Taishyo Ame

As I grew increasingly bored by the sweets on offer in usual venues (convenience stores, supermarkets, snack shops) in Tokyo, I started to look further afield for interesting items. During my last year in Japan, I happened to work near not one, not two, but three shops specializing in regional sweets. One of them sold items from Hokkaido, including the Guarana soda I reviewed previously. It was at that very shop (in Shinjuku, near the Southern Terrace exit), I found this little bit of candy for 50 yen (about 60 cents).

I like old-fashioned packaging, and often was drawn to candy merely by such packaging. Unfortunately, what lured the foreign snack review blogger didn't necessarily draw in the jaded locals, who often saw such candy as something their parents or grandparents ate. Let's face it, this is not the sort of thing that people are going to be loudly shouting about in television commercials. It's far more likely to be welded to the bottom of your granny's pocketbook after being forgotten over a hot summer.

The company that makes this is called Kibidango and they make a relatively small range of traditional treats. I reviewed their "millet dumpling" awhile back with limited enthusiasm. They make the sort of stuff that most foreigners would shun based on the inability to determine what is inside. Even if you bought it based on the packaging, it might scare you away once you saw what was inside. Let's face it, this looks like it may have gone moldy with the little black specks embedded in the whiteness.

Inside the wrapper is a flat little block (18 grams or about half an ounce) covered in oblaat, an edible wrapper which is similar to the types of coatings on (medicinal) capsules. The ingredients list is very short and is only malt syrup, sugar, sesame, and oblaat. The little slab is rather tough and hard to bite into. It's like taffy or hard nougat that you have to fight free from the larger piece in order to take a bite of it. Think of yourself like a dog that is trying to wrest the rag free from your master's hands as you attempt to tear off a bit. After you manage to bite off a piece, it'll slowly become more pliable and taffy-like in your mouth. It'll stick to your teeth like nobody's business and threaten to rip out your fillings.

The question is, is it worth the chewing? The answer is a less than resounding, "yes". The reward is a very nicely flavored bit of black sesame taffy which is has a good, but not cloying or overbearing sweetness. Mind you, I recommend only eating about half of the small portion at once as the sweetness does build up as you eat more. However, I did like the flavor of this quite a lot, but I didn't care for the texture much at all, especially in terms of trying to tear a bit free of the entire smallish piece. I'd say this is worth a try if you like taffy and have good, strong teeth. This gets a "happy" rating, but only barely.

Healthy Creations Sesame Rice Crackers

I knew that there were going to be options for some of my favorite Japanese snacks in America. One of the things that I had high hopes for was a tasty Americanized version of sembei or rice crackers. When I checked Amazon, there were quite a few versions of them sold packaged for the American market. Note that they aren't necessarily made in the U.S. These were made in China, which actually was sometimes the case for the snacks I had in Japan as well. Just because Japanese writing is on a package, it doesn't mean it was made in Japan. Many of the things I purchased were made in Taiwan, Korea, Vietnam, or China. This is because Japanese manufacturers take advantage of the same reduced labor costs as American companies do.

In fact, one little tidbit of information that many people who live in Japan don't realize is that there is a reason there is so much Aussie beef in Japan is that the cattle farms are owned by Japanese business people. Of course, it is still good for the Australian economy to have the farms in their country, but it doesn't represent the sort of opening of the domestic market that many people believe it does. The Japanese only allow copious imports from a country when they have a vested interest. Otherwise, it's rumors about pesticides and heavy restrictions. I'm not sure if that's the way it is in every country around the world, though frankly, it wouldn't surprise me if it happened like that to some extent everywhere. And these were made for a company in California so, that's a little support for my assertion right there.

Getting to the snack at hand, I've got a lot of options for rice-based crackers to sample here in the U.S. Even in the little markets I have access to at present on the San Juan Islands, there are a minimum of 6 varieties. Most of them, however, are all the same flavor, sesame. There's nothing wrong at all with sesame. I love it, after all, but I'm going to get pretty wistful for the wasabi, yuzu koshoo, and kinako crackers I could get in Japan if my selection doesn't widen when I leave here in about a month.

