Yaokin Strawberry Cream Roll Cake

This is the first item from the ZenPop Sweets box that I previously reviewed. I chose it mainly because I wanted a small dessert and it looked small and like a dessert. That being said, this is a "kid's snack" in Japan and sold for a mere 20 yen (20 cents), so it's unrealistic to expect it to be as refined as larger, adult-marketed shelf stable pastries. And, of course, shelf-stable pastries are a completely different category from actual fresh pastries.

If cakes were to be compared to movies, the real deal would be a comedy like "Grand Budapest Hotel," and this type of product would be something by Adam Sandler which didn't do well at the box office. Note that I've never seen a good Adam Sandler movie, let alone a bad one. However, while I distrust most of what the internet tells me, I have some faith that their disdain for a movie that failed to make money that also featured a guy who irritated the crap out of me every time I saw him on "Saturday Night Live" is appropriately placed. So, don't expect some finely made performance a quirky, beautifully executed manner. This is more pratfalls and dumbassery. All you can hope for is that it'll make you smile anyway.

There was no nutrition information on the packaging, so I can't tell you how many calories it is. It can't be many though because it is small. The packaging is very deceptive in that the actual cake is less than half the width and only a little over half of the length of the package. It's also not exactly what you'd think of as a Swiss cake roll with moist sponge cake and whipped cream frosting. The filling is a somewhat cream-cheese-like frosting and the "cake" is somewhat doughy and quite moist. It's more akin to a slightly damp pancake.

When you open it, the strawberry scent is potent. The flavor is not super sweet, which is actually a bonus. The cake has a nice flavor, but the doughy texture is a little disappointing as it feels like you're noshing on a slightly underbaked item. Still, there is something appealing in it's qualities and the flavor of the cake is decent.

The interesting thing about this is that, if you are expecting Ralph Fiennes instead of Adam Sandler, this will disappoint, but it's actually not a bad shelf-stable snack. It needs to be placed into its own category and I felt it was closer to a low-rent version of a dorayaki (a traditional Japanese snack which looks like two pancakes filled with red bean paste).

I wouldn't buy a case of these, and I wouldn't want to eat one every week. If I still lived in Japan though, I could see me buying one occasionally and keeping it in the my desk when an urge or craving hit. I think the fairest thing to say is that I wouldn't want to see this in every box I got from a snack box service, but I wouldn't mind seeing one show up once a year or so. That actually makes it something I'd want to see more frequently than any Adam Sandler movie.

Source: ZenPop box service

ZenPop Sweets Box (Unboxing)

I have to admit that I've been away longer than anticipated and part of the reason for that was that I bought another Japan box from a particular entity and it was so disappointing that I lost my mojo for talking about Japanese snacks. Yes, I am quite the delicate doily. It could also be that my husband and I both got sick a few times due to the fact that he works with germ factories, er, children.

Another issue for me was that I just couldn't get myself to eat as much Japanese junk food as I used to (oddly). I used to work up some enthusiasm for even terrible kid's snacks, but I just looked at my pile and was full of sad. I still have some of the disappointing items sitting around being neglected and going stale because I was so unhappy that they figured into the aforementioned box of sadness.

Fortunately, after a bit of a break and good fortune, my enthusiasm is refreshed. I was contacted by ZenPop about doing an unboxing and review of their service. They sent me their "sweets box." That means I didn't actually need to pay for this box, but I will say that, had I paid, I would have been pretty pleased and I would absolutely buy their box again in the future because this is the first box I've gotten which has a ton of full-sized snack products that represent what you'd actually buy in a Japanese shop if you were able to stroll around and buy the items on your own.

To the best of my ability to tell, nothing in the box is part of a broken up multi-pack. This is the only box I've received that didn't have mini versions or single servings of tiny snacks that originally came in what would be considered a "family sized" bag. This is no small thing because it means the value of most of the items is about a 100 yen (about a dollar). That being said, a few of the items could cost as little as 50 yen (about 50 cents) and one was likely 10-20 yen.

