Kirin's April Fool's Day Prank (promotion information)

I've mentioned in my other blog that the Japanese don't do April Fool's day and I was always immensely grateful for that. It's not that I don't appreciate a clever joke. In fact, I very much appreciate one. It's just that April Fool's jokes are rarely clever. They are often mean-spirited, childish, and lacking in true imagination. Mostly, they play on making your victim look like a fool after trusting you rather than being creative and amusing everyone with your ingenuity.

This past April Fool's Day, there were two jokes that I appreciated. One was the Lil Bub video which was very nicely constructed to make it appear that there are actually two of these adorable cats with dwarfism and the other is the Kirin April Fool's advertisement promoting a 1 ml. can of beer. I appreciate these jokes because they take effort and they provoke a smile rather than embarrassment. While I do like the ad (shown above), I also hope this isn't the start of a wider trend in Japan. 

Random Picture #207

As I "warned" in my Monday review, everything is coming up strawberry right now. This was the display at Marukai market, one of several Asian markets within driving distance of my home. Everything you see here is strawberry sweets. It is mainly various types of cookies (Kabaya's crispy "Panda" cookies, 3 types of Bourbon petit cookies featuring strawberry in each, Delicia strawberry fromage cookie/candy combos), but there are also pretzels (Toppo, Pocky and Pocky Midi), cakes, candy (Hi-Chew and Look) and wafers.

As someone who is not an enormous fan of starwberry, I won't be sampling all of these, but I couldn't resist a few of them. You'll be seeing reviews of at least 4 of these items and a few have already been reviewed (linked in previous paragraph). If you love strawberry, I guess now is the time to track down some Japanese snacks. 

A Plethora of Tirol Choco Releases (product information)

All images come from Tirol.

I can't hit every single new snack every week because there just aren't enough hours in the day, but, when I finally checked Tirol's web site, I felt like I'd seriously fallen down on the job. They've got a little crazy for spring, so I'll get cracking on talking about what is out there.

At the top of this post, there are special bags of dinsaurs depicted in a game called AR3D. I had never heard of this game before, but it is an Android application and Tirol is more than happy to give you at directions for how to play if you're unfamiliar with it. They've also rather graciously posted all 100 of the graphics for you to see so that you know exactly which ones you still need to collect.

For the less game-happy set, they've got some releases that mimic traditional spring flavors and sweets. Sakura mochi, which includes green tea powder, a "mochi" gummi center, sakura (cherry blossom) pink chocolate and a chocolate base should set your inner office lady afire.

For the more conservative set, Tirol has a green tea mochi variety. This also includes a gummi center to mimic the chewy nature of stretchy pounded rice cake with green tea powder and white chocolate.

Finally, lest the traditional sorts feel over-catered to and the kids feel under-served, there's one more new product which seems geared toward the younger set. This is a rice puff chocolate which promises to be both crunchy and light. My experience with these in the past has yielded a fairly sweet chocolate base to cater to the palates of the diminuitive set.

It's clear that after the post-holiday lull, the push is on for spring releases. It'll give everyone something to nosh on while they view the cherry blossoms.

Meiji Meltyblend Fruity Strawberry

When I recently reviewed the chocolate version of "Meltyblend", I remarked that these are usually called "Melty Kiss" in Japan. What's in a name? In this case, I was thinking it might be the potential for a lawsuit between Hershey's and Meiji if they tried to called their small bits of individually wrapped chocolate treats "kisses". The truth is that I have no idea why this is called "Meltyblend", but a little research revealed the unlikelihood that the product has been renamed because of what I'm sure are Hershey's armies of industrial grade trademark protection lawyers. 

Research into how Hershey's came to call their little drops of chocolate "kisses" in the first place provided an explanation, but not a very credible one. Hershey claims that the sounds that the chocolate makes when it's plopped out of the machine resembles the sucking wet of a kiss. They neglected to mention that, back in old timey days, "kiss" was a common name for any small sweet and that there were products of all sorts referred to as a "kiss". My guess is that that origin is lost, but that the concept comes from the idea that it is a small touch of a confection on the lips - sweet and often short - and you want more.

