Orange M & M's

You'd think that M & M's would be the type of thing that'd go over well in Japan. They're small and clean to eat. After all, they melt in your mouth, not in your hand. For reasons I can only (and will) speculate about, you don't see many varieties of M & & M's in Japanese shops. For years, you could buy plain or peanut and that was pretty much it. After quite some time, a crispy variety showed up, but it really didn't taste greatly different from the plain ones. It just had a different texture.

Getting back to why I think M & M's haven't exploded with the same popularity of something like a KitKat (despite having a relatively appealing anthropomorphic mascot), I think it's about packaging in large part. Most people are not going to eat the whole bag at once and folding it up and trying to keep it around for awhile isn't very appealing to the Japanese, who are rather spoiled when it comes to convenient packaging. This is a country which is accustomed to conveniently resealable plastic candy tubes and individually wrapped portions. In large part, I think marketing has a lot to do with the lack of M & M's widespread availability (which must reflect a lack of general popularity). Well, there's that and the fact that there is a cheaper version made by Meiji called "Marble Choco".



My husband picked these up at New Days convenience store for about 100 yen ($1.09), but you can buy them at just about any convenience store for the time being. There's not much to say about their appearance as most people know what a standard M & M looks like. These are only different in that they're only white and orange in color. They also smell a bit like orange baby aspirin. The taste was almost exactly like an orange Tootsie Roll. If you've never had one, it's an artificial orange mixed with weak chocolate. "Artificial" orange, which is more about citric acid zing than the fragrant loveliness of real orange, is what you taste when you eat a cheap, kid's lollipop.

These weren't awful, and I've read that they have been sold in other countries and some people are tremendous fans of them, but I just wasn't keen on them. I love orange and chocolate mixed in sweets, but this just wasn't firing on either of those taste fronts. The textural elements of the crispy candy shell and chocolate center were there, but the taste was just disappointing.

Random Weekend Picture 20

As summer comes rolling in, festivals start making the rounds and that means food. If it can be crammed on a stick and cooked on a sheet of metal, you can generally find it on offer. Here, you see a young man sweating it out grilling sticks of beef at the Koenji Awaodori festival. It looks and smells good, but a closer look at the raw business shows just how bad it is for you:

Japanese people are always telling me that American food is just so much fattier than Japanese food, but this meat looks anything but lean. It smells good, but it looks like artery poison. Also, frankly, this stuff just sits out in the open in sweltering summer heat while hundreds of people mill around (talking, coughing, touching things they shouldn't), insects do their business, and hands have nowhere to be washed.

Meiji BizCharge Banana Yogurt with Konnyaku

Have you ever asked yourself whether or not there is a yogurt out there that is masculine enough for you? It seems that Meiji has pondered this question as well and has determined that existing products lack the Y-chromosome appeal they need.

The reason this is called "BizCharge" is that it is marketed as yogurt for businessmen. Yes, this isn't your typical sissy food for little girls trying to watch their weight. It's a man's yogurt. The top tells you exactly how to use this product (Open->Charge->Go), in case you don't know how to peel the foil off the top of a cup of yogurt and consume it. I guess those businessmen aren't as well educated as they used to be, or that they lack the energy to think before consuming this yogurt.

Part of the promotion for this mentions that you get 86 calories of the total 137 calories in this from banana, though only 5% is banana. The idea is that men can power themselves up on that banana fuel. The ingredients list includes coconut oil, banana sugar, Stevia, and banana juice. The portion size is rather bigger than usual, 170 grams (6 oz.). I'm guessing the bigger size is due to the fact that this is for men to energize themselves on, and the calories aren't higher than they are because konnyaku has no calories to speak of.

The yogurt smells nice and banana-like and has a lumpy texture. The lumps are both bits of banana and little chewy balls of tapioca-like konnyaku. The yogurt isn't as sour as most and not as sweet as some others. It's got a good, authentic banana flavor and has excellent fruit, yogurt, and sweetness balance.

I found this at Seiyu supermarket for about 120 yen ($1.37). I haven't seen it in other markets or convenience stores, but I'll be honest and say that I rarely pay exquisite attention to the yogurt sections as I always buy cheap, plain low-fat yogurt or Luna vanilla yogurt. This caught my eye because of the name. Banana yogurt also isn't very common, but this was really good. I'd definitely recommend any yogurt fans sample it, whether they are businessmen or not.

