Green Tea Coke Plus with Catechin

You'd think that living in Japan would mean I'd be right on top of every new release, but the truth is that one would have to make it a priority to stroll through every aisle of a convenience store on a daily basis to see new items or keep an eye on the news of new releases in Japan. I'm too busy for the former and too lazy for the latter. The truth is that I was completely unaware of this new green tea Coke until Marvo at The Impulsive Buy brought it to my attention. It's because of him that I sauntered down to the local Family Mart and bought three bottles (one for me, two for him) and that you're seeing this review in such a timely fashion.

I didn't realize it when I first looked at this, but this Coke is meant to appeal to the type of people who will buy junk food that has been "enhanced" to make it healthier. It's "Coke Plus" for starters, not "Diet Coke" or "Coke Zero". Coke Plus is the ugly stepchild to the other calorie-free Cokes. It has vitamins or minerals or some such crap added to it such that it has a weird aftertaste. I tried Coke Plus once, and decided that I'd never allow it to darken the doorway to my taste buds again.

The "catechin" is supposed to be the "plus" in this whereas the "plus" in the more commonly available Coke Plus is Vitamin C. Catechin is supposed to reduce your chances of developing cancer or hardened arteries. I'm guessing that you'd be lucky if the catechin in a bottle of this canceled out your chances of developing cancer from the artificial sweeteners in it.


The first ingredient in this is green tea extract followed by caramel flavor and then another type of green tea acidulant flavoring (which adds a sharpness to the flavor). Other ingredients include both of the artificial sweeteners aspartame and Sucralose. You'd expect it to be bursting at the seams with green tea taste given the ingredients list, but taking a whiff of it doesn't really reveal much except an off-brand cola smell. The first several sips also didn't overwhelm me with tea flavor, but as I drank more, there was more and more of a sense of the grassy flavor that comes along with green tea. Halfway through the bottle, it became increasingly more pronounced. It's as if I had to build up a sensitivity to the flavor to detect it more clearly.

The sense I got from this is that it carries the basic flavor of green tea, but without any trace of its trademark bitterness. This gives it a strange flavor which seems reminiscent of Stevia. It's like a grassy, malt flavor. I'm not sure that a green tea aficionado would recognize what this is as actual green tea taste, but I'm pretty sure a Coca-Cola fan would recognize that something was not quite right with it.

This certainly was not bad at all. If I were in the market for a calorie-free Cola and couldn't buy regular Diet Coke or Coke Zero, I'd buy this without fear that I would find it unpalatable. I'd take this over the Coke Plus with Vitamin C for certain. However, I don't see this as particularly special or appealing and it'd definitely be second to a regular plain old Diet Coke. Unlike Pepsi's weird flavors, Coke seems to be attempting to make something more subtle and palatable.

Note that there is currently a contest going on with all Coca-Cola beverages where numbers in the cap can be used to win J-League (Japan Soccer League) shirts and other bits of flotsam if you're inclined to fill your life with useless possessions. You have to go to the contest web site and enter your numbers and manage in Japanese, and you have to care enough to bother.

This is also reviewed at the Impulsive Buy.

Kabaya Fresh Moist Caramel

I'm sure I'm not the only person who has ever taken a look at the average person next to me and thought there wasn't much to him or her. It doesn't have to necessarily be a matter of beauty, but it could be that you expect somehow to see a spark that would draw you magnetically to a person who you might form a beautiful friendship with. Sometimes sparks don't fly until you actually strike that rock. Until you hit it, it just sits there looking dull.

The Kabaya fresh caramel packet sat askew amongst dozens of other packets in a cardboard box with its top cut away at a slant for "display". Yaaaaawn, another packet of little buttery caramel squares. Note that the caramels in Japan are excellent for the most part, but how many buttery, tasty little cubes do I want to sample before I lose interest. Also, honestly, I'm just not a maniacal consumer of caramel. It's good, but it's not something I seek out or feel overly tempted by.


