Lawson Cold Duck and Pumpkin Sandwich (product information)

I often scoff at the idea that Japan offers exotic flavors that you wouldn't be likely to find anywhere else. Now, I have to eat those words because I'm fairly certain no convenience store in America is going to offer a combination like the one in this Lawson sandwich.

This is throwing in all of the goods in order to create the illusion of an elegant sandwich. I'm sure that it sounds and looks better in the promotions than it appears when it's a plastic-wrapped sandwich in the store, but the concept is pretty high profile nonetheless.

This promises fatty, melt in your mouth duck, Kiri cream cheese, balsamic dressing, orange marmalade, walnuts, and pumpkin. The bits of walnut are artfully studded between slices of pumpkin in the pictured sandwich, but I'm guessing the reality will be a bit more haphazard.

"Konbini" elegance comes at a slightly premium price though. This sandwich costs 290 yen (about $3), which may seem cheap by American standards but you have to remember that sandwiches are a more petite affair in Japan. This will satisfy your average office lady with her diminutive appetite, but is unlikely to do for anyone on the more active or taller side. 

Random Picture #136

Both photos courtesy of BlogD (used with permission). 

It's nice to see that the Japanese merchants are really getting into the spirit of the season. That's the spirit of selling more stuff to people, of course. These are kabocha (Japanese pumpkin) cream bread which were on sale in Ikebukuro. The face is a chocolate cookie mixture, probably similar to the coating on melon pan. The bread is pumpkin flavored and inside is custard cream. I'd be happy to sample these if I were in Tokyo if it weren't for the fact that they look like a family that didn't look like cream bread created close enough to  Fukushima's nuclear plant to create some unfortunate results. These are actually very unusual in that they are rather sloppily made for a Japanese bakery. Usually, they're  more meticulous than this.

The cheesecakes in this picture are much closer to what one would expect from a Japanese bakery. They are "rare cheesecakes" (like New York style, except lighter, as opposed to baked cheesecake) and the stenciling is pretty perfect looking. Despite having pumpkins on them, they aren't pumpkin flavored, though those are mini pumpkin pies down below. I wonder if those pies are Japanese pumpkin (kabocha) or American. Yes, the taste is very different. I wouldn't buy one though as 845 yen ($10.65) is far too expensive for a tiny pie.

Pumpkin Cheesecake KitKat

Quite some time ago, I got an e-mail from a reader who wasn't keen on my coverage of extremely strange Japanese snacks who said that he wasn't really interested in that sort of weirdness, but rather in things like the unusual Pepsi and KitKat flavors. I can understand that as many people may prefer to hear about novelty a few standard deviations from the norm rather than gag-fodder that they'd never eat. Unfortunately, if I focused only on those types of variants on popular and accessible snacks, I'd be making only 6 posts a year. 

One of the problems with not living here is that you get a distorted view of how often odd variations on popular food products come out, because other non-Japanese snack blogs only talk about such things. The truth is that that KitKat parade is populated mainly by strawberry, green tea, and various types of chocolate (fudge, semisweet, bittersweet, dark) than by edamame, ginger ale, and other extreme odd flavors. The triumvirate of the aforementioned flavors, especially strawberry, are the boring band members marching along and the really interesting stuff is like Santa Claus at the end of the Thanksgiving Day parade. You watch a bunch of people blowing into brass instruments and beating drums with a yawn and all you really care about is the fat guy in the red suit.

Fake mom and daughter are going to "fight" (with fists, apparently) to make sure fake daughter passes a test so she can get into a good school. 

At any rate, it has been a long, dry season on the Japanese KitKat front. At present, Nestle Japan is gearing up their PR campaign to sell to parents and kids for the studying season. The offerings they are focusing upon are adult sweetness KitKats (mild, dark chocolate), green tea matcha, and the umpteenth variant on strawberry (strawberry tart). They're also offering bags of white and plain KitKat minis in different packaging. Yes, I'm tired of watching the majorettes shaking their batons, too.

