Kingodo Fukurekko Sembei

There's an episode of the old T.V. comedy "Roseanne" where she and her husband spent the night at a hotel for a romantic night away from their kids. The hotel was cheap and cheesy and they ordered a pizza. The characters aren't really the champagne and caviar types. Anyway, there's a piece of pizza which has a "brown bubble" on it and Roseanne says that she wants that piece because it had the bubble, but Dan took the topping off of it.

I mention this little scene because I can understand the appeal of bubbles on food and that was pretty much the reason I decided to try this Fukurekko (ふくれっこ) sembei. Fukurekko, incidentally, appears to mean "swell", so the idea is that these sembei have swollen up. When you translate it, it doesn't sound very appetizing actually. I think I'll stick with the idea that these are like bubble sembei.

These are made by a company named Kingodo. It's a new one to me and appears to mainly be a rice cracker maker with a limited range of products. It was founded in 1950, and has a head office in Nakano in Tokyo. This is actually an area very close to where I currently live (about a 5 minute-train ride) and a place I used to stop by often when I was working at Nova conversation school about 19 years ago. There's a great yakitori place there which we favored. Anyway, the company has 140 employees and is relatively small. I'm surprised that I even found their products on shelves at my local shops since the competition for shelf space is so fierce and the big boys usually get all of the glory.

The flavor of these crackers is actually pretty typical for Japanese rice crackers. It has a nice savory soy-sauce-based flavor and pretty much smells like usual sembei. The first ingredient is rice and the second is soy sauce. The main selling point of these is the crispy texture which is enhanced by the bubbles. It provides more layers of thin, crispy cracker without actually requiring another cracker.

I really liked these. They're perfectly salty and don't have the strong baked rice smell that some types of sembei have. I loved the texture and they're only 17.5 calories per 5-cm. (2 in.) cracker. I'd definitely buy these again. There's only one point which didn't work so well and that's the fact that they're not individually wrapped and if you don't eat them, they start to get a little stale quickly. I can't believe I'm actually saying something in Japan that isn't over-packaged should be packaged more, but the gel pack in the bag didn't quite manage to keep the crackers crispy in the 3 weeks it took me to eat the whole bag.

Bourbon Fuwa Maki Milk Cake

I believe that cows, if they were the size of dogs, would be pets, and we wouldn't be eating them. Sure, they go around dropping big cow pies, fart a lot, and they chew their cuds, but cows are cute. They have big, brown eyes and they're not particularly noisy. If one had a cow instead of a dog, neighbors would never complain. All you'd have to do to keep your pet cow in line is set it out for grass eating in the backyard. I'm guessing you could also get your miniature cow to give you enough milk on a daily basis for your coffee or tea. Frankly, I'm surprised no one has started to breed "toy cows" for such purposes.


At any rate, I'm not necessarily big into cuteness, but I like cow motifs. I couldn't resist buying this Bourbon "milk cake" because it not only has a cow motif on the outside, but cow spots on the cake itself. That's just too cool to pass up. These cakes have been around in convenience stores for awhile. They usually sell for 100 yen ($1.10), but I got mine for 89 yen (98 cents) at Okashi no Machioka.

The cake is a bit on the small size at 11 cm x 5 cm (4.3" x 2"). Note that these are designed to last for awhile as the expiration date on mine was 4 months after the purchase date. I ate mine within 3 days of purchase though because I didn't trust that it'd be the same quality after a few months. There are 179 calories in the entire 43.5 gram (1.5 oz.) cake. One might compare this to one of the best known snack cakes with cream in the center, the Twinkie, which weighs in at 150 calories for a similarly sized amount of cake.

The cake mainly smells like sweet vanilla and milk. When you touch the cake, it's texture is slightly sticky and tacky on the outside, and the cake is rather dry. The filling is super creamy, and fatty. I read recently that "fat" is actually detected by the tongue as a taste, and if you're big into fat "flavor", this would be a delight. Note that this isn't made with butter though. It's made with shortening and "creaming powder". It also includes Sorbitol, a sugar alcohol, and maltose.