With 15 items in the box, that means that about 40-50% of the cost of the box ($29.50) is represented in the cost of the items. There is nothing that annoys me more than getting a box that claims "x" number of items and a few of them are a single, individually wrapped pieces of hard candy or a tiny marshmallow that originally came from a bag with 10 pieces in it. It's just depressing when boxes do that. I'm guessing they're figuring the recipients won't know what they're doing, but I know, and I'm going to tell on them.

Now, my readers may not feel that 40-50% being tied up in actual item costs isn't a good deal, but the reason that it is is that shipping, boxing, and labor are reasonable costs to consider. The parcel was sent by SAL and would have cost 1,180 yen ($9.55) just for the postage. The custom box also cost something as well. So, we're looking at another $10 in shipping costs on top of about $13 (my best guess) for the items themselves. That leaves about $7 for the company to pay for the labor of assembling the box, designing a pamphlet, and printing the information. If I ask myself, would I pay someone a fee of $7-$10 to send me a box full of full-sized Japanese goodies to me, the answer is, "yes."

I can say with certainty that I didn't get a special box because I'm a reviewer getting a free sample box because the pamphlet is clearly designed for everyone and includes every item I received. That being said, the pamphlet was printed individually on a color printer so this wasn't a professionally printed item and could be modified on the fly. My guess is they don't do that because of changing inventory. Since my box heavily focused on Halloween items, they may discontinue them at a moment's notice. I liked very much that the box included a lot of seasonal flavors (apple, chestnut, sweet potato), some interesting novelty flavors ("bloomin' onion")

In terms of the selection of items, I was also very pleased by and large, though there were a few "mundane" items which I wish had been replaced with more interesting versions. The Tongari Corn, for example, is really just plain old Bugles corn snack. I'd rather have had one of the garlic butter or other flavors. That being said, the box is pretty cool and I'm guessing they chose this because of the adorable Halloween box with a mask on the back. It's the sort of thing you might want to save as a souvenir of the experience. The only clunker for me was the small bag of mini butter cookies. It's not only one of the few 50 yen (likely) items, but they're just plain old cookies. The other options are all much more interesting though and I'm looking forward to reviewing them. I will note that I have reviewed one of the items before and that was the "Osatsu snack". That means I can also clearly identify it as a 40-yen item based on past experience.

Note that my cost of items estimates certainly could be wrong. All I can say is that this is definitely an impressive array that feels much more like it's worth the $29.50 it costs compared to the other boxes I've written about (and especially the one I didn't write about).

My conclusions about ZenPop are:

Service: Excellent
Value: More than adequate
Experience: Excellent

Worth it? It is the best value I've encountered so far from these types of service and I hope they don't change the types and volume of items that they include. If any of my readers use the ZenPop service, I hope you'll let me know if your experiences mirror mine in terms of getting full-sized items as purchased in stores and not getting items from a parceled out multi-pack.

Note: I am not promoting ZenPop, though they did provide me with a free sample box for review purposes.

Harajuku Mochi Chocolate

Getting old is a weird experience because you find yourself stepping into the experiences that you used to snicker at your parents for having. You get those weird yellow toenails that are hard to cut so there is nothing you can do about how you're now getting "old people feet." You look in the mirror and see your parents' faces more clearly because you're moving into the age range that they were when you were a kid growing up. You find that normal things, like sleeping in a bed for an entire night, will result in pain. Of course, that assumes that you sleep through the night at all as the body actually forgets how to sleep as you get older.

Why am I talking about age in a review of Harajuku Mochi Chocolate? It's because I missed last week's posting because it was my 53rd birthday. I had plans to go to a very nice hotel with a jacuzzi on the Southern Oregon coast, but the fires in that area rained down ashes and filled the area with smoke. I'm not really complaining because people who lived just north of my hotel had to evacuate their homes. I'm not a fan of arguments of relative privation (as I think they are just a way of invalidating the feelings of others), but it's hard to cry too hard over a cancelled vacation when people are fleeing their homes due to a nearby inferno threatening to rob them of everything they have.