This pumpkin cheesecake KitKat was released some time ago, but I resisted buying it because I didn't want to buy a big bag of minis knowing I may not care for them. Don Quixote, the store, not the hapless avenger who attacked windmills, persuaded me to try a bag when they offered it for a mere 138 yen ($1.80) for a bag of 9 mini bars. Each mini bar is about the size of 1.5 regular KitKat fingers and has 68 calories. These were designed for Halloween, but were still available in abundance and at full price in shops in my area throughout the new year. In fact, most of them had larger bags for about $6.50 and that was a big reason why I didn't opt to try them until now. Each bar is individually packaged and there's a white space on the back that one can write a message on. I'm not sure what that message would be; perhaps you could say, "here is one bar from a bag of 9 that I could not consume on my own." 

Getting to the bars themselves, one of the reasons I was not necessarily keen on these is that "cheesecake" translated into actual flavor in the Japanese KitKat world usually means "tastes like sour powdered milk" and "pumpkin" (kabocha) is usually "strong vegetable flavor that feels rather out of place with all of that sugar'. My past experience left me anything but encouraged. 

The scent when you take a whiff of the bar is familiar yet hard to pin down. I think it may merely be that my olfactory senses are tuned to the scent of such kabocha-based treats after so much experience with them. They smell good, but unusual at the same time. The flavor is a balance between Japanese pumpkin and a custard flavor. I'm pleased to say that none of the yogurt/sour milk flavors in other "cheesecake" KitKats is present in this. One of the ingredients is "natural cheese", but the pungent elements are either masked or so subdued as not to register. This is quite sweet, but not in a cloying way, at least not if you stick to eating only one mini. My guess is that it might accumulate and become overbearing if you eat more than one at a sitting. 

With a surprising well-rounded combination of tastes, this was quite pleasing, albeit still rather sweet. Like most KitKats, the chocolate coating is slightly on the softer side with fresh, crispy wafers inside. The textural balance of a real KitKat is almost always superior to any knock-offs. It's the one thing Nestle always scores on. My feeling about these is that they are a pleasant digression, but definitely not part of a steady sweets rotation. I would buy them again, but likely only once a year. Chances are that they'll be back, however, because Nestle often rotates the same flavors in seasonally. Though this is no flavor "Santa Claus", it's definitely a bit more interesting than a mere member of the marching band.

Random Picture #89

Click to see a bigger version.

Shakey's Pizza is inexplicably popular in Japan. Well, that's not quite true. There's an explanation, but it doesn't really make a lot of sense in a country of relatively affluent people with ready access to good quality food. They are mainly popular for their incredibly crappy lunch buffet which is a festival of bad carbohydrates (fried potatoes, sparsely topped pizza, and spaghetti). 

The good folks at Shakey's have taken the cake when it comes to "weird" Japanese pizza. The specimen at the bottom has pumpkin, red bean paste, mini marshmallows and black sesame sauce. The marshmallows really are the kicker. This is a culture that reacts with abhorrence at the idea of candied sweet potatoes so my husband and I did a double-take when we saw this sign. Yes, they've finally become "one of us". 

Yamazakipan Kabocha Danish

Mirror, mirror, on the wall, which is the loveliest squash of all? Is it American pumpkin, as it is rolled into pies, danishes, donuts and anything which wears cinnamon, nutmeg and ginger like a scrawny high fashion model wears a ridiculous outfit? Is it Japanese pumpkin, which pairs so well with soy sauce and mirin and studs any dish it appears in with creamy delight? The truth is that both are the ugly stepsisters to the Cinderella that is butternut squash, but nobody makes that comparison. Recently, I paid around $3.50 (280 yen) for half of a tiny butternut in a Japanese market and found that it is sweeter and has more depth than either of these traditional squash rivals. Butternut gets the glass slipper, but it's too expensive to squire to the ball on a frequent basis. I guess I'll be doing the waltz with the green-skinned stepsister.

That is not to say that Japanese pumpkin isn't worthwhile, but rather that if we're going to play a game of my gourd is better than your gourd, then we should include a full range of contestants, not just the big orange jack-o-lantern fodder and rough-skinned Japanese greenies. I love Japanese pumpkin, but in order for it to shine in a food though, there has to be enough of it to actually taste. This is a fact that seemed a bit lost on the folks at Yamazakipan. 

