Alix Goma Soy Beans (Setsubun)

After researching and shopping for this week's worth of Setsubun snacks, I wondered if soy bean producers are rubbing their hands together with glee at the notion of Setsubun just as confectioners are happy about Valentine's Day and Halloween. This notion was reinforced when I researched the maker of these sesame soy bean snacks, Alix. Alix makes a variety of soy-bean and rice-based products as well as snacks with nuts. One of their pages is nothing but Setsubun-related items. Of course, Alix also has a page devoted to Doll's Festival snacks, so I might be revisiting them if I do anything related to that holiday this year. Since this is a Japanese snacks blog, it would seem appropriate for me to hit upon the holiday foods in Japan eventually. Still, it's hard to get enthusiastic about soy beans (for Setsubun) or puffed rice (for the Doll's festival).


Confronted with a plethora of soybean snack options as part of the Setsubun displays at local markets, I opted for these sesame seed(goma)-covered ones. Among the types I passed on were ones that looked frosted with white sugar, salted and seasoned ones, and ones mixed with bits of nori. I chose these because they were only 98 yen ($1.07) for a 100 gram (3.5 oz.) bag and I have fond memories of the last sesame-based treat that I reviewed.

When you open the bag, you mainly smell the sesame seeds. Each little ball is a sphere that is nearly perfectly and evenly covered with seeds. I don't know how they manage this, but it's a pretty impressive feat considering how small they are (about the size of a small marble). The flavor is at first of sesame seeds, light sweetness, very light salt, and then the soybeans with a return on the sesame toward the end. The sweet and salty flavors are relatively subtle and allow the sesame to shine through and the soybean to peak out.

I enjoyed these and would definitely place them at the top of the heap if I were choosing a Setsubun snack to eat 45 of (one for each year I've been alive). That being said, these are fairly fattening. The bag probably holds about 50 soy peas coated in sesame and you'll consume 460 calories for the privilege of having the entire bag. They are fairly protein rich though (16.1 grams) and rather fatty (23.7 grams). I'd certainly consider buying them again if I were in the mood, but I would have to place them a distant second to the Daiiti Seika Goma Crunch candy. That being said, these are definitely healthier and less likely to produce cavities.

(Thus ends my week of Setsubun-related posts. I hope you found them interesting!)

Aero Setsubun Black Soy Chocolate Bar

The Aero black soy bar is Nestle Japan's second entry in the Setsubun marketing game.The red devil on the soy bean KitKat has been given a color job and been symbolically castrated by having his horns removed. This might be a girl demon. I'm not up on gender identification of devil and demon sorts.

I found this bar side-by-side with the Setsubun KitKat at Family Mart convenience store. Both bars are pretty much the same size, about 14 x 3 x 2 cm (5.5 x 1.2 x .8 in.) and cost 120 yen ($1.32). The bar has a bit of a rough-hewn pattern on the outside. I'm guessing this is supposed to resemble wood, but I can't imagine why. The information on the front says that this bar is .28% black soy. That small a quantity of a key ingredient seems to indicate that the people at Nestle Japan subscribe to the homeopathic notion that no matter how little of something you use, it can be effective.


The bar smells vaguely of soy flour (kinako) and has a gray bubbled interior. I ate my bar at room temperature, so the sometimes crunchy effect you get from eating catacombs of cold aerated chocolate didn't happen. Instead, I just got a soft, rich milk chocolate flavor and texture. It melts so quickly in your mouth that it seems like you've got a mouth full of warm fudge. It's a very sumptuous experience.

As milk chocolate bars go, this is very enjoyable. I've had Aero before, but mainly as smaller bars. I don't know if the tiny bit of black soybean in the bar enhanced the richness or simply that the thickness and room temperature chocolate made it seem more decadent, but I enjoyed this more than I remember regular Aero bars. That being said, I didn't taste the soy component at all.

Kobayashi Seika Roasted Soy Beans (Setsubun)

Most of the time, I give the company that makes a particular product some credit for infusing a product with their own unique flavors or cooking style. In the case of these roasted soybeans, I'm guessing that nearly any packet of this type of plain soybean is going to be pretty much the same as any other packet. There are certainly dozens of varieties of them and most of them look the same. That being said, you can get types which are coated in sugar, seaweed, etc. For the sake of experiencing what I assume is a "basic" in the spirit of the Setsubun season, I went with the plain ones.


I bought these at Peacock supermarket for 98 yen. To be honest, I chose this packet (made by a company that sells a huge variety of soybeans) because it was one of the few types of soybeans that was not sold in what appeared to be a family size or a multi-pack. Most of the soy beans (or soy peas, as they are sometimes called) seem to be offered up in bags full of little bags. I'm guessing this is so they can be handed out to family members and each person can either eat them or pelt their paternal figure with them during the celebration.

