Lotte "Beauty Life" Sugar-free Biscuit Chocolate

Sugarless chocolate is pretty hard to come by in Japan. You can find some types of sugar-free treats, gum and hard candy mostly, but chocolate is relatively rare. I think the Japanese take the common sense approach to sweets. Either you can have them in their full form, or you can't have them at all. People with diabetes or conditions which may require them to limit sugar consumption are largely out of luck.

This Zero chocolate has been around for a long time, though not in this packaging. I remember buying it at least 7 years ago in its plain chocolate form and not being overly impressed. For the record, I don't have a health condition that makes me want to limit sugar, but I am completely aware of two points about it which affect everyone. First, it is bad for your teeth. Second, eating sugar causes a spike and a crash so that you feel energized then very tired. Occasionally, it is nice to have a sweet and not concern oneself with these points, but there is always a price to pay in taste.

Sugar, like salt, has particular flavor aspects. There is an edge to the taste of sweets made with sugar much as there is one to foods made with salt. You can sense its absence, even when artificial sweetener is present and simulates its sweetness. That edge is absent in chocolates like Zero, and that's why they are not as good as the real thing even when they have cocoa butter and sufficient fat to emulate the real deal.When I first sampled Zero a long time ago, I noticed this flat taste, and experienced a strong bittersweet chocolate aftertaste. It was the strongest Japanese chocolate aftertaste that I'd ever experienced and literally left a bad taste in my mouth.

I decided to give this chocolate another chance when I saw the repackaged "biscuit crunch" version at Tomod's drug store. Note that this chocolate is generally more expensive than that with sugar. It's around 150 yen ($1.60) for 5 sticks that are each 10 grams (.35 oz.), each stick is 8.5 cm x 1.7 cm (3.3 in. x .67 in.). Each stick has 42 calories.

There isn't much of an aroma to this chocolate. I think it may actually have some sort of sealant to make the little bars shinier. The flavor is very intensely bittersweet chocolate which is quite sweet; you can tell it's made with artificial sweetener, but it's not really bad. It's just different. The chocolate is with crispy bits of cookie. The cookie doesn't taste like anything, but makes for a more interesting texture. I would definitely prefer the cookie version of this to the regular version.

This was good, and I'd buy it again if I were in the mood to spare myself the effects of sugar. I can't strongly recommend it for everyone, but if you want to have a sweet and avoid sugar, this is pretty good. Keep in mind that sugar-free doesn't translate into low calorie. This is actually pretty much as fattening as any sort of chocolate, but it just won't up your blood sugar levels.

Otsuka Calorie Mate Maple

Click on this picture to see a bigger one that will allow you to read all of the ingredients clearly.

Calorie Mate is one of those things which nearly everyone who has been in Japan is aware of, and thanks to a video game appearance even those who are not in Japan may have heard of it. I'm not so sure that everyone who has seen it has tried it. I know that I had no inclination to sample it until I started this blog.

I've never been 100% sure of what the point of Calorie Mate is supposed to be, but I've always guessed that it is meant to balance people's bad eating habits by offering them a couple little fortified blocks. One of the reasons I never saw the appeal was that they aren't low calorie as a snack at 100 calories per cookie, and I eat fairly decently anyway and don't feel the need to eat this type of thing to balance my life nutritionally.

The Calorie Mate web site emphasizes nutritional balance and even provides a chart of the number of calories, amount of protein, fat, vitamins, etc. that an adult needs to maintain weight and health. For the record, the calorie count that Japanese men require according to the site is 2,650 and women need 2,050. I believe that the bars are supposed to be considered possible meal replacements if you are trying to cut calories in addition to being used as supplements if you feel you need more nutrients.

Calorie Mate is often sold in convenience stores and drug stores in Japan for around 150 yen ($1.67). I got mine from a huge display of health food cookies and bars at Tomod's drug store. Most of the other items were variations on granola bars and whole grain cookies.


There are quite a few flavors of Calorie Mate available including fruit, cheese, chocolate, and this maple version. I chose maple because I wanted to buy a variety that my husband would be willing to try. Each cookie is 7 cm x 4.25 cm x 2 cm (2.8 in. x 1.7 in. x .8 in.) and there are 4 of them in the box. They smell strongly of maple and, well, general cookie smell. The cookies are very dry and crumbly and have a decent, though rather artificial, maple flavor. They're like a poor quality shortbread cookie. Occasionally, there are fragments of what appear to be nuts in the cookie which isn't surprising since almonds are one of the ingredients.

For what they are, these are pretty good. I wouldn't be doing cartwheels over them or selecting to have one rather than a real cookie or an authentic treat. That being said, if you want to have something cookie-like which is healthier or at least less unhealthy, these are enjoyable both in texture and in taste.