Unfortunately, before I purchased this packaged baked item at Lawson 100 for, obviously 100 yen ($1.23), I didn't know that "danish" meant "bread" and that a small smattering was all that was required to qualify this as "kabocha". I was captivated by the notion of enjoying those black sesame seeds with Japanese pumpkin and hoped for the best. I'm dumb like that. The bread in this "danish" is best described as "nouveau hotdog bun". The filling, when you happen upon more than a tiny, tiny portion, tastes fine, though rather thin on the pumpkin side. I get the feeling it is mixed with liberal amounts of water or some other filler to stretch it further.

Yamazakipan makes some pretty nice packaged treats, especially things with whipped cream filling, but this was a huge disappointment. I didn't exactly want baker-quality pastry, but I also hoped for something more than this. I could have lived with the lackluster bread if there had been more filling, or lived with less filling if the bread had been good, but Yamazakipan didn't give me anything at all to work with.

Random Picture #86

Click to see a larger image with more detail.

Halloween quietly passed Japan by, which is reasonable considering they don't actually celebrate it. However, they do know how to take advantage of a marketing opportunity and every year I see more and more items designed to get the Japanese into the Halloween spirit. Well, that's not exactly true. I don't think they know what the spirit of All Hallow's Eve is and I'm pretty sure that, if they did, it wouldn't really suit Japanese sensibilities. I'm not only talking about how knocking on strangers' doors for free candy would rub them the wrong way, but the "tricks" aspect would be viewed as troubling others in a thoroughly unacceptable manner. Besides, in a country that goes for the toilet paper in a crisis, I'm pretty sure they wouldn't feel great about wasting it TP'ing.

Among the plethora of cute Halloween-themed treats, I was especially enchanted by these pumpkin-shaped manju (traditional Japanese sweets). I even considered buying them, but three are more than I can eat in a short time and this is the type of thing best consumed fresh. 

Random Picture #79

Japan doesn't "do" Halloween, though over the years I have been here, it's been heading in that direction.  The displays of Halloween candy are growing larger, though the candy doesn't tend to be especially positioned as Halloween flavors but rather just attractive and colorful packaging of the same old releases. There is an exception to that, and it's the pictured Japanese KitKat above. This is a pumpkin cheesecake variety. Clearly, anything pumpkin would seem to be simpatico with the spirit of the occasion.

I'm torn about trying this. I want to try it, but am reluctant to buy a whole big bag of it just for sampling. There's every chance that this is Japanese pumpkin (kabocha) flavored rather than a more American pumpkin pie experience. This isn't really a problem for me as I adore kabocha, but my husband dislikes it and the prospect of eating a whole bag of mini bars alone (it'll take over a month) is what is holding me back. Still, I may weaken and give in. We'll see.

Crunky Pumpkin Purin

In addition to missing out on American holidays, there are some holiday-related dubious pleasures that I also cannot take advantage of. One of these is the post-Halloween candy sales where everyone goes out and picks up snack-size bags of treats bearing a Halloween motif for a fraction of their former price.

I can say now that I have had my first experience in Japan with buying reduced price Halloween candy, and that it was completely planned. The Crunky Pumpkin Purin (pudding) candy had been recommended to me by a few friends so I went looking for it. When I found it, the 238 yen ($2.65) price for 49 grams (1.7 oz.) rubbed me the wrong way. To offer you a point of comparison, a regulation size Crunky bar is also 49 grams/1.7 oz. and sells for only 100 yen ($1.11). I found this at Family Mart in a bargain basket on November 2 for 119 yen ($1.32).


This variation is essentially a broken up bar with it's squares wrapped in foil packets and put in a nicely designed Halloween themed box. Each square is 3.9 grams (.14 oz.) and 22 calories. It's a monument to wasteful packaging in the service of cuteness. The candy itself is very sweet, as is so often the case with white chocolate-based bars. That being said, the strong sweetness works well with the pumpkin flavor.

I felt the pumpkin flavor (and smell) was very strong in a positive way, and that there was a hint of salt. My husband said he couldn't detect it at all, but something was there that he couldn't identify. I think that was because he was expecting pumpkin pie rather than the squash-like flavor of Japanese pumpkin. The texture is just right with enough malt puff crispy pieces (not rice) to lend texture without undermining the pumpkin flavor.