My husband is a great fan of caramel so he fished out a packet for himself, remarking that it felt nearly empty and quite insubstantial inside. He knew he wasn't getting much for his money, but we forked over 188 yen (about $1.80) for 40 grams (1.4 oz.). Note that we got this at a discount shop and the retail price is 210 yen ($2.05).

Usually, I take pictures before a package is opened, but I was so disinterested in it that I told him I wasn't going to review it and he could tuck in. When he revealed what looked like little packets full of liquid caramel which he wasn't sure how to eat, I noticed that the boring person sitting next to me was showing some spark.


There are 5 double packets of caramel goo. It exists in a state which is somewhere between melty liquid state and solid form. You can't handle it with your fingers, but it also doesn't slide around like molten caramel. It's like super soft, fresh taffy that never gets firm or hard. You're supposed to pull the packet open and then the whole thing easily peels away and you can pop it on your tongue without even handling it. The volume is small and they are relatively flat and 3.5 cm (1.4 in.) x 2.5 cm (.99 in.) so it's easy to eat all of one at once. I took a bite out of it though to see how it fared. It pulled like super soft taffy.

The texture is smooth, soft, and cool. The flavor is sweet, super buttery, and rich. Note that the first ingredient is real cream. They reminded my husband of See's caramel in Scotchmallows or their regular caramels. See's is a mid-range premium candy maker in the U.S. and this is a consumer product in Japan. He was very impressed and wouldn't hesitate to have them again if they weren't so pricey for the volume.

Variety Friday: Domino's Millefeuille Pizza

Japan is well-known for its weird pizzas. I've been here long enough that most of them don't even catch my eye anymore. Tuna and corn has become as normal to me as pepperoni and onion. Even artful lattices of mayonnaise squeezed across the top of a pizza elicits a yawn from me after all of this time.

Recently, I got a menu from Domino's in my mailbox which contained a pizza that made (even) me take pause. This one went above and beyond the normal weirdness into a whole new realm of culinary adventure. Domino's has stepped through the pizza looking glass and they've come up with this:

Click this image for a somewhat bigger one on which it is easier to see details.

The basic concept behind this pizza is that it imitates a millefueille pastry by layering thin crusts. The diagram you see on the right under the actual pizza describes the layering as follows:

bottom: Italian crispy crust
2nd layer: baloney sausage and mozzarella "mix cheese"
3rd layer: Italian crust with Camembert pepper cheese
4th layer first half: roast chicken, apple slices, almond slices, tomato sauce
4th layer second half: baloney sausage, grilled eggplant, grilled zucchini, red pepper, tomato sauce

If all of this is just a little too adventurous for you, you can order a pizza with only one side of the toppings. The apple version is called a Normandy Millefeuille and the eggplant and zucchini side is called a Bologna Millefeuille. There may be a place where apple and almonds on your pizza is mundane, but such a land is beyond my limited imagination.

I like apples and eggplant, but I'm not prepared to go for these funky pizzas. They may be incredibly tasty, but I'm just not adventurous enough, particularly when it comes to something which I regard as a relatively expensive indulgence. If I order a pizza, I'm going to be sure it's something I like that is worth the calories and the cash. For your reference, a 25 cm./10 in. medium is 2700 yen (about $26) and a 36 cm./14 in. large is 3950 yen (around $38).

teriyaki chicken, roast chicken (top right), shrimp mayonnaise, jalapeno (middle right), and meat sub (bottom right)

On the bright side, the same menu mentions that Domino's is starting to sell 15 cm. (5.9 in.) hot subs and those are in far more mundane varieties and much less pricey (550 to 680 yen or from about $5.50-$6.80). Such sandwiches are generally only available from places like Subway (of which there are none in my neighborhood) or somewhat expensive coffee shops in Japan. I'll be giving one of these a try, and passing on the funky pizzas.

Natsu Mikan

One of my students gave me three of these ugly customers from a tree in her yard. She told me that she had copious amounts of them and that I could have more if I liked them. They were called "summer oranges" or "natsu mikan". Apparently, this type of fruit is very popular for people to plant in the gardens they plant at their residences.

