Mos Burger Lucky Bag for 2014 (product information)

If I had the time and the inclination, I could do a sequence of posts on all of the "lucky bags/boxes" that various Japanese fast food entities are going to sell. I think it would be very interesting to do, but would take a fair bit of time so I'll focus on just a few. Most of these are sold in limited quantities so you have to get out there early to find one. The exception to that tends to be Mister Donut. It's rare that they run out, but certainly not unheard of.

The "lucky bag" pictured above is for MOS Burger (which you can probably guess from the title of this post). It includes the gree and white lap blanket that the other items are resting upon, a vinyl pouch, a calendar, a MOS Burger card, and what they call "lottery tickets" worth 200 yen each. I believe these are really just coupons which you can use toward food purchases.

Like most of these types of fast food offerings, your pay the value of the coupons (in this case 2,000 yen/$19 US) and get the other items essentially free. As long as you regularly patronize a place that you buy the lucky bag from and use up the coupons through regular consumption, you've got nothing to lose. That being said, most of these lucky bag coupons have a deadline (usually March) so if you don't use them, you lose the value. 

Random Picture #195

This is the time of year for me at which I most long for being in Japan again. Christmas is generally better in America, but New Year's is definitely better in Japan. The picture above is the selection of snacks that one could buy in one of the Meiji shrine shops on New Year's day. My husband and I went there the year before we left (2011) and got this shot of the sorts of snacks on offer.

As you might guess even if you can't understand the Japanese or make out what is in the bags, these are all rather old-fashioned snacks. I think that they are designed largely with older folks in mind or to evoke a sense of nostalgia from people who went there as children. Note that I do not recall seeing Pocky at Meiji shrine, though I'm pretty sure I saw it at kiosks at at least one of the other shrines I went to during my time in Japan (definitely at one in Kamakura and possibly at Yasukuni).

Happy New Year to all of my readers. I hope that the year ahead brings you many positive changes and challenges as well as good health and fortune.

Pocky New Year's cards download

Image from Glico.

The folks are Pocky are a little late in the game in promoting this, but I thought I'd put it out there for anyone who is doing 11th hour New Year's cards and would like to use them. Next year will be the year of the horse on the Chinese calendar and Pocky has some pretty nice designs on offer (both of horses and some beautiful traditional Japanese designs -scroll down to the bottom of the page to find those). You can download them here. Of course, even if you don't send New Year's cards, you may want to use these if you're a fan of horses!

To retrieve a card, click the one you like then right-click and choose to save the image from your browser.

Fumido Kanoko (chestnuts in chestnut paste)

One of my students brought me a sample of the "kuri kinton" that her family had for the New Year's holiday as part of their traditional holiday "o-sechi". Those are more Japanese words than I usually put in a sentence, so I'll say that it's just chestnuts in a sweet puree made up of sweet potato and chestnut that is served as part of their traditional elaborate holiday meal(s). I loved what she gave me. In fact, I raved about how good it was because it had two great tastes that taste great together.

When I left Japan, I lamented to her that I'd never see the likes of kuri kinton again. I was wrong, sort of. I did see it again, but at a price that justified the "kin" (gold) in kinton. Fortunately, this student remembered my love of said dish and, as part of her goodbye gift to me, she gave me a box that contained two cans of "kanoko", which she said was like kuri kinton and would keep for up to a year. 

When I got to the U.S., in a fit of nostalgic craving, I had one can in the first month of my stay at Lopez Island. I stashed the other away and had it a little over a year later, but it was none the worse for wear. It kept well in it's stylish tin can, and tasted every bit as good as the first can consumed a little over a year earlier.

This is made by a company called Fumido which makes a variety of very Japanese types of sweets and sells them largely at department stores, but also offers them online. They are beautifully packaged and don't come cheap. One can is 1,260 yen or about $12.60. Two are 2,520 yen, which shows you that there are no economies of scale (as is so often the case in Japan). This means my student spent some pretty pennies, or yen, as the case may be, on this gift for me.

