Lawson Value Line Tuna Mayo Pizza

There's an excellent blog called "Heat Eat Review" which features frozen and ready to eat food reviews. I've often thought that such an idea would be interesting for Japanese frozen or prepared meals, but the truth is that there isn't much of such types of food around relative to the U.S. The fact that women tend to cook most of the time and housewives are still pretty common means people tend to get full and balanced meals rather than grab something quick. Also, the types of food that are available in this area tend to be expensive and of very poor quality. It'd require one to eat an entire meal of junk instead of just the snack size things that I review.

As I mentioned in a former review of a prepared ham and cheese bagel, I rarely buy prepared food, frozen or otherwise. The only time I tend to buy it is when I'm not feeling well and feel too tired or sick to cook. The night before I bought the Lawson's Value Line frozen pizza that I only slept about 4 hours, so I was ripe for an easy meal when I hit the local convenience store for milk. I found this pizza, along with a similar one called a "mix pizza" and decided to give it a go.


The pizza cost 100 yen (about a dollar) and is 14 cm (5.5 in.) in size. The entire pizza has 249 calories, which is what puts it into the "snack" range and not a meal. It comes in a plastic shrink-wrapped package inside of it's main plastic package. I guess they feel it needs the extra wrapping for freezer burn protection. The instructions on the package recommend that you cook this in the toaster oven for 5-6 minutes at 1000 watts, but I found that was not long enough for the cheese to melt or the crust to get a bit brown.


After cooking, the pizza smells odd. It has a bit of a tomato smell, but also a strange nondescript fishy smell which I associate with Japanese food. I'm guessing that smell would be the tuna. While the crust is your standard preformed crust, it actually has a little better texture than average. The outsides is slightly crispy and the inside is nicely chewy. The sauce is inoffensive, but not very flavorful. In fact, the main problem is that aside from the crust and the tomato sauce, there's very little flavor at all. The tuna is more of an aftertaste than an actual topping. The cheese is so sparse as to be undetectable as is the corn.


I should note that I had very low expectations of this given that it's very small and cheap, and frozen pizza in Japan is abysmal on the whole. The crust exceeded my expectations, but the toppings were about usual for a Japanese frozen pizza. This makes for a pretty nice "bread" if you manage to cook it just right in the oven. It really isn't much as pizza though. If you'd like a soft, warm pizza-flavored bread to go along with a salad or as a snack at tea time, this wouldn't be a bad choice. I'd say this is fine as long as you're in the mood for that and nothing more.

Sakuranbo KitKat

When my husband brought home this KitKat, I thought, "oh no, another pink KitKat". In the past, there have been several variations on this. There was a triple berry one and strawberry Senga Sengana one. There have also been numerous cherry, berry, and strawberry ones which pre-date my writing this blog. Does Nestlé Japan really need yet another one of these? The answer appears to be, yes. Yes, they do.


The hook for the marketing on this particular KitKat is the ability to download one of three pop songs produced by Jin Nakamura for free if you buy it. The songs are "Sakura Million", "Merry-Go-Round", and "Flower of Life". The names are written in English on the inside of the box the KitKat comes in along with a serial number and a bar code which will allow you to download one MP3 per serial number.

The box says that this is on the KitKat "Through the Break" label, but I'm pretty sure that doesn't mean anything as it's not so much a label as a distribution network for those who promote themselves via KitKats. When you go to the site, they ask you to enter your gender and age in addition to the serial number, so I'm guessing part of this promotion is gaining demographics on who buys their candy.


With exceptionally low expectations, I opened up the package on this KitKat. It smells of cherry and sweetness. On the first bite, the cherry flavor is neither too strong nor too weak and the bar isn't as sweet or cloying as some white chocolate-based KitKats. There's a nice, tart aftertaste that reminds me of sour cherries. Unfortunately, as you eat more, the sweetness tends to build up and it approaches throat burning levels after the first finger. As seems to often be the case with KitKats, this has a pretty soft exterior at room temperature and will melt in your hand if you hold it for long. You can always tell by my pictures when a KitKat is on the soft side because it does not break cleanly when snapped in half. The wafers are nice crispy and fresh and make for a nice textural contrast with the softer coating.

If you're a fan of Japanese pop, this is probably a pretty good deal. You pay about 130 yen (about $1.30) and get the candy bar and an MP3. I downloaded "Sakura" and found it about usual for Japanese pop. It's cheaply produced bouncy pop music with a lot of synthesizer music. It has elements of ripped off rap rhythms inserted into it, random English words here and there, and pretty boy crooning. It's perfect music as a background in a commercial, unsurprisingly. It's just not my sort of thing, but it may appeal to some people. Since the download page is so simple, you could probably manage to download the songs even if you know very little Japanese. Just enter your serial number in the first box, click a radio button (for gender, but it doesn't matter which you choose), and enter your age in the third box then press any button that says "ダウンロード" (download) and you'll get there.

As for the candy bar itself, I was really on the fence with this between a "happy sumo" (might buy again) and "indifferent sumo" (will finish, but not buy again) rating. If I was in the right mood, or found this for a pretty cheap price, it's not out of the question that I'd buy it again. Mainly, I went for the more favorable rating because my husband really liked it and he's not even a fan of cherry so I figure it deserves a little boost.

Variety Friday: Leftovers

One of my fellow Japan bloggers once remarked that her husband would not eat leftovers, so cooking was difficult as it required her to cook a fresh meal every night. In a pinch, he would eat leftovers if they were rolled into a new dish. My husband happily will eat the same meal two nights in a row, sometimes three, if I make a large quantity of something he especially enjoys. One of my friends has been known to make enough of the same dish for an entire week. I can't imagine eating tuna casserole for a week, but he'd prefer this to having to cook every night.