I must say that these smell really great. Like the golden oranges that I reviewed previously, they don't have a distinctive smell, but rather a mixed citrus smell. I could pick out an orange, lemon or grapefruit by their distinctive scents, but I couldn't easily identify one of these. Each orange is about the size of a small grapefruit or a large orange. The color is that of a dirty lemon with a few orange areas.


When I asked my student to describe the taste, she said they were very sour and advised me to cut it in half and either pack the top with sugar or honey and leave it on a counter or in the refrigerator overnight to allow it to absorb the sugar. I mentioned that this sounded a lot like a grapefruit and she said that these were more bitter and sour than grapefruit. While I do like the flavor of grapefruit in jelly sweets or citrus blends, I don't like to eat real grapefruit.

This did not bode well for the likes of me because I don't take well to bitter flavors. Some people can develop a taste for them, and heaven knows I've tried, but my sense of taste in regard to bitter things is extremely acute. In general, most people can't tolerate bitter flavors because a lot of bitter plants are poisonous. Hating them is something which has helped our species survive just as loving sweet things has done so (and made us all a bit curvier).

I did as my student recommended and packed the top of one half with sugar and left it in the refrigerator overnight. The next day, I dug into a section with a spoon. Suffice it to say, I didn't take to it at all. It was okay where the sugar was absolutely packed on, but even the areas which were moderately saturated with sweetness weren't enough to make this palatable. One bite and I had to toss it away.

I think people who eat a morning bit of grapefruit might enjoy this, though even they might be hard-pressed to eat it regularly. My student told me a lot of people like to use these to make things like marmalade, but I'm not a fan of that either. At best, I'm thinking these could be made into some sort of potpourri or scented oil, but I can't recommend buying them or even much more than sampling them if you get one for free.

Tiramisu Dessert Pocky

Well over a decade ago, there was a big tiramisu fad in Japan. It was popular enough to become a regular flavor in various limited edition sweets. You can also pick up a cheap knock-off version of "real" tiramisu in most markets and convenience stores. It's sold in little plastic containers for far too high a price and the quality is very dubious, but it does tend to be some sort of cake saturated with coffee, topped with something resembling mascarpone cheese, and topped with chocolate.

Being a fan of textures, I love tiramisu, but more so because the saturated cake, creamy cheese, and chocolate make a very nice feeling in your mouth when you eat tiramisu. I should have remembered that when I decided to try out this variety of Pocky. It can have the taste, but it can't have the texture.

Like all Dessert Pocky, this box contains four packs with three sticks in each for about 160 yen (about $1.55). Each pack has 97 calories which is really not too bad for the satisfaction of three of these thickly coated sticks.


This Pocky smells like liquor, which is an immediate turn-off for me as I don't like alcohol added into processed foods. I don't mind it cooked into real food, but it always seems overdone in snacks, as if they have to saturate it to make sure the flavor stands out. The strange thing is that I didn't notice any alcohol in the ingredients so I'm guessing this is something which is buried in "flavoring".

The first bite of this carries a lot of coffee flavor with alcohol. Subsequent bites reveal a hint of mascarpone and a bit of chocolate and then there's that liquor flavor. The liquor part tastes and smells increasingly artificial as you eat more. On the bright side, the sweetness balance is spot on and there is no lingering bitter aftertaste from the coffee or chocolate.

One thing I'll note is that I usually don't have Pocky around for very long, but I kept this box around for about a month. I guess that is an indication of a lack of enthusiasm for it, but it did teach me something about the way Pocky keeps in a non-temperature controlled environment. While it hasn't been higher than 76 degrees F. (24 degrees C.) in Tokyo in the past month, the last packet of Pocky in this box seemed to have lost its freshness. The pretzel portion wasn't as crispy or fresh as I'm accustomed to and seemed to have absorbed a bit of the moisture from the coating. This is in spite of the fact that the expiration date on the box is November of this year.

I think these are pretty well done and someone who doesn't mind that fake alcohol flavor would really enjoy them. However, I just don't care for this particular Dessert Pocky and I wouldn't buy them again, though I eventually finished off the box.

This was also reviewed at Snack Love.