The contents of the can are large halved and whole chestnuts resting comfortably in a thick paste of chestnut and sugar. Fumido makes it a point to let you know that the chestnuts are domestic (from Japan) and that there are no chemicals whatsoever added to it. It is simply chestnuts and sugar, so, while it may not exactly be "health food", it's not full of artificial badness either.

What it is full of is chestnut goodness. Each can contains 260 grams of paste and nuts and 100 grams is 257 calories. That's a whopping amount of energy, especially when I had to restrain myself to eat the can in 3 sittings. It packs a caloric punch, but it is decadent and delicious with the mild chestnuts and the smooth paste having the right level of sweetness and nutty flavor. It's a simple, but warm and enriching experience.

If I could buy this again, I absolutely would. If you're going to Japan or are in Japan and want to buy someone and delicious gift, this is a great fit if you know they like chestnuts. Yes, it's expensive, but for something which is an elegantly presented slice of Japanese cuisine and culture that can safely stick around on a shelf for awhile, it's well worth it.

Random Picture #143

Happy New Year to all of my readers! If you're Japanese, you're probably on your second day of "osechi ryori" (traditional New Year's cuisine) and not quite burned out on the monotony of the traditional cuisine yet. Of course, if you're Japanese, this blog is probably of no interest to you and you're not reading it!

Though I lived in Japan for a long time, I never partook of this custom for a variety of reasons. First of all, I'm not Japanese and have my own customs for the holidays. For the new year, this mainly included going to bed early and wondering what the big fuss was about when the calendar turned over. Second, the types of food included in such meals generally does not appeal to either me or my husband. That being said, many of my Japanese students and acquaintances were none too thrilled about this food either. Many complained about the general "sameness" of it all, especially that a lot of it was too sweet. 

The point of osechi is to allow the lady of the house to kick back for three days instead of having to hustle and feed everyone. Instead of busting her buns cleaning and cooking from Jan. 1-3, she does so up until those dates, so, hurrah for women's "liberation" during the holidays. That means that traditionalists who make their own osechi make a bunch of food designed to be eaten essentially as leftovers. These days, it's not the least bit uncommon for people to just buy osechi from a department store or market. It's a lot of work to put on a full spread, after all. The Wikipedia page linked above details some of the contents if you want a better idea of what I'm talking about.

The item pictured in this post is one of the things from the osechi repertoire that I love. It's "kuri kinton" which is a rough chestnut and sweet potato puree made with lots of sugar and a pinch of sweet sake. It's like candy, really. The tiny serving shown above was available at Nijiya market for $4.99 (428 yen). It is insanely expensive for a portion which can't be more than a half cup total. I'd imagine this would make two miserly servings.

Fortunately for me, one of my students as a goodbye gift gave me some kuri kinton in a can that lasts up to a year which I can eat this year. After that, I'll have to learn to make it myself or do without. The irony is that, while I was in Japan, I never learned to make Japanese food. I never saw the point since it was all around me and prepared by more skillful hands than mine will ever be.

Incidentally, if anyone at Nestle Japan is reading, kuri kinton would make a fantastic KitKat flavor!

Random Picture #96

Clover, a patisserie/cake shop offers dragon-themed fukubukuro. This is the year of the dragon, in case the obvious wasn't hitting you on the head hard enough. That is not my hand or coat, incidentally. 

This picture is slightly late in coming along, but I figure that as long as it is January, I can sneak in some New Year's shots. My husband and I went to Tokyu department store in Shibuya, an extremely popular shopping district in Tokyo, to check out the holiday sales. While New Year's holiday sales aren't quite as crazy as Black Friday in the U.S., they are pretty busy and can be intense. There are sometimes feeding frenzies on bags of choice products. This year, for reasons unknown, we saw a gaggle of men swarming fukubukuro ("lucky bag"/grab bag) that contained underpants. 

Our main purpose was to scope out fukubukuro, which often offer goods exceeding the value of the price of the bag. We saw tons of clothing grab bags and then hit the basement for the food ones. About 95% of them showed you the contents of the bag and most represented adequate value provided that you wanted every single item in the bag, but we didn't find anything appealing this year. I did like how attractive many of the packaging designs were, and was particularly fond of the way dragons were worked into so many things (like this cake).