This "Meltyblend", not "Melty Kiss", but they actually are the same product is the last of my "winter limited edition" Japanese sweets in stock. It's only limited to winter because of the low melting point aspects. It's not because it's strawberry. Trust me on this. If you're around for the random picture I'm planning to use on Wednesday, you'll know that strawberry is anything but "limited" right now. In fact, spring seems to have sprung in an absolute explosion of this particular fruit.

As for the candy, I'm sorry to say that this is the biggest "miss" I've experienced in the Melty Kiss line. It's not bad at all, but compared to the almost sublime varieties that I've sampled before, it comes across as humdrum and lacking in flavor power. They smell faintly of strawberries, and have a pretty decent strawberry taste at the start, but as the taste develops on your tongue, it becomes too strong and isn't balanced out by the chocolate portion. If it has had a ratio of 1/3 chocolate to 2/3 strawberry, I think the bitterness of the chocolate may have provided for an interested contrast. As it is, it just came across to me as 90% berry and with an almost inconsequential bit of chocolate. 

If you're a bigger fan of strawberry than me, this might be the bee's knees. It still has the soft, almost truffle-like, qualities of Melty Miss and melts nicely on the tongue. I just really need more chocolate in my chocolates. If this were a real kiss, it'd be the sort which didn't end up igniting much passion, at least in me. Perhaps it's more someone else's type.

Weiss Anis-Plätzchen

I like to ask people questions that, perhaps, no one has ever asked them before, or, at the very least, ask a question which tells me something that I don't know about them. It's a good game that allows you to know things about your friends that you might not otherwise ever know and can shed some interesting light on to their past or perspectives. Here's a question that I'm pretty sure I have never asked anyone, but these cookies brought to mind. The question is, "what was the first German word that you ever learned?" Of course, this only works if you are not actually German. If you are German, you probably don't remember your first German word.

I asked my husband this question and he said his was "zugzwang". Her learned it when he was 12 or 13 from reading books on chess. See, you have already learned something about my husband from that strang question and answer. My sister said that hers was likely something heard on the old comedy, "Hogan's Heroes" and she guesses it might be "schnell." This tells you something about what she watched on T.V. as a child (re-runs of shows that thought being a prisoner of the Nazis was a great sitcom idea). I asked my friends on Facebook and they gave an obvious one which I completely forgot about, "gezundheit." I think they were raised with better manners and around more mannerly people than me. The same goes for the friend who said it was "danke" ("thank you").

My first word in German, to my best recollection, was "hasenpfeiffer." I recall hearing it again and again in a Bugs Bunny cartoon. Now you know something about my mispent youth. Among the words that I did not know was "plätzchen". It turns out that it means "cookie" in German. I think that would have been a far more appropriate word for me to know as a child than hasenpfeiffer as cookies were much more to my tastes at that time than rabbit stew. And, for what it's worth, the only other person besides me who knew a food word as their first one knew sauerkraut. That told me something about his early exposure to German food in a manner which made me feel bad for him. No, I'm not a fan of sour, wet cabbage that looks like it spent some time in someone's dirty sock.

Let me apologize for not having an actual picture of these cookies. You can see them through the window of the bag, but that's substandard cookie-viewage. They do actually look the same as the illustration, though the actual cookies are quite tiny. Each is about the diameter of a nickel (or five-yen coin).

This close up of the window of the bag is from Amazon Germany's picture - it's pretty clear and it makes me feel less bad about not having a proper picture. 

These are two layers and the top is an anise-flavored meringue dome with a crispy little cookie base that lends textural contrast, but very little in the way of flavor. Most of the flavor comes through in the little meringe top and it is lovely if you're a fan of anise. The combination of the meringue crunch and sweetness with the spice of the anise is a big winner in my book, but I'm a sucker for anything meringue. Some people find this type of cookie too hard and dry.

I loved these. I really did. In fact, I'm definitely going to pick up another bag next time I'm at the little European shop in Palo Alto that carries them. If you can get your hands on a bag, and you like anise, I can't recommend them highly enough.