This is a nice thing to have around for a small treat with tea, but I wouldn't buy it at the original price. I would also warn those who don't like super sweet treats that this is not for them. That being said, I'd certainly buy it again if it rolled around again next year for a more reasonable price.

Halloween Manju (Pumpkin and Sweet Potato)

I usually don't post on Saturday, but this is a special extra for Halloween. A few weeks ago, my husband and I picked up some fresh manju (cake filled with sweetened bean or other traditional fillings) at a shop near the local train station. They were cute, and we both like manju. The orange one is kaboucha or Japanese pumpkin and the brown one is sweet potato.

These sorts of sweets are made exclusively by one shop and cannot be bought just anywhere. They are, essentially, like the product of a bakery. That is why this is a special post rather than a real review. Not only can my readers not buy these unless they happen to visit the same shop as us (or the same chain), but the chance that this exact same treat will be around at this time next year is pretty low. Mainly, this is just a one-off for some pictures of the type of cute seasonal fare you can get in Japan.


The pumpkin one has a bean/pumpkin mixture. I thought it tasted strongly and pleasantly of Japanese pumpkin (like a butternut squash), but my husband couldn't taste the pumpkin element at all. He said it was pleasant and nicely sweet, but couldn't really pick out the pumpkin. I ended up eating half of his as well as all of mine (the sweet potato one).


The sweet potato one has a chocolate exterior and sweet potato mix interior. You can see little bits of mashed sweet potato in it. The outside coating was surprisingly intense in cocoa flavor and overwhelmed the sweet potato flavor at first, but it was revealed a bit more fully after the first bite.

Both of these were fresh, moist, and really tasty. I think the cake exterior, which is very moist and a bit gummy (which sounds bad, but isn't), is made from yam flour. If you visit Japan, this is exactly the sort of thing you want to try from local shops and eat while it's absolutely fresh. You really can't beat this sort of experience, and it's the type of thing that isn't nearly as good the next day.

Happy Halloween to all of my kind readers!

Tirol Sweet Halloween Variety Box

Have you ever seen a more adorable or happy-looking skeleton?

I love bright, vivid, clean graphics. Even if I wasn't keen on the candy in this Tirol Halloween box, I'd want to buy it for the bold, clean look. You may not be able to tell from the picture, but parts of the box (the ghost and other creatures and the trees) are perforated so they can be popped up and the box can be used as a little Halloween decoration or display. As it turned out, my husband picked this up at New Days convenience store (for about 210 yen or $2), so the choice wasn't really in my hands.


This is the second of these bright, attractive boxes that I've reviewed (though there have been at least several others which I've passed on). The other one was the W Purin one, and it was actually quite good. I have much lower expectations of these flavors because 3 of them are repeats of flavors that have appeared in less slick variety packs in the past (and 1 was a former 'Premium' candy), and I have reviewed 2 of them before.


The 4 flavors are conveniently written in English: coffee nougat, almond, pumpkin tart, and "milk". Each candy is between 30-35 calories for its 2.25 cm (.9 in) square x 1 cm (.4 in.) tall size. Here are the reviews of each flavor:

coffee nougat:


This smells like milk chocolate even after it has been cut apart to reveal the firm nougat center. At first, you get the milk chocolate flavor, which is your average Japanese milk chocolate (which is to say, on the bittersweet side). The chewy coffee center comes in at the end very strongly when all of the chocolate has melted away and you chew on the toffee-like coffee center. The coffee flavor is similar to fairly decent quality instant coffee and not too strong. I wouldn't necessarily crave this, but I wouldn't mind it either. It wouldn't compel me to buy a box, but I'd certainly eat the ones that came with a variety pack as they are enjoyable enough for the calories.

chocolate almond:


This is the same almond as is included in other variety packs. Since I liked it before, I still like it now. It smells like milk chocolate or cocoa powder. It tastes like pretty decent milk chocolate with a super crispy deeply roasted and crunchy almond. There's a nice mix of almond and chocolate flavor but a bit of a bitter aftertaste from the chocolate.

Milk:


This is a milk chocolate shell with a "cream" filling according to the package description. One of the ingredients is "cream powder", but it doesn't taste much like cream and is similar to actual milk. There's an unusual taste to it, and I believe it is mirin (Japanese sweet cooking rice wine). It's a very milk influence, but it gives it a light liquor flavor. This is pretty good, though rather sweet. Some may find the mirin flavor off-putting or odd though.