Cola and Lemon Squash KitKat

The concept for this KitKat is an interesting one, though not necessarily a good one. Instead of offering one dubious flavor as a limited edition weird flavor, they are offering two in the same box. Each box contains two fingers of lemon squash and two of cola. This probably helps Nestlé Japan sell to people who are interested in the more palatable of the two flavors and have no choice but to buy both. Of course, we all know which one is going to be lamer.

Does anyone like cola flavored candy? Seriously. Is it a flavor that works outside of carbonated liquids? When I was a kid and was trick-or-treating or got a lollipop and couldn't choose the flavor, cola was always a disappointment. Of course, the fact that a given flavor doesn't "work" never stopped Nestlé Japan before, so why hesitate now?

Okay, I shouldn't prejudge the flavor just because every other cola candy on the planet is a disappointment. And, I shouldn't judge it solely on the fact that it smells like every other cola candy I've ever had. I will judge it based on the fact that it tastde like flat, generic cola mixed with fizzy generic-tasting "soda" powder. It was okay, but nothing to write home about.

The lemon squash one held far more promise because lemon chocolates can be good. This smelled promising, which is to say, lemony. Also, the pairing of sour lemon with sweet white chocolate sounds like a good balance. In reality, this wasn't as good as the Valentine's day lemon KitKats that I've had before. It's not bad, mind you, but the lemon flavor is spoiled to some extent by the addition of a fizzy generic soda flavoring in the powder between the wafers. This flavor is similar to the one in the Caplis KitKats that I recently reviewed. I think they added something in to give it a slight alcohol flavoring that makes it slightly bitter.

Neither of these is great. Both are, at best, "interesting". If you are interested in trying something unique, then pick this up and give it a sampling. You won't hate them. You may like the lemon squash version and be indifferent to the cola. I got this at a 7-11 near one of my local stations for 120 yen ($1.37). If you can't find it though, it's not worth tracking down.

Sanko Seika Japanese-style Curry Sembei

I'm coming up on two years of this sort of Japanese snack food reviewing and you'd think there would be some lessons I would have learned about having food lying around all of the time, especially in the 5-month long "summer" in Tokyo. If you don't finish up a salted snack food rapidly, it's going to go stale in the heat whether it is completely sealed up or not.

I left two of the six packets of sembei in the bag for about a month before I got around to them and they started to go stale despite being well-sealed both in their individual packets and a Ziploc bag to boot. Stupid heat! The fact that they sat around for about a month is an indication that these were not something I was crazy about or that I was really lazy about getting around to reviewing. In this case, it was mainly the latter as I've found far too many salty snack treats this past month and couldn't eat them all up.

If you look at the picture on the front of the bag, you'll see that it is not Indian-style curry but rather Japanese. Japanese curry is more like a spicy stew than actual curry. It's heavy on the beef or pork gravy and usually lacks some classic Indian spices (like cardamom) and includes some Japanese components (like soy sauce, though not always). Among the ingredients for this are apple juice, black pepper, soy sauce, pork and chicken extract, and chicken oil.

There are two parts to the sembei, a flat curry flavored cracker and a small ball which is shrimp flavored. If you eat them separately, the shrimp balls are quite sweet and the curry crackers rather savory. I recommend eating them both together for the best effect. They smelled nicely spicy, and carried a lot of the flavor of curry powder with some good cumulative black pepper heat. They have a lot of good savory flavors in them, but somehow seemed a bit flat in flavor regardless. I think part of the problem is that the peppery nature and curry powder flavors saturate your tongue too rapidly and mask any other tastes (like garlic).

These were good, and I think fans of rather mundane curry (as opposed to authentic Indian curry) would probably enjoy them. I liked them fine, but I wasn't over the moon about them (as their approaching staleness testified to). I found them at Okashi no Machioka snack shop for about 160 yen, and I certainly don't regret sampling them, but I would have been happier with about half as many packets as come in the pack (six, at 86 calories per pack). These have a nice sweet/spicy thing going on, but they just didn't blow me away.