12 and they're good until September 28, 2010.

Daiichi Chocolate Cream Bar

Armies of snacks go unnoticed by me when I shop. I bypass them for the same reason that most people do, their packaging doesn't do anything to grab me or illustrate the food contained within very well. The chocolate ice milk bars pictured above have been in the freezer case of the local 99-yen shop for ages, but I never gave them a second glance. Part of the reason for this was that I always saw them from the side and I thought they were these tubes of liquid that you freeze to make Popsicle-like treats (an ice pop). It also didn't help that these were shoved in a corner of the freezer case as if they were trying to hide from customers.

These are made by an ice cream and ice milk manufacturer named Daiichi. It's a very small company which only has 40 employees and was established in 1950. They have several interesting looking confections, few of which I have seen in my local markets. Their line includes monaka (ice cream or milk wrapped in a cake-cone like shell), cones, ice milk and frozen confection bars, and daifuku-style frozen treats (ice cream or milk wrapped in mochi). They also make ice cream for store brands on consignment. If you've ever been to the Peacock or Co-op (Coop) markets and bought their brand of vanilla ice cream in cups, it was made by Daiichi.


They also make ice cream products for Lawson's 99-yen shops. I saw the package of bars that I'm reviewing today in the frozen foods case at our local Lawson's. There were both chocolate and vanilla varieties and I was drawn to them after investigating the calorie information on the back and finding they were the "cheapest" treat among the ice cream and ice milk selections. There are 3 servings with only 84 calories per bar. I decided to buy the chocolate one because it looked like Fudgesicles. As is so often the case in Japan, things aren't always as they appear.


The inside of this bar is actually ice-cream-like ice milk. It's very soft and creamy with a firm shell. The shell is fairly thin and is clearly there to allow the ice milk to be eaten on a stick instead of out of a cup with a spoon. It's a very interesting concept and has one drawback; the stick isn't inserted into the shell but directly into the ice milk so it's easy to yank the stick right out if you try to slide the bar out of the wrapper by pulling "down" on it. It goes right back in though, and seems to hold just fine while you eat the bar.

The bar has a light cocoa scent and the outer shell, which I licked at first because I thought it was like a Fudgesicle, has very little flavor at all. The taste when you bite into the bar and get the ice cream is rather mild cocoa and not very sweet, but both the chocolate flavor and sweetness compound on your tastes buds as you eat more and more. You can tell they skimped on the cocoa to some extent, though fans of mild chocolate may prefer this over the intense bittersweet flavor of some Japanese chocolate.

Each bar is 85 ml., and the same size as a standard Popsicle. This is not, by far, premium or fabulous ice cream. It is, however, a really nice frozen treat for someone trying to watch their weight and their wallet. It's sufficiently sweet and enjoyable, and may even quash a chocolate craving for some. I wish the chocolate flavor was deeper, but I have no quibbles about the soft, light texture. The texture was super creamy and reminded me of a marriage between whipped cream and ice cream.

I compare this directly with the Glico Calorie Control line of frozen treats when I evaluate it. That line of treats, which include monaka as well as cups of ice milk, sell for 160 yen ($1.77) each and have 80-some ml. of ice milk (similar to one of these bars). The Calorie Control line chocolate ice milk is very similar to these bars in flavor, that is weak, but serviceable. Given the choice of buying chocolate cream bars for 99 yen ($1.10) and getting three 84-calorie frozen sweets or just one Glico chocolate chocolate chip cup of ice milk at 80 calories for 160 yen, I'd choose these in a heartbeat.* My high rating is based on a combination of price, calories, and texture more so than a stellar taste experience (and the fact that I expect to buy these repeatedly).


*Note that I didn't compare ingredients since neither the Glico ice milk nor this is very impressive. They're not nutritious or good for you, but rather attractive as occasional frozen treats to fill an urge for ice cream without a ton of calories. This has sugar, grape sugar, and palm oil (all bad news) and the Glico is chock full artificial sweeteners.