Another aspect of aging is that my appetite for any food isn't as high as it once was. It has been taking me far longer to get through my stash of traditional Japanese sweets from Nippon-ya than I would have expected. Despite that, I have to say these sweets have aged very well. They aren't as soft as the first box of these that I reviewed, but they are far from stale. They are just a bit chewy and less pillowy soft after four months in the closet. Frankly, I'm impressed.

In terms of flavor, these are very potently chocolate-y, while not being too sweet or bitter. It's quite an impressive balance between the two as most strong chocolate flavors have the bitterness of a dark chocolate or they are washed out by overly sweet milky flavors.

While these are awesome as a delivery system for chocolate and as a way of enjoying the texture of mochi, they aren't especially unique. I think they are a great choice for someone who is squeamish about exotic flavors who you want to share a mochi sweet with, but I don't think I'd get them again despite how good they are. I enjoyed them greatly, but I'd rather have something more unique and I can get good quality chocolate in cheaper delivery systems than this. However, if you like chocolate and you like mochi, these are a big winner.

Where I bought it: Nippon-ya (San Francisco)

Weight: 11.6 oz.

Price: $9.99

Yoneya Lemon Daifuku

As I've mentioned before, I am currently living in a rural area. For the most part, I love it here. Though the local politics don't match my values at all, I'm accustomed to living in a culture with values that aren't in accord with mine. In fact, I feel like living in Japan helped prepare me for being a liberal in a conservative zone. I can accept the culture (which is beyond politics, but that's the biggest "hardship") as something which suits the locals, but doesn't suit me personally and just keep my distance.

At any rate, the biggest aspect of small town life that actually does bother me is the food culture, such as it is. There are about 10 restaurants that aren't chains or fast food places, and most of them offer a limited menu with an emphasis on burgers and sandwiches. I don't like to order anything at a restaurant that I can't make myself at least as well, if not better, than a restaurant can. I rely on Yelp to some extent to make some decisions about which places to try, and, though I've lived here for almost two years, I've not hit all of the places yet because I tend to spend my money at ethnic places about an hour north of where I live (in Oregon, in a city which is big enough to have a wider range of options).

What Yelp has made me realize is just how much ones tastes are conditioned by local experience. People raved about a local steak place and it got high star reviews. My husband and I finally went there on his birthday about a year after living here and both found it extremely disappointing. The "salad bar" was a limited range of canned food options. The chicken I ate was some sort of pressed meat with grill marks. The "dessert" was a scoop of cheap ice cream with Hershey's syrup on it. This helped me see all too clearly that people who haven't had a broad range of experiences can't tell the difference between what is at the low end of the culinary scale and what is at the high end.

As someone who reviews snack foods from another country, I realize that that people may judge the food I'm judging less harshly than I do because some of them haven't lived in a place in which better options exist. And, I'm sure there are sometimes things I review which other people have more experience with that other people would find inadequate, but I really enjoyed. This snack really illustrates to me how spoiled I was to have lived in a place in which fresh confections made with mochi were common. I think someone else might have found this more enjoyable than me, but only if he/she had never had a better version.

This is made by a company called Yoneya which specializes in traditional Japanese confections like yokan (a block of sweet bean gel). They seem to offer a lot of summer gift boxes as well as individually wrapped sweets like the one I'm reviewing. One of their less traditional, but quite interesting looking foods is a peanut monaka. It's actually shaped like a peanut, comes in a peanut-shaped box, but is oddly filled with red bean jam (anko) and not peanut-based filling. Oh well, two out of three ain't bad...