Note that there are a lot of Calorie Mate commercials on YouTube featuring Kiefer Sutherland. Since "24" is so popular in Japan, they love to show him in his headset being frantic about something or other and then having some Calorie Mate product. Here's one commercial:

Iwatsuka Shirabe Sembei

Recently, I did an interview with a young woman who needed to talk to an established blogger for part of a senior project at university and I used the word "sembei" with her assuming that she'd know what it meant. I thought that sembei (or "rice cracker" in English) was one of those Japanese words like "sushi" or "karaoke" that had infiltrated American culture such that its meaning was known. Reading food sites that love to toss around a much more esoteric Japanese word, umami (savory or meaty), has perhaps mislead me into thinking Japanese food vocabulary is more pervasive than it really is. The fact that sembei is not a household word back home was brought home by the fact that my friend Shawn also did not know what it mean, and he reads cooking blogs.

That was a bit of a lesson for me in not assuming the words I toss around are going to be understood by everyone and that I need to take care to explain in English for new, infrequent, or selective readers. I don't want to appear to be one of those people who blithely tosses out words in Japanese to show off my language skills (which frankly are not worth any sort of showy display, believe me) or assuming everyone operates from the same experiences as me.


Getting back to the topic at hand, which is this Iwatsuka sembei. This was the second bag of rice crackers that I opted to sample when I found a sale going on at Okashi no Machioka. That sale was two bags for 250 yen. I chose this not knowing what "shirabe" was. In fact, after quite a bit of searching, I still don't know what it is. I can say that the ingredients listed for this are: Non-glutinous rice, vegetable oil, sugar, starch, glucose, soy sauce powder, salt, seasoning and, caramel coloring. Incidentally, the company that made this, Iwatsuka Seika, started out as a manufacturer of caramel syrup starch.

I can also say that "shirabe" in Japanese appears to have several different meanings based on my fruitless searches. It is a type of drum. It also seems to be some sort of pervy porn comic book (manga) name as I kept turning up the same result which showed some barely dressed woman displaying her backside. If someone knows the food-related meaning of "shirabe", I'd appreciate a word in the comments.

One thing I did come across again and again in my searches was the fact that many Japanese bloggers mentioned this sembei in the same breath as the "Happy Turn" sembei which I reviewed previously. This sembei has a similar vinegar-like flavor, though it seems coupled more prominently with a somewhat fishy flavor. It's also a salty and sweet mixture with the sweetness hitting your tongue at the end.

These are very good, though I think I liked the Happy Turn 200% better for its more intense flavor. That being said, these were excellent value with 36 crackers (18 packs of 2) for only 125 yen ($1.40). The crackers are on the smallish side at about 6 cm x 3.5 cm (2.3 in. x 1.4 in.), but one packet is enough for a satisfying little nibble or to fulfill a crispy, salty snack craving. They're only 31 calories per packet as well so they're a pretty low calorie salty treat. I'd definitely buy them again, particularly if I found them on sale.

Though Iwatsuka's main line of products is more family and adult oriented, they do have a cutesy mascot (a pink bear?) that you can download some pdf files for including stationary and a papercraft envelope, a calendar, postcard designs, and desktop pictures.

Milk Coffee KitKat

I think this particular KitKat has definitively signaled the fact that Nestle Japan is running out of ideas. You'd think the hundred or so variations on strawberry that have been released would have helped me reach such a determination quite awhile back, but, no, I have given them the benefit of the doubt (and maybe I'm just a little dumb). Back in April, I reviewed an Espresso Coffee KitKat which looked, smelled, and tasted suspiciously similar to this one. The important point to keep in mind is that this KitKat isn't about adding a novel flavor to the ever-increasing roster of flavors. No, it's about marketing.


This KitKat contains the "support students" mark (the pink flower which says "kitto sakura sakuyo") that appeared on the KitKat Mail. This KitKat is timed to coincide with students taking exams. There's a little message box on the back of the box which says "Dear (big blank space for name and message" and "From (smaller blank space for name)." I wonder if the flavor selection is also related to students with the idea that coffee is often drunk to keep one awake during long study sessions. The PR on Nestle Japan's site says this is good for breaks when you're working hard.


This KitKat was released on December 21 and you can pick it up at various convenience stores. My husband found this one at the venerable New Days for 120 yen ($1.31) and deposited it on my desk for review purposes.

I like milk in my coffee and I enjoyed the Espresso KitKat so I thought it looked pretty promising. The bar smells like white chocolate sweetness and there's no coffee scent. The interior has brown cream between the wafers, but I think coffee flavoring is in the coating as well. The flavor is very much like instant coffee with milk. There's a slight bitterness to it which takes the edge off of the white chocolate sweetness. The wafer flavor seemed more prominent in this as well, which I rather liked. It could be that this was just really fresh and you can detect the baked flavor of the wafers more when they're new off the manufacturing line.

This was good. I could see buying it again, but I'd caution people who are interested in it that they really have to like instant coffee and the level of bitterness of weak coffee in general. Since I'm a coffee sissy and can't take it black, the way in which the strong flavors were muted was appealing to me. All the being said, I liked the Espresso KitKat better because of the salty hit it had and this bar was on the edge of getting an "indifferent" rating and a "happy" one. I'd never turn this down if I got it for free and I enjoyed it, but it's not a slam dunk as a repeat purchase.