Random Weekend Picture 16

Describing mochi to people always feels inadequate when I do so in English. Calling it "rice cake" makes people visualize things like the Styrofoam health food discs that are sold to people trying to lose weight. Most mochi in Japan is processed in factories because making it is very labor intensive. Occasionally, people will get together and make it fresh for festivals. This picture was taken at one such festival. They're beating rice to a taffy-like consistency. This is the basis of all of the mochi snacks that I review, though obviously none of the mochi used in those foods is hand-made. My guess is that only premium mochi or that which is made for special occasions is hand-made.

One of my students told me her family buys fresh mochi (like that made by hand in the picture above) for their New Year's "kagami mochi" (traditional New Year's decoration). I asked her if it tasted better than the mass-produced stuff and she said she didn't like it. Of course, one of the reasons she wasn't keen on it was that it had the tendency to crack and get moldy as it sat around as a decoration until New Year's day. She said her mother had to cut out the moldy bits before they could eat it. It didn't really inspire me to seek out fresh mochi for my future kagami mochi needs.

Lotus Root Chips

I have a nagging feeling that I don't review nearly enough funky stuff. With that in mind, I've decided to push myself a little harder to buy weird rather than appealing snack items. And, with that said, don't expect too much from this commitment. It's probably going to be more like a New Year's resolution than a marriage vow. It's one I'm unlikely to fulfill except in a half-hearted fashion and eventually I'll give up.

With the notion in mind that I need to try harder to introduce at least slightly quirky foods into the rotation, I picked up these lotus root chips. "Lotus root" in Japanese is renkon (れんこん, 蓮根 or レンコン). For some reason this bag has it written in hiragana (the phonetic alphabet for Japanese words) but the Japanese Wikipedia entry lists it in katakana (the phonetic alphabet for foreign words). That only means something to you if you're shopping in Japan and need to track the characters down or study Japanese and care about such things.

Lotus root is common in Asian cuisine and Chinese medicine. It is high in water, fiber and carbohydrates. It also contains Vitamin C, Potassium, Thiamin, Riboflavin, Vitamin B6, Phosphorus, Copper and Manganese. I'm guessing that at least some of the nutritional benefits are lost in how these are processed to make a salted snack. I can say with certainty that a lot of salt is added in as these have 326 mg. of sodium. That's 22% of daily sodium intake in a small bag of these.

It's not something I have had any experience with either back home or in Japan. My eating is not particularly adventurous (hence my half-assed assertion at the start of this post), and I just can't recall ordering some food and finding lacy bits of lotus root in it since coming here. That being said, I believe I have eaten these as Japanese pickles before, though mainly when eating spicy Japanese curry so I can't say their true flavor was revealed between the brine and the curry flavors.

I found these at AM/PM convenience store for 105 yen ($1.14). They caught my eye for several reasons. The portion is small at 18 grams (.63 oz.), which is always good when you're sampling something new. Their ingredients include various seasonings including onion and mustard powder as well as Sucralose.

These smell like frying oil that is a bit on the "used" side. They are a little hard and super crunchy. The texture is a bit similar to fried onions. The flavor whollops you hard right from the start, particularly a hot mustard taste. The flavor reminds me greatly of the tiny packets of hot mustard that I get from our favorite yakitori joint or that you might get for egg rolls from a Chinese restaurant. Frankly, I can't taste anything other than the mustard, salt, and the savory spices. If lotus root has a taste of its own, it's buried in these chips.

Frankly, I liked these. I liked how powerful the flavor was and the heat. I enjoyed the crunchiness of them and felt they were not really all that dissimilar from a thick potato chip in terms of texture. That being said, I'm not sure they're a whole lot healthier for you than a conventional chip. In fact, calorie-wise, these are just a few calories higher than your average chip at 96 calories for this small bag.

If you enjoy really hot mustard and salted crunchy snacks, I recommend these. If you're not a fan of mustard that can be so intense that it blows heat up the back of your nasal passages, then these aren't for you. If you love lotus root, you're probably better off buying the real deal since I don't think these are going to do much for you.

