Calpis Soda Grape Zero

Let's get the big laugh out of the way first. When you say "Calpis", it sounds like "cow piss". The makers of Calpis either didn't know or didn't care about that when they made the name. The "cal" is for Calcium and the (rather unfortunate) "pis" is from Sanskrit and supposedly means "supreme taste" and is used because it is part of Buddist culture (and Japanese culture has elements of Buddism). Note that in English-speaking countries, this is called "Calpico".


Despite having been here for 20 years, I've never been tempted to buy Calpis. I chuckled about it a few times when I first got here, and promptly lost interest. The drink is supposed to be yogurt-like and feature milky flavors. It's called a "lactic acid" beverage. The color of this beverage certainly would bear that out as it is very cloudy and appears to be mixed with something milky.

This attracted me to it because it is zero calorie, though the first ingredient is, oddly "grape sugar". I'm guessing that it is not absolutely zero, but one of those deals where it is essentially zero per 100 ml. The other ingredients include the usual cocktail of artificial sweeteners.

This smells like grape soda, and on first sip, tastes like it. It has two strange aftertastes. The first is likely the lactic acid/milk element and the second is the artificial sweetener. I don't know what it is about Japanese low calorie sodas, but with the exception of Diet Coke, they all seem to have a heavy chemical flavor. This one is better than some on that front, but the weird bitterness and somewhat metallic taste that chases every sip spoils what might have been a promising beverage. So, while I drank the rest of the bottle, I wouldn't buy it again.

Bakauke Five Cheese Sembei

The Bakauke brand seems to be exploding. I hadn't seen it in most markets when I started this blog, and now I'm seeing varieties of its banana-shaped rice crackers everywhere. This cheese flavor was at Seiyu supermarket and cost about $1.45 (about 140 yen), and it caught my eye amongst the see of fish and seaweed types.


Bakauke sembei has very good brand imagery and I think that's why it's catching on fast. Besides having a distinctive cracker shape, it also has a couple of distinctive mascots (as mentioned in my review of their wasabi sembei). Like many mascots for food products in Japan, they're rather crudely drawn and not really very attractive, but seem to help make the product more noticeable. For this particular bag of sembei, one of the little blurbs on the back mentions that every cracker packet inside has a mascot in a different get-up.


When I opened up the package, even before I breached one of the individual packets, I could smell the cheese powder used in these. The first whiff is highly reminiscent of Cheetos cheese puffs seasoning. The flavor is also rather similar, but these have more depth and variety to them. I'm guessing that's because of the five flavors of cheese that have been included - Edam, Swiss, cheddar, Camembert, and Gouda. You can detect the Swiss notes distinct from the cheddar in particular.

These are nicely cheesy, but not extreme. They have a bit of the typical rice cracker flavor, but not the heavily cooked flavor with soy that you sometimes get. The crackers are crisp and fresh and only about 45 calories per packet of two. If you're not a big fan of sembei, these may be a good stepping stone for you to transition from the "light" stuff to the heavy stuff. They're not quite as accessible as the garlic butter sembei (which I would call the non-sembei-tasting rice cracker), but they're a good second.

Hi-Chew Mystery Pack

Have you ever seen a movie trailer which spoils some of the best mysteries of the movie by revealing some critical plot point or telling you something which would be better not to know? Well, Morinaga obviously subscribes to the same type of thinking. They go to the trouble of making a "mystery pack" and then detail all of the flavors on the back of the bag.

I guess the mystery isn't what the flavors are in general, but which flavor you might get in each packet. The thing is that they also assign "levels" to the candy and give you a clue of what might be in each one which further undermines the mystery. I'm guessing that the lowest level candies are supposed to be easier to identify than the higher level ones.


While I usually take pictures of the open candy, it hardly seemed worth it for these because it's just a bunch of differently colored taffy blobs. The flavors are:

lemon ("Level 1"): very nicely tart with a good lemon scent and flavor; a complete winner on the flavor front, even for someone like me who isn't mad about lemon candies (but certainly not averse to them either). I could guess what this was from the scent alone. The color was light yellow.

lime ("Level 1"): Sharp, tart flavor. I couldn't smell anything when I sniffed it, but my husband said he could and knew it was lime before tasting it.

grape ("Level 2"): this was your normal Kool-aid grape candy flavor. It was classic kid's flavor with perhaps just a tad more verisimilitude to the taste. While I certainly didn't dislike this, the flavor felt a bit cheap. Like the lemon, I easily guessed the flavor by the smell. It was light purple in color.

cantaloupe ("Level 3"): This was very sweet and had only the vaguest hint of melon flavor. It had a very mild perfume-like hint. It wasn't bad, but certainly not a favorite.

pineapple ("Level 4"): This was a pretty interesting candy because it had some of the less sweet notes of real pineapple in it. There's sometimes just a whisper of bitterness in it. This one was a bit of a dead giveaway since pineapple is pictures on the front of the package and it smells a bit like it.

lemon ("level 4"): Smells like lemon and there's a picture of one on the front. That means that they tip you off pretty well. Good lemon flavor which was nicely tart.

In terms of texture, these seemed stickier and harder to chew than the Hi-Chew candies I've reviewed before. They seemed to have more of a taffy or chewy candy element than the disintegrating gum aspects that I've noticed before. Also, they were all one solid color. Most (but not all) of the Hi-Chew I've experienced before were two-toned.