I found these crackers at a tiny little market on the South side of the island I'm on. It happens to be the second of only two markets on this one. I bought these at that place for two reasons. The primary one was that this little market had an interesting and eclectic blend of items from all over the world and their business wasn't exactly booming. I wanted to support them by spending my money with them rather than the bigger chain market on the other side of the island. The other reason was that they were pretty reasonably priced at $1.89 (153 yen) for a 3.5 oz. (100 gram) bag. It's nice to support the little guy when it costs less than supporting the big guy. Since I doubt my readers will be in the San Juan Islands, I'll mention that you can get them from Amazon, but I'd be surprised if markets all over the U.S. don't carry them.

These crackers don't smell like much of anything though they do have the vaguely rice crackery smell. They do have that same baked rice flavor that I associated with rice crackers in Japan, and there is a pleasant sesame seed flavor, but it's the flavor that you get on the top of your hamburger bun. That's because these are made with white sesame seeds, not the black ones that are more common in Japan. Since they are mildly salty, the delicate sesame flavor is able to shine through. The point on which these really fell short for me was the texture. They are hard and slightly tough. I'd wager this is because they are baked rather than fried and contain less oil than Japanese sembei.

While the bag does not say anything about how these are made, the fact that 18 crackers have only 120 calories speaks volumes. Each cracker is 2 inches/5 cm. in diameter, so they aren't exactly tiny. The ingredients list is also quite short with rice, white sesame seeds, sunflower oil, and maltodextrin as the main ingredients and less than 2% sea salt, sugar, and kelp extract. I don't know if that actually makes them "healthy", but it doesn't look too bad.

I wouldn't buy these to just eat by themselves because I've been spoiled by the light, crispy texture that comes from Japanese "hard" sembei (their way of referring to deep-fried, crispy, thin rice crackers). However, they do make a good cracker to accompany cheese, dips, etc. I also think that other people may be a bit less fussy about the slight toughness of the texture than me. Eating these makes me appreciate more than before the delicate balance between the taste and texture of a product and the "healthiness" of it. These are definitely lower calorie than Japanese rice crackers and have a nice flavor, but they aren't quite as much fun as the less healthy and stronger tasting rice crackers I could get in Tokyo. Still, I'd buy them again.

Random Picture #110

Click to see a larger picture.

It's that time of year in Japan again. The cherry blossoms are blooming. The salary men are sitting on blue plastic tarps and getting drunk in appreciation, and the young folks are flocking to Inokashira Park in Kichijoji and drinking in reasonable moderation. The vendors near that area, which has very heavy foot traffic composed largely of people for whom nutrition is not a concern as there are a lot of university students, always come out in force to sell their wares. I'm sure most people imagine Japan at cherry blossom season like some ukiyoe (woodblock) print and food options would be more like bean jam buns (anpan) and dango (mochi balls on sticks). The most popular thing, at least by the number of vendors, is wieners on sticks and whatever Western food strikes people's fancy in a given year. 

This charming woman is selling chorizo and Bavarian pretzels in "normal" or "fresh butter" flavors. During the early days of our time in Japan, my husband would see "chorizo", which he loves, and eagerly buy one. That eagerness was quickly suffocated by the fact that "chorizo" in Japan seems to mean "marginally spicy hotdog". I'm guessing the Bavarian pretzels (Brezel) were about as authentic as the chorizo. 

Mintia Rich Grapefruit

Prolific movie reviewer Roger Ebert once said something to the effect that what he wanted out of a movie was for it to be something that he had not seen before. Given how many movies he digested as a movie reviewer, this would become an increasingly difficult bill to fill. The more active experience you have with something, the harder it becomes for the next experience to impress you.

Note that I say "active" experience and not "experience". Most of us sleepwalk through our sensory lives. We wake up and barely taste the expensive coffee we pick up at the local coffee chain shop. Well, when I say, "we", I mean other people. I make an active effort to attend to the taste, smell, and texture of every food I consume. This is the gift and curse of being a food blogger, as I'm sure Roger Ebert can't watch a movie without attending to various details that most of us pedestrian viewers fail to notice (and therefore can just enjoy our movie without any extraneous nonsense).

