Calbee Potato Farm Jaga Pokkuru

When I first came to Japan, I didn't have a phone or television. Telephones back them required a deposit on the order of $500, and my husband and I already had borrowed about $10,000 from his brother in order to set up shop here. That money, incidentally, was mainly sunk into the cost of our apartment (first and last month's rent, a month for real estate agency fees, and a month as a way of thanking the landlord for accepting about $1200 a month from us in exchange for living in a tiny apartment). We also used some of it as start-up scratch (furniture, food, living expenses until our first paycheck arrived). We wanted to pay that back before we indulged in luxuries like telecommunications or T.V.

When we finally got a T.V., it was a tiny one that only caught signals from local T.V. channels and had very little, if any bilingual programming at a time when we were novices to Japan and the Japanese language. We didn't watch much T.V. back then, but there was a bilingual travel program which talked about all sorts of resort areas in Japan like Hakodate. Since Hakodate is in Hokkaido, they kept playing this song which went something like, "oh, oh, Hokkaido, Hokkaido-oh, oh." I probably heard snippets of that song three or four times during that one viewing of that program and it has burned into my cortex and I cannot get it out. What is worse, now every time I see a product from Hokkaido, that hideous ditty pops back into my head. Needless to say, I've never been to Hokkaido, and probably never will go there for fear of going mad from the endless loop that would surely result.

Jaga Pokkuru cavorting in the blue waters before their lives are horribly ended in some drunk's mouth. 

So, now we come to the actual review portion of our program in which I tell you that this is a souvenir-only item from... oh, oh, Hokkaido. Supposedly, you can only buy them from kiosks or souvenir shops in Hokkaido-oh, oh, but Rakuten sells a box of ten 18-gram packets for 840 yen ($10.48). The box we were given has six 18-gram (.64 oz.) packets. The selling point of these over something like Jagabee (which is a similar product also made by Calbee) is that these are whole fried potatoes that are monitored by a human being rather than processed sticks which are created by a machine.

These look like petrified French fries. They also sort of smell like them. What they taste like, however, is potato chips in somewhat concentrated form. If you could make a chip that was as thick as a fry with all of the flavor and crispy texture of the chip intact, this is what it'd be. These have a nice potato flavor and are lightly salted. They are a fine enough salted snack but the thickness is, at least initially, a bit odd. I'm not used to eating something which looks and crunches like a thin chip but is so dense.

This is excellent to have around for a salty snack craving, especially with the individual packets discouraging you from eating more than108 calories at once. That being said, I would never buy these for myself simply because I can't see them as being superior to Calbee's already delicious line of regular chips. If I have a choice between this and a bag of any of their flavored or plain chips for a much lower price, I'd take the chips. That being said, this was a very welcome gift and a good souvenir. I'd definitely be happy if someone wanted to give me another box.

Just a gentle reminder that there is a contest running for two weeks to win a few snack and snack-related goodies. If you'd like to enter, the details are in this post.

Variety Friday: Debu Neko Sembei and a Summer Contest

Debu Neko is the "mascot" character of a company called SK Japan which provides prizes for claw games (called UFO Catcher here) in Japan. It is my favorite cute Japanese character and the inspiration for me to get my husband to try UFO Catcher games which neither of us would have touched prior to my passion for this "fatty cat". Recently, SK Japan issued a new prize in their line of debu neko items and it's called "sembei", though it is not real sembei. The overall color, texture, shape, and design of both the foamy cat head and the plastic packet it is offered in mimics sembei. There's also a hard plate of some sort embedded in the head which if you press it will make a sembei-like "snap" sound. Be forewarned that doing that too much will result in the rubber of the cat head starting to tear (as the sample at the game shop made clear). It comes on a loop so you can hook it onto your cell phone or backpack (or just hang it on the wall).

The poorly photographed small booty pile: The debu neko "sembei", Ginbis sesame biscuits and a "white soda" Hi-Chew. I'd love to send more, and frankly, it wouldn't cost much more to buy more items, but the cost of shipping by airmail quickly exceeds the cost of the snacks rather exponentially. 

My husband won a handful of them from one of the easier UFO Catcher games. These aren't the most expensive prizes to produce, so it's no shock that they make it easier to win a handful of them as compared to the larger, more elaborate stuffed toys. I'm going to offer one along with some heat-resistant snacks as a prize in a contest. To enter this contest, all you have to do is leave a comment on this particular blog post telling me how you discovered this blog (Google search, from a comment I left on another blog, through a link on another blog, etc.). If you found me through another blog, please let me know the name of it if you recall. Only comments on this post will be considered when I choose the winner. The winner will be chosen by a random number generator according to the order in which comments are made.

