Fujiya Look Matcha Mousse Chocolates

This box of chocolates came to me courtesy of Skoshbox (gratis).

Fujiya would like to have tea with you. No, really. They're talking about a tea ceremony campaign linked to a pretty swanky-looking tea house in which you can spend 90 minutes experiencing tea culture. If you live in Kyoto, Nagoya, or Tokyo, or are willing to travel to these places, you and your offspring can enjoy yourself some high-falutin' tea, or, you can plant your ass on your sofa, watch some inane T.V., and open up a box of chocolates for a less swanky and elegant, but more comfortable experience. After all, who wants to sit seiza for an hour and a half while people painstakingly prepare tea?

Skoshbox sent me this pretty much on the cusp of the point at which hot weather would have wrecked it. EbiDebby at Snack Love also reviewed it, and her candy fared far worse than mine due to the heat. My box of chocolate suffered more from sitting on my counter during a West coast heat wave than from traveling from Skoshbox's hands to mine.

On the left is green tea and adzuki and on the right is green tea and milk. 

Look has actually been impressing me lately with their candy, and this was no exception. The matcha chocolate has a mild chocolate flavor mixed with a slightly more potent green tea flavor. It's not overbearing in any way and is lightly sweet. Rather than possessing flavor depth, they fuse together to create a single entity which is neither chocolate nor green tea, but a happy combination of both.

The green tea with adzuki is a slightly different experience. The green tea is more prominent. There's something about the adzuki which  makes it emerge. I tried both o these chocolates cold and at room temperature. The cold version of the adzuki was subdued. The room temperature one was much, much stronger and had the strong earthy tones of red bean soup. I, frankly, preferred it cold.

Both of these are nice chocolates. The matcha milk one is more accessible, but both are interesting without being overbearing. I'm not sure if someone who is not a fan of matcha or adzuki would enjoy them, but someone who is should be pleased. I'd certainly have them again.

I don't know if these are still available from Skoshbox as part of their current box because the weather may have become prohibitively hot, but you might be able to get one while they last.

Iyokan Tirol Chocolate (product announcement)

Several months ago, I visited my father-in-law and he showed me a couple of oranges which he said he was going to toss out because they tasted like grapefruit to him. I looked at them, and they looked and sounded like iyokan. That's an orange in Japan which is slightly sour, but still sweeter than a grapefruit. It turned out that those were Mineola oranges, which aren't the same as iyokan, but are probably second cousins to one another on the taste scale.

Tirol has decided that iyokan, which is the second most widely produced citrus fruit in Japan after mikan (small Japanese oranges which are similar to Clementines), is a good choice for one of their chocolates. Frankly, I concur, and I hope to locate a bag of these beauties at one of the local Japanese markets in the not too distant future.

There are two types of iyokan chocolates in the bag. One is a cookie variety, which I'm sure just has Tirol's trademark bland crispy little biscuit with some orange sauce on it. The other is a marshmallow with orange sauce over it. Even though this is white chocolate, the bitter notes of iyokan show potential for off-setting the cloying nature of it.

Random Picture #169

While I was sifting through pictures for my 1000 Things blog, I came across this shot of "Hello Kitty" sumo chocolate crunch candies. Personally, though I think the mouthless cat is so overused that it guts any sense I have of her cuteness, I do think the little handkerchief in a kesho mawashi (ceremonial apron) is really adorable. The chocolate, however, is another matter entirely.

If you look at the sample closely, and I'll put a closer shot here to give you a better look...

...it does not look particularly appetizing. In fact, it resembles what one would fish out of Kitty-chan's litter box. Aesthetics are highly prized in Japan, but sometimes, well, the outer wrapping conceals a failure to refine the image of the product itself. 

Burger King Japan Offers More Drinks, Ribs

Burger King Japan has embraced the idea that fast food and liquor go together for quite some time. You could get a Heineken and a high ball there already. From June 28, 2013, select locations will also offer Mojito, Cuba Libre, Long Island Iced Tea, and pink daiquiris. The last one is for the ladies whose discerning dates have decided to wine and dine on a budget, no doubt.

If the idea of getting loaded on exotic drinks isn't enticing enough, you can also order ribs. This will allow you to get drunk and then dribble sauce all over yourself to boot. For 980 yen (about $10), you get the plate pictured above with three ribs on the bone, onion, pickles, and a small salad.

The locations that this deal is currently available at are Ochanomizu, Ebisu Garden Place, and Roppongi. 

Careme Quattro Fragrant White Cookies

I recently watched a lecture by a priest on addiction. You might ask yourself, "why is a priest talking about addiction?" You might also say, "this is a Japanese junk food blog, why on earth are you talking about priests giving lectures on serious topics?" This are all good questions and I have a good answer. He was talking about how there are certain things that we are born enjoying and, as children, we like things that are sweet because our genetic heritage has inclined us to do so.

When it comes to things like coffee and booze, we have to actually learn to like them. Part of how we do that is to adulterate them with more pleasant-tasting things like sugar, milk, or juice. We add something we naturally enjoy to something we find less pleasant in order to acclimate ourselves to bitter or harsh flavors. Once you get addicted to caffeine or alcohol, you can let go of those things which make them palatable and focus on what you need to get you high.

As this priest talked about how kids like one thing and adults like another, I thought about adult tastes and how we tend to separate them from those that children enjoy. Alcohol, by virtue of the illegality of consuming it at younger ages, at least outside of ritualistic practices, is something that we associate with adult tastes. However, sometimes, even adults don't enjoy the taste of alcohol. We have to learn to like it.

This cookie is part of an adult tastes line-up of the Quattro cookie line. I'm sure that this is an idea that they ripped off from Nestle Japan with their popular "adult sweetness" line of KitKats. What does "adult" taste like? It appears that it tastes like rum raisin as that is what the goo inside of these little biscuits is highly reminiscent of. One must ask why they didn't simply name them "rum raisin". It could be that I'm wrong about the flavoring or it could be that "mystery meat" sounds more provocative than "meatloaf".

I picked up this box of 6 cookies for $2.29 at one of the many Japanese markets in my general area. This is my second review of one of the Quattro line of cookies. The first one was an orange chocolate one that I loved so much that I sent a box to my sister. I won't be sending a box of these to my sister.

There is really nothing "wrong" with these cookies, but there are several things that they didn't exactly get "right". One was that the chocolate cookie portion is so flavorless as to practically be a plain cookie. I think more chocolate bitterness would have balanced out the almost cloying sweetness of the white chocolate. Sandwiched between the white chocolate and the bland cookie is another layer of slightly off-white chocolate that is supposed to be cheese flavored, but not much of that comes through. The dominant flavor is what I perceive to be the sweet white chocolate and the rum raisin sauce.

I like the textural mix of the crispy cookie, soft-ish chocolate and the jelly-like filling, but that's really not enough to overcome the fact that rum raising is one of those "adult" flavors that I never developed a strong affinity for. I'll finish the box, particularly since, at 43 calories per cookie, these aren't the most calorific sweets in the world, but I wouldn't buy them again.