Calbee Yakimorokoshi Corn Snack

Sorry for the mangy picture. I had a shot of the unopened bag and lost track of it.

When Japanese folks eat rice, they generally eat it plain. Occasionally, they'll garnish it with a bit of sesame seek or place a pickled plum (umeboshi) on the top. I'm not sure if these things are added to enhance the rice or just for the aesthetic appeal of the contrast between the snowy white rice, black seeds, and red plum. The idea that one would put soy sauce in the rice is abhorrent to most Japanese people and the notion that you'd butter it is downright insane, yet many Americans have been known to butter their rice. It's little different than adding it to potatoes or spreading it on bread. Adding fat to starches is what we do.

The way in which we conceptualize cuisine is far more limited than we imagine because we get into habits. Those patterns are governed by what is placed in front of us from childhood. When we had roasted corn, it was delivered with salt and/or butter. Oh sure, occasionally somebody's grandma may have rubbed it with beet juice or rhubarb pulp or some such esoteric combination, but it isn't common.

For most Americans, it doesn't occur to us that we could brush it with soy sauce and that would add a rich, savory, salty dimension that could be incredibly delicious. In Japan, it is not uncommon to see roasted corn brushed with soy sauce, but I have never seen it here. This being a Japanese corn snack, it's going to go with what they enjoy on their corn, so that's soy sauce.

This corn snack is infused with the flavor of roasted corn brushed with soy sauce. Actually, it's a little low on the "roasted corn" angle and higher on the salt, soy sauce, and, yes, even a little sweetness aspect. It's a flavor combination with depth that plays well with the crispy corn base.

One thing I love about Japanese savory snacks is that, most of the time, they have a fairly rich flavor blend. Many American snacks of a similar bent are one-trick ponies - fake cheese flavor, fake "barbeque" flavor (usually heavy on the smoked paprika), etc. In Japan, I find there's generally a richer mix of things like meat-flavored powders, onion, garlic, soy sauce, and yes, even fish powders. This mix includes bonito (essentially fish flakes) broth and kelp powder as well as soy sauce, sugar, and shiitake mushroom powder. You don't have to love any one of them because they come together in a rich melange of savoriness which is unique.

I really liked these, though the hit of sweetness at the end came about as close to undoing the happy rating as it could come. It just wasn't quite powerful enough to step over the line, fortunately. I found this at Nijiya Japanese market for a mere 99 cents (it's a small bag at 26 grams or just a shade under an ounce) and it was well worth the investment. I don't know where others can locate it, but the package size and design screams typical "konbini" (convenience store) fare in Japan.

Sanko Seika Kakimochi Sembei

One of the things which I have not had any sort of access to since coming to America is sembei (rice crackers). Yes, I can find rice crackers in shops that look like sembei, but I've discovered that they don't taste like it or have anywhere near the same texture or flavor depth. What little I've had has been too soft and lacking in snap and lightly dusted with flavoring on the outside. In other words, they are nothing like the richly flavored crackers I tended to experience in Japan. The adjective that comes to mind is "flaccid".

Fortunately for me, Nijiya Japanese markets carry real Japanese sembei. Yay! Unfortunately, they tend to be much more expensive than what I could buy in Tokyo and I cringe at the idea of paying 3x as much (or more) for a bag of rice crackers. Sure, I love them, but I also love Pop Chips and they essentially fill the same empty snack hole in my life. Salty stuff is salty stuff. Well, not quite, but for the price of one modest package of sembei, I can buy an enormous mega-party-size bag of barbecue Pop Chips at Costco. I can snack for a month or so on that, but I was starting to long for my old sembei experience.

Fortunately for me, these appeared to be on sale when I was at Nijiya. Instead of something in the $3-$4 range, these were about $2 (157 yen). This priced them pretty much at the same point as if I were at Inageya supermarket back home. There are 12 individually wrapped crackers, each is about the length of your palm and a little less than half the width. By the way, I used to give exact measurements, but someone wrote that I was too precise, so now I just try to give a visual approximation. That may still be too much information, but each is a single serving so it's important to know what you're getting. One cracker is 45 calories.

When you open the package, these smell like concentrated soy sauce and baked rice. Ah, smells like living in Japan and being given snacks at tea time by an office lady. The taste is a good blend of soy sauce, savory spices (chicken, mirin (sweet sake), sesame, bonito (fish flakes), etc.), and seaweed. On the surface, this isn't necessarily a mix to warm the cockles of my taste buds, but they come together in a savory melange of goodness. You can't really detect anything individually except the soy sauce and seaweed. The remainder forms a backdrop of rich flavor depth. Coupled with the super crispy cracker, this is a sublime experience.