Jun Hit Choco Ice Milk Bar

It's amazing how easily suckered in we are by packaging. The same product that we have overlooked a hundred times may go into the shopping basket if it is swaddled in new wrapping. A product that we might overlook draws out attention because of the way the label is designed. I think this "Jun Hit Choco" ice milk bar suckered me in both with the silly name ("Jun Hit"? It sounds like a pop star... ) and the large blocks of chocolate all over it.

Hyphenation clearly is a bit of a challenge.

The label also promises me that they have used only "the finest quality chocolate". I'm sure that that's the truth. After all, it's not like a snack food manufacturer would lie to a consumer about the quality of the ingredients in order to entice her to purchase it.

I picked this up for 100 yen ($1.09) at a local 7-11. It's an 80 ml. (2.7 oz.) bar and only 120 calories. The size is on the generous side, particularly for the caloric impact. The company that makes this is called Andeico, and this is my first review of one of their products. They make frozen treats as well as chilled baked items like chou cream (french pastry shells filled with custard or whipped cream) and puddings and yogurt. Their forte appears to be cold treats. The company was established in 1946 and their motto is something along the lines of, "we will never produce non-quality items." It's a rather small company with only 346 employees, and that may be one of the reasons I have never seen any of their products before. It's hard for smaller companies to get shelf space compared to bigger ones.

When I removed the bar from the package, I smelled nothing and a closer sniff also didn't yield much olfactory pleasure. The bar is very, very dark in color. My immediate sense was that it was going to be like a Fudgesicle, but I've been fooled before by Japanese ice milk bars with hard outer shells and surprises lurking within. It turns out that this actually is a "Fudgesicle-like" bar that is the same texture and substance through and through. It's easy to lick or suck on and doesn't melt too quickly. It softens and gets pleasantly easier to draw into your mouth.

The taste was very strong. It is intense, deep dark chocolate with bittersweet undertones with the right level of sweetness to make it palatable. One of the ingredients is coffee and, though you can't detect it in the bar, it likely helps develop and enhance the chocolate flavor. This was immensely flavorful in a way that was deeply satisfying for me, though it may be off-putting for people who dislike dark or bittersweet chocolate.

If you want something which is chocolate and has flavor "teeth", I can't recommend this bar enough. It's strong, but good. This bar lives up to Andeico's motto about quality. If you're the type who only enjoys milky chocolate or muted chocolate, this is going to be a bit much for you, but I favor milk chocolate and still loved this. I'll definitely buy it again if it remains in the freezer case at 7-11.

Lotte Black Black

If you don't live in Japan and follow blogs like this one or shop from Asian importers, it may seem as if there are a lot of interesting options just waiting to be sampled when it comes to foods and snacks and that you can get to all of them given enough time. When you get here, it becomes a bit more complex because there is so much around you that it is hard to pick and choose. It's not just that there is a new KitKat every other day, but also that you're competing with traditional sweets shops selling things like bean cakes and rice crackers, and fresh snacks made in stalls (like taiyaki).

Black Black is one of those things which has been on my radar for two decades, but I never tried it. It's a classic offering, and that probably is one of the reasons why I've ignored it for so long. It's not like it's going to stop being carried and vanish. Unlike many of the all too common seasonal or limited edition items, Black Black isn't going anywhere.

The funny thing is that I always assumed that Black Black was licorice gum, because, well, it is black. There are few sweets back home that are black and not made of licorice. The truth is that licorice is not a common flavor in Japan. In fact, I only ever see it as an imported food and my husband offered some licorice twists (Twizzlers) to students and they were decidedly so-so on it. I've read that the plant that licorice is derived from is part of traditional herbal medicine ("kampo") in Japan. It could be that the flavor is associated with illnesses rather than treats.

As soon as I broke the seal on my pack of Black Black, I knew this was no licorice gum. A very strong mint flavor wafts out of the pack. The flavor is intensely spearmint and it was actively unpleasant for me during the first 3 minutes of chewing and remained almost bitter for over 7 minutes of chewing. It is one potent chew.