The information about Setsubun says that you're supposed to both throw these at someone wearing a demon mask (to drive away evil and invite luck) and eat one for every year you have been on the planet. Surprisingly, basic roasted soybeans are pretty calorific. This 65 gram (2.3 oz.) bag is 305 calories. Considering the absolute lack of any sort of external flavoring or oil, this is a little surprising, though there are 14 grams of fat in these. Japanese soy products are not de-fatted as many Western soy preparations are. Mind you, unless you're 100 years old, you're not likely to eat the whole bag at once. On the bright side, there are 21 grams of protein.

These smell pretty much like soy, because, well, that's all they are. They're very crispy and crunchy and resemble a more brittle version of a peanut, but with more of an edamame flavor to them. They're certainly fine and inoffensive, but I kept feeling that they desperately needed some salt or seasoning. They're like a blanched peanut in that way.

I like these, but not enough to just sit down with a Diet Coke and snack away. I think they'd be best consumed with something else like cottage cheese or even possibly in a salad to add crunch. In fact, I think they'd be fine mixed with anything which needed a relatively bland, somewhat nutty textural component. That being said, I'm not sure I'll make it through the whole bag before they go stale. I'm just not that into them.

Soy Bean KitKat (Setsubun Edition - Big Bar)

Nestle Japan currently makes six sizes of KitKats in Japan. There is this big bar, the regular 4-finger bar sold in boxes, minis, flat single finger minis used in cookie plus bars, flat longer fingers for regular Cookie Plus bars, and "petit" bars which are like 1/2 of a regular KitKat finger wrapped in foil as an individual treat. I've never reviewed the "petit" KitKats because they are simply regular milk chocolate bars in a different package. I imagine Nestle Japan offers these variations in size so that they can recycle a few recipes and offer them as something new by changing the sizes.


The notion that the recipes are being recycled wholesale (as opposed to being offered in small variations) came to mind after I sampled this Setsubun soy bean variety. It tasted exactly like the Ohagi KitKat that I reviewed last September. That is, it has the earthy, mossy, somewhat "dirty" or "moldy" taste that that bar had. I hated that flavor when I first encountered it in the Oshiruko KitKat, and found it more tolerable in the Ohagi one, and have reached a point of indifference after this bar. Next time they roll the same thing out in a new form, I may actually like it, though I'd prefer not to buy it again under a new name and in a different form.

This bar does have a few things going for it. It has a demon on it as a mark of the Setsubun holiday, and it is a big bar with plenty of crispy wafer goodness and nice milk chocolate. That being said, it was very disappointing for the flavor to be a repeat of a previous flavor. If you like the Oshiruko or Ohagi KitKats and regret that they are no longer on store shelves, you can grab yourself one of these at Family Mart for 120 yen ($1.32) and relive the memory. Otherwise, you might want to pass.

Variety Friday: Setsubun Snacks

top shelf: Setsubun demon masks, second shelf: a variety of soy beans for the celebration

Though I've been in Japan a little over two decades, I have never taken much notice of the holiday Setsubun. This is in large part because I associate celebration of the day with kids and I neither have children nor close friends with them. The truth is that I have been vaguely aware of the holiday and some of its practices since the early years of my stay, but never really paid much attention until I started seeing Setsubun-themed candy in the past few weeks.

Setsubun includes a custom called mamemaki, which is where the head of household (usually the father of the family) puts on a demon mask and the children or other family members throw soybeans at him to drive away evil, draw luck, and purify the home. I say that I associate this holidays with children, because I have never known a Japanese adult who carried out mamemaki without kids. Childless adults don't usually perform this little role play. My guess is that most of them have far more interesting role plays involving long-celibate samurai and curious geisha or helpful gladiators and lost, grateful, and randy goddesses who have fallen to earth.

Though I'm sure Setsubun-themed foods have been around since long before I was born, I wasn't writing a snack blog prior to last year. This year, I decided to do a week's worth of Setsubun-related foods as a way of exploring the food culture end of the holiday. Setsubun is celebrated on February 3 so next week seemed like a good time to offer up those reviews. Some of the foods are modern candy with a Setsubun theme, and others are more traditional.

I could have easily done two weeks worth of Setsubun-related foods. While I was at one of my local markets today (Peacock), I saw that there was a wide variety of snacks covering both the purification end and the demon personification. One of the coolest was a package of big demon "feet" stick-less, lollipop-style hard candies. A bag full of big transparent yellow feet was hard to resist, but the price (358 yen or $3.93) and the prospect of all of the tooth decay from sucking on that many sugary feet put me off (though it does sound like a fetishist's dream). There were also demon "clubs" made out of what I'm guessing was some sort of carbohydrate backbone coated in a curious brown coating and nuts to make it look like a caveman-style bludgeoning device.

Since I couldn't possibly buy and consume everything, I made a few selections which I think may have broader application to my readers. By that I mean that these are foods which you may be able to find as imports or that might be available in Asian groceries (albeit from different manufacturers than the ones I sampled).