From a Hi-Chew consumers viewpoint, these were tasty. If you want to sample a lot of Hi-Chew flavors in one bag, these would be a good option, but the mystery part is simply silly when they're giving away so much of the game. There are 22 candies in one bag at about 17 calories per candy. Frankly, I'd opt for the rolls with flavors I know I'm going to enjoy rather than buy these again even though they were fine.

Japan Tobacco Super Lemon Soda

I was lured to this drink, which I found in the local 99 yen shop, by the graphic on the can. The first thing I thought was "Roy Lichtenstein" because of the style, but I'm guessing the target audience is supposed to be thinking "manga" (Japanese comics). It was next to the alcoholic beverages, but is a soft drink. Little did I know that there may have been a reason for it to be stocked next to the booze.

Incidentally, you read right that this is produced by Japan Tobacco. Who knew that the purveyors of oral carcinogens were in the beverage business as well? They've teamed up with a company called Nobel Confectionery to try and make some scratch in a manner which doesn't result in premature death. In addition to soft drinks, they sell canned and bottled coffee, water, tea, cocoa, health, vitamin and energy drinks.


The can that this soda comes in is quite small. It is only 190 ml, but trust me when I say that is "enough." The entire can has about 60 calories despite also having artificial sweeteners (Sucralose and Erythritol among them). It has sugar as the first ingredient and lemon (at 1% of the total amount) as the second.

According to the web site, the goal of this beverage is to emulate super sour candies and, boy howdy, is it a success. It smells relatively mild and doesn't look like much since it looks like modestly tinted carbonated water. The first sip though is like drinking straight out of a bottle of lemon juice. It's incredibly intense and I wonder now if the goal is to use this as a mixer for liquor rather than to drink it straight.

This isn't bad at all, and it is fortified with Vitamin C. I imagine that it might even be somewhat refreshing if you had a cold and a diminished sense of taste and smell and wanted something to pick you up. I can't recommend just drinking it straight though unless you love super, super sour and strong lemon flavors. I'm giving this an indifferent rating not because it's bad because I actually think it is good for what it is, but I don't think I'd buy it again except in very specific circumstances.

Tirol Sweet Halloween Variety Box

Have you ever seen a more adorable or happy-looking skeleton?

I love bright, vivid, clean graphics. Even if I wasn't keen on the candy in this Tirol Halloween box, I'd want to buy it for the bold, clean look. You may not be able to tell from the picture, but parts of the box (the ghost and other creatures and the trees) are perforated so they can be popped up and the box can be used as a little Halloween decoration or display. As it turned out, my husband picked this up at New Days convenience store (for about 210 yen or $2), so the choice wasn't really in my hands.


This is the second of these bright, attractive boxes that I've reviewed (though there have been at least several others which I've passed on). The other one was the W Purin one, and it was actually quite good. I have much lower expectations of these flavors because 3 of them are repeats of flavors that have appeared in less slick variety packs in the past (and 1 was a former 'Premium' candy), and I have reviewed 2 of them before.


The 4 flavors are conveniently written in English: coffee nougat, almond, pumpkin tart, and "milk". Each candy is between 30-35 calories for its 2.25 cm (.9 in) square x 1 cm (.4 in.) tall size. Here are the reviews of each flavor:

coffee nougat:


This smells like milk chocolate even after it has been cut apart to reveal the firm nougat center. At first, you get the milk chocolate flavor, which is your average Japanese milk chocolate (which is to say, on the bittersweet side). The chewy coffee center comes in at the end very strongly when all of the chocolate has melted away and you chew on the toffee-like coffee center. The coffee flavor is similar to fairly decent quality instant coffee and not too strong. I wouldn't necessarily crave this, but I wouldn't mind it either. It wouldn't compel me to buy a box, but I'd certainly eat the ones that came with a variety pack as they are enjoyable enough for the calories.

chocolate almond:


This is the same almond as is included in other variety packs. Since I liked it before, I still like it now. It smells like milk chocolate or cocoa powder. It tastes like pretty decent milk chocolate with a super crispy deeply roasted and crunchy almond. There's a nice mix of almond and chocolate flavor but a bit of a bitter aftertaste from the chocolate.

Milk:


This is a milk chocolate shell with a "cream" filling according to the package description. One of the ingredients is "cream powder", but it doesn't taste much like cream and is similar to actual milk. There's an unusual taste to it, and I believe it is mirin (Japanese sweet cooking rice wine). It's a very milk influence, but it gives it a light liquor flavor. This is pretty good, though rather sweet. Some may find the mirin flavor off-putting or odd though.

Pumpkin:


When I reviewed the premium version of the pumpkin Tirol, it had the same pumpkin coating and cookie center, but it didn't have the "soy sauce" that this has on it. I mentioned in the former review that I thought the pumpkin needed some other seasoning to offset the sense of it being a very sweet squash flavor. It seems Tirol agreed since they added this sauce to the latest incarnation. The variety pack versions are usually smaller, but also simpler than the premium ones, so this sauce was a surprise. Soy sauce in candies often tastes a lot like maple syrup. It is thickened and sweetened and this seems to turn it from soy- and salt-flavored to maple syrup-like. This was good, but my least favorite of the bunch. It still seems like sweetened squash to me, but at least this has an added dimension.

This is a nice collection, and I really love the size of these. I like to have just a bite or two of something sweet after lunch and one of these generally does the trick without making me feel overly full or like I've just piled on more calories on top of lunch. This is a more desirable combination of flavors without any stinkers in the bunch than some of the other variety packs I've sampled. I'd definitely buy this again if it came around next year for Halloween. I only wish that I could find a reason to preserve the box and wrappers because they're insanely cute Halloween graphics.