The main draw of Black Black may or may not be the intense flavor and long-lasting nature of the minty chew, but I'm guessing part of what keeps it selling is the inclusion of caffeine. The Japanese are pretty nuts for caffeine-spiked stimulants, and this seems like it's just another delivery system for the third most popular legal drug of choice in Japan. For the record, alcohol is the most popular one, and nicotine is the second.

Frankly, I thought this was disgusting. It was too intense and tasted like chemicals. I couldn't believe that the flavor became bitter as time went by rather than simply mellowing out. I chewed it for about 10 minutes because I felt I should give it a chance. I wouldn't buy this again and have no expectation that I'll chew even a second stick. Besides the fact that it tastes gross to me, it contains sugar (though is only 8 calories per stick) and I don't like the idea of chewing on something saturated with sugar. Oddly, it also has Erythritol, Aspartame, and L-Phenylalanine in addition to sugar so it's also spiked with artificial sweeteners. I guess there's something to object to for everyone in this gum.

This was just "bleecch". I can't imagine anyone would chew this gum for any purpose other than to extract a stimulant from it or to wipe out a case of absolutely lethal halitosis (which I don't suffer from, fortunately). I'm sure Black Black has its fans. I'm just never going to be one of them.

KitKat Aloe and Yogurt

This is the second collaboration between the Tokyo Beauty Clinic (TBC) and Nestlé Japan. The first bar was the bitter almond, which had a very tenuous link to beauty (the flavor was supposed to suit women's tastes). This bar boasts a better claim and that is that it contains collagen. Collagen is something which you see plastered on many products in Japan because consumption of it supposedly promotes skin elasticity, and as I've mentioned before, Japanese women are bonkers for skin health. The thing is, the collagen in this bar does not come from aloe or yogurt. One of the ingredients is pork gelatin. Yeah, this bar is fortified with pig connective tissue and it appears higher on the ingredient list than aloe.

Of course, being crazy about skin health doesn't seem to translate to much except a fanatical avoidance of the sun and tons of money spent on expensive face creams. I haven't really noticed much in the way of superior skin among Japanese women. Most of them still have wrinkles when they get older, develop blemishes, and wear foundation make-up to smooth out uneven skin coloration. In fact, they're very uncomfortable if they can't wear foundation make-up. Personally, I can't stand the stuff and never use it, so their desire to wear it baffles me. I'd rather be a bit blotchy on occasion than slather flesh-colored goo on my face, but I'm 45 and not so worried about my beauty anymore.

The bar smells mainly like white chocolate, but it has a mild scent which has a hint of chlorophyll. Frankly, it smells like skin lotion to a very mild extent, which is no surprise because aloe is more often used for skin treatments than foods in the West. In Japan, you can buy drinks with aloe in them, but I've never had one. They may or may not taste like this bar, but I have no point of comparison. I never saw an aloe beverage in a store and said, "hmmm, I could really go for the taste of aloe right now."

The first bite mainly reveals a lot of sweet white chocolate flavor followed by a perfumey flavor which is vaguely reminiscent of chewing on a piece of grass. It's not a terrible flavor, but, honestly, it did seem like sweetened skin cream to me with a hint of grass dipped in your favorite eau de cologne. Frankly, I couldn't detect any yogurt sourness at all though I did sense a little bit of the smooth, dairy sense of it. I'm not sure if my tongue just wasn't sensitized to it at the time that I sampled this or if the sweetness just blew away any sour yogurt tones. I could only taste the yogurt at all by the time I ate the second finger of this mini bar and I could only detect it on the sides of my tongue.

The aloe and yogurt flavors were quite weak, but they are there if you're really paying attention and after your tongue has become sufficiently saturated with the sweetness of the bar that other flavors can get through. I found this bar at 7-11 for 42 yen (46 cents). If you live in Japan and are curious about oddball flavors, it's not much of an investment for a sampling and I wouldn't say it's not worth a try. The bar is small (about the total size of 1.5 regular KitKat bar fingers), and only 69 calories. Under any other circumstances (paying more via an importer, having to track the bar down with difficulty or having to buy a big bag of the mini bars to sample it), I wouldn't say it's worthwhile unless you've ever thought your bottle of hand lotion smelled so delicious that you'd like to mix in a ton of sugar and take a swig.