Pumpkin:


When I reviewed the premium version of the pumpkin Tirol, it had the same pumpkin coating and cookie center, but it didn't have the "soy sauce" that this has on it. I mentioned in the former review that I thought the pumpkin needed some other seasoning to offset the sense of it being a very sweet squash flavor. It seems Tirol agreed since they added this sauce to the latest incarnation. The variety pack versions are usually smaller, but also simpler than the premium ones, so this sauce was a surprise. Soy sauce in candies often tastes a lot like maple syrup. It is thickened and sweetened and this seems to turn it from soy- and salt-flavored to maple syrup-like. This was good, but my least favorite of the bunch. It still seems like sweetened squash to me, but at least this has an added dimension.

This is a nice collection, and I really love the size of these. I like to have just a bite or two of something sweet after lunch and one of these generally does the trick without making me feel overly full or like I've just piled on more calories on top of lunch. This is a more desirable combination of flavors without any stinkers in the bunch than some of the other variety packs I've sampled. I'd definitely buy this again if it came around next year for Halloween. I only wish that I could find a reason to preserve the box and wrappers because they're insanely cute Halloween graphics.

Country Ma'am Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Cookies

Translations are a tricky thing. Take the word "kaboucha", for instance. In Japanese, it means pumpkin. In English, the concept of a pumpkin is usually that of a big, round orange thing which you scoop the guts out of and carve weird faces in or make a pie from. In Japan, it's a small green thing that tastes like squash and you use it in stews or eat it as a vegetable side dish. It doesn't taste the same as an American pumpkin, yet it is nearly as versatile. Mainly, it just has a more potent hit of squash taste which tends to shine through more strongly when you use it in things like cookies and cakes.


If you buy any sweets with pumpkin included, you have to learn to expect that squash flavor. You also have to forget about any notion of spices being added to cut through the vegetable nature. There will be no cinnamon, nutmeg or ginger included.

There 16 individually wrapped cookies in the bag. Each cookie is 50 calories and quite small at 4 cm in diameter (1.6 in.). They are made with "pumpkin paste" and pumpkin-flavored chocolate chips. All of the chips are yellow to reflect this fact.


Country Ma'am cookies have a signature texture combination which you will find in every single cookie produced under that brand name. They are crunchy on the outside and moist and tender on the inside. It's a very gratifying cookie on that front and lends itself to being heated in the microwave. There are instructions on the side of the bag advising you how long to heat them in the microwave or toaster oven.

These smell very faintly of squash and mostly just smell like a basic cookie. They are quite sweet, but not over the top. The balance of sugar with the vegetable taste of the pumpkin is well-matched. The chips are much sweeter than the cookie itself.

These are enjoyable, but a bit of an acquired taste. I think they slightly challenge the palate and that they won't be as tasty to people who have no experience with similar foods. Surprisingly, my husband liked these even though he doesn't like kaboucha (Japanese pumpkin). I wouldn't buy these again, but we'll finish the bag and I certainly don't regret having had a chance to sample them.

Tirol Pumpkin Tart Premium

Despite the obvious Halloween motif, the Tirol pumpkin tart candies are still available in convenience stores in Japan. I'm guessing they'll vanish once they're sold out, but for now, you can still buy yourself a bite-sized vegetable-flavored treat.

My husband picked up one of these candies because he loves pumpkin. It's more accurate to say that he loves American pumpkin, not Japanese pumpkin which is called "kaboucha". There's a vast world of difference between the two since American pumpkin as sold in cans and commonly used for pies and baked goods is a careful blend of various types of squash and pumpkin to make the best taste and texture. Japanese pumpkin is just green-skinned Japanese pumpkin and doesn't always blend favorably into treats. The fact that traditional pumpkin pie spices like nutmeg, cinnamon, ginger and cloves are absent from Japanese sweets flavored with kaboucha doesn't help matters.


This tiny morsel is about an inch square and is made with pumpkin powder and pumpkin paste. It's a two-bite (well, small bites) candy and is only 48 calories. Like all of the Tirol "premium" candies, it's perfectly molded and quite attractive. Ebidebby also reviewed this and took pictures and her candy had a different picture molded into it so they come with different designs. Oddly, her candy had a rocket design and mine a house. Clearly, they aren't using molds which suit the Halloween theme of the wrapper.