There is an odd aftertaste associated with these types of cakes made by Bourbon that are supposed to last awhile. It's hard to pin down, but it seems like something that's hiding under all of the sugar. Mostly, this is just sweet and fatty. There isn't much of a "vanilla" flavor so much as a "milk" one, which is no surprise since this is a "milk" cake, but us foreign folks are accustomed to vanilla in white cakes so I figured it was worth mentioning. My husband wasn't fond of this because it didn't taste like much of anything to him. This is despite the fact that he likes sweets (and very sweet things) more than me.

This is good, and reminds me a lot of a slightly off-brand Hostess snack cake clone. If I was in the mood for this type of thing, I'd certainly choose this over any other options. That being said, I rarely eat snack cakes (which is why they don't get reviewed very often). I'm unlikely to buy this again because I imagine that it'll be off the market before my tastes turn toward sponge cake with cream filling again. I'd certainly recommend giving these a try as long as you're not very sensitive to preservatives.

Random Weekend Picture 6

Packets of amino acid supplement drink were on sale at a local green grocer for 108 yen ($1.19). These are muscat (grape) flavored and contain 1% juice. I like the fact that it is named "Guts Gear". It is supposed to make you brave or strong, but all I could think was that it'd make your belly grow.

Bontan Ame

I first learned about bontan ame from Kyoto Foodie's post on it. I had seen it in multiple shops, but the old-fashioned packaging sort of faded into the scenery of treats on display. For the record, I found these in a local market for 98 yen (about a dollar). The point about this which most made me want to try it was the fact that it has edible wrapping.

I've read many times about candies produced in Asia that have wrappers that melt away, but I'd never knowingly sampled one before starting this blog and sampling some jelly candies with them. This is a bit of an old-fashioned concept that many modern snack manufacturer's do not follow.

You can tell by the packaging that this candy is based on a citrus fruit. I've seen it translated as "bontan", "buntan" and "bontang", but that probably matters less than the fact that it's a tangy lemon and orange flavor fruit which grows in Southern Japan. I'm guessing folks can buy the fruit in shops there, but personally I've never seen it in markets in Tokyo and therefore never tasted the real fruit.

This candy was first released in 1926 and the maker, Seika Foods, asserts that this is an original candy and not a copy of another confection. That seems like a pretty reasonable assertion. I don't think I've had anything quite like it in my experiences either in Japan or the United States.

The manufacturer's web site and Japanese Wikipedia pages both describe this as "caramel-like", but I think Kyoto Foodie's description of it as "mochi-like" is more apt. The texture to me seemed like a cross between a gummy or jelly candy and mochi. It's not quite as chewy as mochi. It's like a really thick gummy, but not as tough. The external wrapper, incidentally, is like glue when it melts in your mouth. It doesn't have the taste of glue, mind you, just the stickiness.


The flavor is like a mellow orange, with a hint of lemon. It's mildly sweet and has the barest whisper of citrus sourness. It reminds me a lot of a far, far less sugary and chewier, thicker version of a Sunkist fruit gem. For the record, I love Sunkist fruit gems. As it turns out, I liked this even more than the gems because the subdued sweetness was more to my liking. Each candy is 17 calories and I'm guessing that is a better calorie count than the gems as well.

At first, I thought these were incredibly weird because of the edible wrapper's bizarre glue-like dissolve and because they're so thick and chewy. Once I got used to the texture though, I loved them. In fact, I had to force myself to stop after eating three of them (there are 14 in the box) and I'm certain I'm going to buy them again and again. Without a doubt, they are going to be the biggest threat to my teeth since I gave up sugar sodas over two decades ago.

I recommend that anyone who likes citrus fruit gems, jelly candies, or gummies give these a try. I do put a caveat on that suggestion though about the texture. I can see how the texture (and wrapper) can be a big turn-off for some people. I'm going to try and get my husband to try one, but I think I may tell him to remove the wrapper first since he's pretty fussy about such things.