Anyone anywhere can enter (even those in Japan), but I can't guarantee delivery in Central or South America or Africa. My experiences in the past have shown that postal delivery is unreliable in those countries. While I'll surely send the package anywhere in the world, I can't guarantee it's arrival on the other end, especially to countries which I've had some bad experiences with.

This contest will run for two weeks. I'll be posting links back to it and reminders to enter on posts during that time period. Thanks for reading, and I look forward to hearing your comments!

Hyuga-natsu Chocolate Sand Cookies

One of my students grew up in Miyagi Miyazaki prefecture in Japan and introduced me to a fruit which is a specialty of that area. The fruit, which she gave me several months ago, is called hyuga-natsu and it looks like a yellowish orange. She told me that it was "very sour" and that I'd have to put sugar or honey on it to eat it. Give my experience with natsu mikan (summer tangerine), I was pretty skeptical about like hyuga-natsu. I'm really not a fan of loading my fruit up with sugar anyway, so I decided to try it as it was. It was delicious and tasted like a cross between a lemon and a grapefruit with only modest sour notes. I thoroughly enjoyed the fruit and told her so. As a result, she brought me this box of hyuga-natsu cookies the following week.

The generosity of my students often amazes me, and I've found that those who make lower incomes are often the most generous. She bought these cookies at the Sheraton Hotel, but I'm not sure which one. One thing I am certain of, however, is that they were not cheap. They have the look and feel of an expensive souvenir. The question was only if they had the taste.

Each cookie is a langue du chat type of cookie which is crispy and buttery. Sandwiched between the delicate crispy layers is firm white chocolate filling flavored with the citrus flavor of hyuga-natsu. Since I've had the actual fruit, I can make a comparison. These do not actually capture the true essence of the fruit, but they are delicious and carry tones of lemon and orange. They are excellent cookies of the finest quality and definitely worth every fattening bite. I say they are probably fattening based on their buttery nature rather than from really knowing the calorie count. Souvenirs in Japan rarely offer nutrition data and these were not an exception.

If you see these cookies, buy them. It's a no brainer that they will be enjoyable to anyone who loves a high quality buttery crispy cookie or citrus sweets. The tricky part is, of course, getting to a Sheraton that actually sells them.

Random Picture 67

One lasting effect on me from my post-quake (March 11, 2011) experience is that I never allow my toilet paper supplies to run low. Now, the moment I open a new bag, I make sure to pick up a second one. The inexplicable TP hoarding that followed the quake has convinced me that I need to keep certain essentials on hand in abundance. For greater Japan, the focus appears to be on other types of essentials, as this vending machine with but one choice reveals.

My husband and I both have noticed that there are immense amounts of water for sale now as compared to the pre-quake stock. We don't know if people ordered a lot and now it isn't selling or if they stock a lot because it is still selling well with the ongoing nuclear issues at Fukushima. The only thing I can say is that I have not bought one bottle of water since the quake. I may one day glow in the dark, or disintegrate into a puddle of goo from drinking tap water, but I'll be damned if I'll give into what feels like (hopefully) unfounded fear.

Nippon Ham Chilled Bakery Meat Pie

Since I started working part-time, my eating schedule has been forcibly changed two days a week. Usually, I have the luxury of eating dinner at 7:00 or 8:00 pm, but on the two days on which I work, I get home at 10:30 or so after eating lunch around 5:00. I don't want to eat a lot late at night, so I've been pursuing some different options. As a result, my readers will be "enjoying" some different food reviews than before. In fact, chances are that there will be more convenience foods which resemble "real food". Honestly, this is all the better for the continued life of this blog as I really am starting to see fewer and fewer attractive options in the snack aisles. That's not to say there aren't things I haven't sampled, but that variations on a theme get pretty boring after awhile.

This is more pie than "meat", but that's okay with me. I'm not a great fan of meat anyway and chose this for a light meal prospect. The pie is flaky and slightly buttery. It has a light crispiness which is very pleasing and a tender interior. The meat filling is more of a "paste" which has a touch of tomato paste flavor, but nothing really too strong. It reminds me of the sloppy joe mix we used to get in elementary school.

This is actually pretty good as long as you have exceptionally low expectations of the meat filling and reasonable hopes for a nice flaky pie. I enjoyed this quite a lot, much as I enjoyed its companion piece, the cheese pie. I'd pick up either as a filling snack or breakfast if the spirit moved me. Both have better than average bakery qualities for something you pick up in the refrigerator case at Seiyu. At 298 yen ($3.72) for 4 pies, they're cheaper than the local bakery's offerings as well. I kept this around in the fridge for about a week with no degradation in quality, which was a bonus. If you get home late, like a more filling snack, or just want a little breakfast variety, I'd recommend giving this a try.