In no way am I suggesting that my sense of taste is refined from attending to all that I eat, but rather that it becomes pretty jaded. Things that people who are not food reviewers enjoy will be those which I find lacking because I'm paying perhaps too much attention. One of the reasons that foodies, and I'm not a "foodie", but more of a "junk foodie", seek food further and further afield of their usual scope is that they're bored. They start to think that "different" is "better" because this is valuable to them personally, just as Roger Ebert embraced and endorsed movies which I found unappealing because, for him, "different" was "better".

That's a big intro for a review of the Japanese equivalent of Tic-Tacs, but I'm making a point about all Japanese food and snacks. These are awesome in part because they aren't the little smooth pellets that shook in ones pocket throughout childhood, though they do essentially fill the same niche. The main difference is that Mintia plays into the higher Japanese tolerance for sour things and a mixture of savory and sweet together. Tic-Tacs play closer to sweetness, which suits American palates better.  Mintia tends to reflect basic Japanese cuisine's flavors. Japanese people like things less sweet, more sour, and more bitter because they're used to it. Jaded palates like mine like these things a lot because they're bored.

That being said, I like Mintia because the flavors are usually pretty intense. Every tiny little sugar-free pellet of this "rich grapefruit" flavor is sour without making your mouth pucker and sweet enough for balance. It evens tastes like "real" grapefruit to a fair extent, though without any of the intense bitterness of the real deal. The first ingredient is "grapefruit sugar" followed by a scary cocktail of sweeteners that the likes of me does not mind but those that are sensitive to them may want to avoid. The packaging tells us that there are some sort of grapefruit chips in them as well as some sort of "grapefruit aroma" addition. They do smell good, though I doubt many people other than myself will be sniffing at them. You are, after all, normal rather than a bizarre junk foodie.

My only "problem" with Mintia, and I've never had a bad experience with them, is that I tend to want to eat a whole package at once. At 24 calories per 50 teeny tiny pellets, this isn't much of an expense calorically, and at around 100-120 yen ($1.23-$1.47) per pack, it's not hard on the wallet. It is, however, hard on the tongue as these are closer to the rough texture of a pressed powdered candy than the slick smoothness of a Tic-Tac and tend to be abrasive on your sensitive body parts. I'd definitely buy these again, but I'd have to wait until after my tongue has healed. 

Nestle KitKats of the World Limited Edition Mini (product info.)

Image pilfered from the Nestle Japan web site. 

As my very first product information post, I'm pleased to show you something which Nestle Japan was boring me with just before I left Japan. I actually feel a little guilty putting it that way because proceeds from the sales of this release are for charity. Twenty yen (about 25 cents) from each bag of 13 mini KitKats sold will go to help rebuild the Sanriku railway which was badly damaged in the Tohoku earthquake last March. The theme of "world" relates to recognizing all of the messages of support that Japan got from all over the world in the aftermath of the disaster. Each bag retails for 500 yen (525 with tax/$6.46). Nestle Japan doesn't tell you how long it will be available, but it was released on March 5, so I imagine it won't be too hard to find in the coming months. 

The reason that I didn't buy this when it popped up in Japan is that it is essentially a bag of various milk chocolate KitKats. There are 5 each of the British and Australian versions of KitKats and 3 of the Japanese ones. Thirteen seems like an odd (and unlucky, if you are superstitious) number of bars to offer. It seems a bit chintzy not to just give 5 Japan bars and make it 15, but there it is.

I'm sure there are subtle taste variations between every version of a milk chocolate KitKat world-wide, but the notion of sampling such minor differences didn't wow me into buying a bag. Minis never represent the best value for KitKats anyway, so I have to be heavily enticed by the flavor to buy them when they're not on a steep discount sale. That being said, if you want to be charitable, there are worse ways to get your generosity on. 

Image also pilfered from Nestle Japan. 

As a related aside, Nestle Japan has announced that it has changed the basic KitKat for the first time in 37 years by making the wafers crispier. It was common in Japan to see the words "saku saku uppu! (crispier)" on man, so it seems that the Japanese market loves nothing more than brittler forms of its favorite snack treats. I'm sure that researchers in various food labs all over Japan are furrowing their brows in concentration trying to wring a few more molecules of moisture out of their processed treats.