The wrapping for this candy has two pieces, which seems a tad wasteful. There's a plastic outer wrapping with the illustration and a piece of foil-lined paper inside to keep it fresh.When you remove the wrapper, you smell squash and the faintest hints of caramel. Inside, there's a little round crispy cookie in the center. This adds to the "tart" aspect by making it appear as if there is a "crust" with the pumpkin "filling".

The taste of this is very much that of what is called kaboucha purin (pumpkin pudding) in Japan. It definitely has caramel overtones and a very powerful squash flavor. It's not bad, but it's an acquired taste. If you're expecting a traditional Western pumpkin treat, you're in for a shock.

While this isn't the sort of thing I'm inclined to hunt down or eat again and again, it is an interesting experience and I wouldn't mind picking one up when the season rolls around again next year. I do wish, however, that they'd toss in some spices to dilute the strong squash flavors for a more balanced and less esoteric flavor. It's surprisingly overbearing in flavor for a Japanese treat given that the Japanese on the whole favor more subtle flavors.

Vegips (Sweet Potato and Pumpkin Chips)

Vegetables are good. Sweet potato and pumpkin are even better when you're thinking of vegetables. In fact, I often think of sweet potato as the "candy" of vegetables. When I saw this bag of "Vegips", I thought it'd be tasty and nutritious. The claim on the package is that they are "light and delicious". It also lets you know that these are real vegetable slices rather than reconstituted vegetable product (a la Pringles). That'll teach me a lesson in checking the nutrition information on the back of the bag before buying the product.

The "chips" part of Vegips is out in full force. These are not dehydrated or baked healthy chips. They are deep fried like the dreaded potato chip. This small bag (45 grams/1. 6 oz.) contains 16.2 grams of fat, 26 grams of carbohydrate, and 4 mg of salt. This means they weigh in pretty heavy calorically at 256 calories for this bag which one can easily polish off in one sitting. To off-set the fat, you get a paltry 1.6 grams of protein and I'm guessing whatever nutritional gains from the sweet potatoes and pumpkin survive the frying process.


The bag contains about 10 of each type of chip in whole or in fragments. When you open it, it smells like squash. The pumpkin is definitely the more flavorful and dominant chip among the two. It's important to note that Japanese pumpkin, kaboucha (かぼちゃ), is not the same as American pumpkin. It tastes more squash-like and the flavor is a bit more intense. They're both good, but a different taste experience.

I tried a pumpkin chip first and it tasted nicely of pumpkin but there was an oddly familiar taste with it. I couldn't pin it down at first and then I realized that it's oil. In fact, it tastes a bit like "old" oil. The chip is super crispy and a little thick but not dense. It fact, it breaks off very nicely. I think that the oil flavor is so strong because they must be saturated with oil to get a proper texture. After eating a few, the oil flavor tends to become more muted. This might be because it seems to coat your tongue. I found that there is a bit of a residue in my mouth after eating these chips.

I was looking forward to the sweet potato more than the pumpkin and it had the same good, crunchy texture as the pumpkin chip and was cut slightly thinner. The first chip didn't seem to have much sweet potato flavor and seemed more like a regular chip but after eating a few, the sweet potato flavor emerged more strongly. The oil taste seemed less oppressive, but still present. The sweet potato chip loses a bit more in the translation from real vegetable to chip in my opinion. I found myself wishing the chip had retained more of its sweet potato essence. Both types of chips are very lightly salted and I think the sweet potato one probably suffers a bit for not having more salt. A bit more seasoning would probably give the flavor more definition.

These chips contain very few ingredients. Essentially, they consist of sweet potatoes, vegetable oil, and pumpkin. Note that the ingredients are in order from highest volume to lowest. That means there is more oil than pumpkin! There are no chemicals and no extra flavoring and that would be refreshing if they weren't so full of fat. A bag of these cost me 168 yen ($1.58 USD), which is slightly expensive for such a small portion. If these weren't so fatty, I'd happily have them regularly despite the oily aftertaste. They really are much tastier and more flavorful than regular chips.