The mochi shell on this wasn't hard, but it also wasn't super soft and pliable. It seemed too thick and, though it was easy to bite into, it was weirdly firm in a way most fresh (non-shelf-stable) mochi is not. That said, the lemon filling in this was nothing short of amazing. It was tangy, sweet, and bright. The flavors were so good that I very much wanted the textures to match and I decided to give it a turn in the microwave to see if warming up the mochi would make the texture more stretchy and pliable, but it didn't change anything. It seemed too thick and overworked/dense. It was very unfortunate that the mochi outside didn't match the lemony bean filling inside.

If you want to try this, and I guessing you don't, I'm afraid you're out of luck as the only place you could have gotten one was from Bokksu and they seem to no longer carry them.

Source: Part of the Bokksu premium summer citrus box

Pocky Orange Peel

I was watching a video on "shows that should never have been made" and one of the abominations that was featured was a show that I had the faintest recollection of from my youth. That show was "Pink Lady (and Jeff)" and I personally never watched it, but saw it advertised. I've watched a little bit of it on YouTube. This is the sacrifice I make for my readers. I fall on the grenade so you don't have to.

It stuns me that any network attempted to sell Japanese pop stars to the American audience in 1980. If you watch the clips that I linked to, and keep in mind that it is #35 on the list of the 50 worst television shows of all time as chosen by "TV Guide" so consider yourself warned, you'll be treated to some incredibly culturally inappropriate material. If you've taught English, you'll also recognize immediately that the singers in Pink Lady can't actually speak English and learned their lines phonetically.

Though this was a disaster in all respects, it is important for people to have foreign cultures stuck in front of their noses on occasion. Small bits and pieces of information prime people to be more open to that culture in the future. In 1980, sushi was just raw fish to Americans. In the present day and age, it's something they're willing to fork over a lot of money for a bastardized version of in places as pedestrian as their local supermarket. That's some cultural infiltration.

When I returned to the U.S., I was stunned at how ubiquitous Pocky had become. I think the versions I see are from Korea for the most part and not the same as what I had in Japan, but the brand is recognized and consumed as a Japanese product. It started to be sold in Japan in 1966, and a U.S. division of Glico was established in 2003. November 11 is "Pocky" day and this year will be the 4th one that is celebrated in the United States. It took awhile, but it gained some traction. Pink Lady, apparently, was too early for the times.

I've not had as much Pocky as most in my career as a person who consumes food, but I can say that this is unique amount the few handfuls that I've tried. The main point about this is that the little bits of peel are chewy. They are clearly candied bits and they bring a nice, bright, authentic citrus flavor to each bite. The chocolate is milk bordering on semi-sweet. It has enough strength to be present, but not so much as to be bitter. The flavor combination is very well-balanced. I believe part of what helps this is that the organe peel bits appear to be coated in dark chocolate so they carry some of that flavor through as well. If you look at the sticks, you'll see they look more like Oreo cookie parts than orange peel, but orange peel they are indeed.

This snack came with advice to refrigerate it before consuming and I ignored that advice when I ate all but the last packet. So, it was only with my last experience that I had the most optimal one. The lesson here: Do what you are told blindly without question, at least when it comes to Pocky.

When not refrigerated, the coating is a bit too soft and the chewy peels feel as if they are in a slighly greasy chocolate in terms of the textural experience. It's still good, but it is a lot better when the coating is chilled and much firmer. The standard, bland, Pocky pretzel stick seems more orange in color to me on these than what I recall, but my memory could be going. I am getting on in years, after all.

I like the combination of orange and chocolate, but these seemed a tad rich for my tastes as well as having a cumulative sweetness that I found cloying by the 5th and final stick in a packet. I don't regret having these, but I wouldn't go out of my way to have them again. If you're interested, and I would act fast if you are because these are seasonal and likely to vanish at some point, the Asian Food Grocer is currently offering these for $3.58. Yummy Bazaar has them for $3.05 and Economy Candy has them for $2.99. I got mine from Bokksu as part of a premium box, but they are currently sold out. It wouldn't matter anyway since Bokksu was selling them for $4/box and would have pricier than the alternatives anyway.

Source: Part of the Bokksu premium summer citrus box