Americans in general don't love leftovers, but they tend to prefer them to the effort of daily cooking. Because of this, I thought my fellow blogger's husband sounded very spoiled in his refusal to eat leftovers, but I've come to learn since then that this isn't specific to her case. Most Japanese people do not favor leftovers.

I've asked quite a few people about this and their resistance to leftovers is multi-faceted. One reason is that they don't like to eat the same food two nights in a row. The emphasis on variety in meals is much higher in Japan than it is in the West. While we typically have three parts to every meal (protein, starch, vegetable), they often have five or more. Another reason is that freshness and food safety concerns are much greater in Japan. Japanese housewives often shop daily for the food they prepare for their family's evening meals. When there are leftovers, they tend to get folded into the next day's lunch rather than served as the next day's dinner.

Finally, I think the size of Japanese homes and appliances have a pretty big impact on a culture that hasn't embraced cooking for leftovers. In America, we often choose to cook more than we need, sometimes far more, in order to put some aside in the freezer for future quick meals. You can't really do that in Japan because freezer space is smaller as are most pantries.

I think that the Japanese way of handling food is actually very good. In particular, I think that the variety and freshness aspects are conducive to good health. On the other hand, it is a very labor intensive way of life. I can't imagine working full-time and doing the sort of work that Japanese women put into meal preparation. The acceptance of leftovers is, in part, an acceptance of a culture which says that women don't have the time to go shopping daily or to put efforts into what we might consider elaborate meals.

Sanshin Curry Sembei

Something about this packet of curry sembei rubbed me the wrong way when I saw it elegantly displayed in a cardboard box at the local 99 yen shop. I like curry, but the package put me off. I think that the cartoon of a turban-wearing man might be a part of it. It could be the fact that the graphic is a bit cheap-looking with the over-sized head and the tiny body. It could also be the bizarre disconnect between the relatively lifeless expression on the face and the "thumbs up" gesture, or it could simply be it all carries strong hints of politically incorrect packaging.


At any rate, my desire to give curry sembei a sampling overcame my apprehension. I do love curry and this bag claims 18 spices have been used to season these rice crackers. The packet is actually quite small at 45 grams (1.6oz.) so I won't be wasting much if they end up being a bust. The entire bag contains 204 calories and half a bag seems about right for snacking.

When I opened the bag, the very strong and familiar scent of curry powder wafted up to my nostrils. This was quite welcome as I prefer a strong flavoring over a weak one and these did not disappoint on that front. The flavor is rich, potent, and slightly hot at the finish. If I were judging these on the flavor alone, I'd be pretty satisfied.

Unfortunately, texture plays a huge role in things like sembei and these failed rather badly on that front. Sembei ought to be crisp and fresh, but these seemed like they had drawn a little damp. They are still a bit crispy, but also rather spongy. I don't know if this is an issue with how they are made or if they have absorbed moisture from the seasonings coating them as time has gone by. The expiration date on my bag was May 24, 2009 which is relatively soon by snack dating standards. The maker of these sembei, Sanshin, is a relatively small manufacturer that has been in business since 1972 and makes a small variety of crackers and chips. You'd think they'd have a method down for keeping them crispy, so I'm attributing the dampness to age and possibly just the curry flavoring in particular rather than the company's lackluster production methods on the whole.

I loved the intense curry flavor on these, and I will slowly finish the bag. However, I don't think I'd buy them again because of the texture issues and I can't recommend anyone else pick them up.

Cheese Cream Stick Pie (Yamazakipan brand)

Sometimes I get a craving for a cheese danish, then I remember I live in Tokyo and there are no real cheese danishes around. At other times, I get that craving and I forget that I live in Tokyo and what resembles a "cheese danish" is some sort of Frankensteinish hybrid between savory cheese bread and sweet cream cheese breakfast pastry. During the latter times, I end up buying something like the item pictured above. In my quest for a cheese danish, I missed one very important clue about this item. There is a wedge of what looks like Swiss cheese pictured on the package.


When I removed the "stick pie" from its package, the smell of baked Gouda on bread wafted up at me and expectations were immediately lowered. Sure, it may look like a golden flaky pastry filled with sweet cream cheese and topped with crumbly bakery goodness, but the crumb-like things on the top are grated cheese of some variety, not sweet bits of flour, fat and sugar.


The inside looks pretty encouraging with a reasonably generous piping of sweetened cream cheese. The first bite is rather tasty as you get a strong sense of the cream cheese flavor, but it is followed by the funky aftertaste of savory cheese. I wouldn't say it totally ruins the experience, but it does make it far less enjoyable.

Since I bought this in a plastic package at a convenience store for 99 yen ($1.07), it would be unfair to expect the pastry portion to be fresh and crispy, particularly since it had an expiration date 6 days from the date of purchase. The "pie" portion was a bit like a day-old croissant. It used to be crispy and flaky, but had absorbed moisture to the extent that it was pretty flat and lifeless. It tasted good though and had a good flavor, but I think I'd have to catch it very quickly after stocking to get a really nice texture out of the pie.

Yamazaki pan makes a lot of these types of items for convenience stores and it's generally a hit and miss proposition. Their cakes are usually good, but the pastries often let you down. This Franken-pastry (not Al Franken) was certainly a letdown and I won't be re-visiting it again if my memory of the experience holds up.