Daiichi Chocolate Cream Bar

Armies of snacks go unnoticed by me when I shop. I bypass them for the same reason that most people do, their packaging doesn't do anything to grab me or illustrate the food contained within very well. The chocolate ice milk bars pictured above have been in the freezer case of the local 99-yen shop for ages, but I never gave them a second glance. Part of the reason for this was that I always saw them from the side and I thought they were these tubes of liquid that you freeze to make Popsicle-like treats (an ice pop). It also didn't help that these were shoved in a corner of the freezer case as if they were trying to hide from customers.

These are made by an ice cream and ice milk manufacturer named Daiichi. It's a very small company which only has 40 employees and was established in 1950. They have several interesting looking confections, few of which I have seen in my local markets. Their line includes monaka (ice cream or milk wrapped in a cake-cone like shell), cones, ice milk and frozen confection bars, and daifuku-style frozen treats (ice cream or milk wrapped in mochi). They also make ice cream for store brands on consignment. If you've ever been to the Peacock or Co-op (Coop) markets and bought their brand of vanilla ice cream in cups, it was made by Daiichi.


They also make ice cream products for Lawson's 99-yen shops. I saw the package of bars that I'm reviewing today in the frozen foods case at our local Lawson's. There were both chocolate and vanilla varieties and I was drawn to them after investigating the calorie information on the back and finding they were the "cheapest" treat among the ice cream and ice milk selections. There are 3 servings with only 84 calories per bar. I decided to buy the chocolate one because it looked like Fudgesicles. As is so often the case in Japan, things aren't always as they appear.


The inside of this bar is actually ice-cream-like ice milk. It's very soft and creamy with a firm shell. The shell is fairly thin and is clearly there to allow the ice milk to be eaten on a stick instead of out of a cup with a spoon. It's a very interesting concept and has one drawback; the stick isn't inserted into the shell but directly into the ice milk so it's easy to yank the stick right out if you try to slide the bar out of the wrapper by pulling "down" on it. It goes right back in though, and seems to hold just fine while you eat the bar.

The bar has a light cocoa scent and the outer shell, which I licked at first because I thought it was like a Fudgesicle, has very little flavor at all. The taste when you bite into the bar and get the ice cream is rather mild cocoa and not very sweet, but both the chocolate flavor and sweetness compound on your tastes buds as you eat more and more. You can tell they skimped on the cocoa to some extent, though fans of mild chocolate may prefer this over the intense bittersweet flavor of some Japanese chocolate.

Each bar is 85 ml., and the same size as a standard Popsicle. This is not, by far, premium or fabulous ice cream. It is, however, a really nice frozen treat for someone trying to watch their weight and their wallet. It's sufficiently sweet and enjoyable, and may even quash a chocolate craving for some. I wish the chocolate flavor was deeper, but I have no quibbles about the soft, light texture. The texture was super creamy and reminded me of a marriage between whipped cream and ice cream.

I compare this directly with the Glico Calorie Control line of frozen treats when I evaluate it. That line of treats, which include monaka as well as cups of ice milk, sell for 160 yen ($1.77) each and have 80-some ml. of ice milk (similar to one of these bars). The Calorie Control line chocolate ice milk is very similar to these bars in flavor, that is weak, but serviceable. Given the choice of buying chocolate cream bars for 99 yen ($1.10) and getting three 84-calorie frozen sweets or just one Glico chocolate chocolate chip cup of ice milk at 80 calories for 160 yen, I'd choose these in a heartbeat.* My high rating is based on a combination of price, calories, and texture more so than a stellar taste experience (and the fact that I expect to buy these repeatedly).


*Note that I didn't compare ingredients since neither the Glico ice milk nor this is very impressive. They're not nutritious or good for you, but rather attractive as occasional frozen treats to fill an urge for ice cream without a ton of calories. This has sugar, grape sugar, and palm oil (all bad news) and the Glico is chock full artificial sweeteners.