It could be that my absence from such snacks has made my heart grow fonder. Scratch that. This is the sort of thing I'd completely take for granted if I were still living in Japan and experiencing it after so long an absence made it much more enjoyable. This really took me "home" to living in Tokyo again as it had a blend of flavors I'm unlikely to experience from any product that wasn't exclusively designed for the Japanese market. I'd certainly buy it again.

Random Picture #102

Back in 1988 when I first came to Japan for a vacation and to meet my future husband, I went to Tokyo Disneyland. Though it is a very popular destination with the natives, my husband and I weren't really drawn to it over the years. However, with our departure at the end of March, we decided it was time to put the other bookend on the story of our life in Japan and make a return trip. Twenty-four years later, we showed up at the gate to the Japanese incarnation of Disneyland. The food offerings were actually disappointing and sparse. Most of the snacks were repeated at every gift shop on the grounds. One thing which was relatively common was fresh popcorn. Each vendor sold a different flavor and this was one of the more uniquely Japanese ones. I'm sure I won't be seeing soy sauce and butter popcorn at amusement parks back home. 

Befco Soy Sauce Kakimochi

People love to build lists of "you know you've been in Japan too long", and I always find them to be attempts to be a little too cute and clever, not to mention sometimes insincere. That being said, I have definitely witnessed some peculiar and authentic "you've been here too long" behaviors. One of them is when foreigners who are speaking Japanese on the telephone and they actually start bowing near the end of the call. Yeah. They do that, but I don't.

For me, I think that one thing that is an indication that I've been here "too long" when I have gone from thinking soy sauce rice crackers are too common and pedestrian to be worth my attention. Since I grew up in the rural northeast, rice crackers unless they were the type of pressed puffed rice cereal discs sold by Quaker, were not something I encountered. I first experienced them in Japan and I've been here long enough to see them as "old hat".

Considering my expression of the yawn factor of soy sauce flavored rice crackers, one may wonder how I came to review them. The answer would be that I am cheap. Several types of Befco rice crackers were on offer for a mere 69 yen (84 cents) at Okashi no Marche snack shops. This is between 50-70% of the usual price. I'm guessing that this is because they are close to their expiration date at the end of April. I've noticed that Okashi no Marche has the lowest prices among all of the snack shops in my area, but that's because they seem to be a repository for some of the more mature cases of snacks. That's okay though because most of the expiration dates are conservative anyway.

There are 12 individually wrapped largish crackers in the bag and they are flavored with soy sauce and nori. They taste rather savory and have a familiar cooked soy sauce flavor. They are neither too intense nor too bland and are unsalted but carry enough salt in the sauce. Two of the ingredients are coloring agents (caramel coloring and annatto), which I guess goes to show that brushing soy sauce on crackers isn't sufficient to paint them brown enough to make them visually appealing to customers. The texture of these is light and crispy. They're hard and slightly brittle in a way that makes them a nice substitute for chips. At 17.5 calories per cracker, they're a little less fattening than chips.

I liked these just fine, though I'll be honest and say that soy sauce isn't really my top choice of flavors. It's not that I dislike it or anything, but rather that it's not the bee's knees for me. If I saw these for full price, I wouldn't get them, but if I had a chance to get them for such a low price again, I'd pick them up.

Iwatsuka Soy Sauce and Nori Sembei

Readers who follow the trends of what I review may have noticed that there was a time when I was reviewing pretty much one type of rice cracker (sembei) a week and that lately the frequency of such reviews has dropped greatly. This isn't because I got far fewer comments on the sembei reviews than any other type or that I perceived that they were of the lowest interest to most of my readers, though frankly I believe that is true. It is because I'd pretty much sampled most of what I wanted to and wasn't going to start buying things of dubious interest (particularly shrimp-flavored crackers) for the sake of keeping up the appearance of having an interest in sembei. I'm not a sembei poser, after all.

The only reason this is being reviewed is that it was included in the supermarket fukubukuro that I bought. This isn't the sort of thing I tend to gravitate toward though I also won't recoil from it in horror. The little flecks of nori (seaweed paper) tend to turn me off. It isn't because I hate seaweed, but rather because it can be too strong a flavor and I'm not that great a fan of the sense that I'm gnawing on chlorophyll. Since you can never predict how intense the grassiness is going to be when you have a snack with seaweed, it's easier just to pass, especially when the choice is to buy such a big bag.

It turns out that these are actually pretty mild on the seweed and have a nice savory flavor influenced mainly by soy sauce, but also by bonito (which is used for Japanese fish soup stock). None of the flavors are pronounced or individual but they tend to all come together in one mild savory mix which isn't too grassy, fishy, or salty. There are 14 two-packs in this big bag, and two crackers are 46 calories. This makes them an excellent option for a quick salty snack treat.

I was surprised that I liked these as much as I did, and I'd certainly consider getting them again. The main problem for me is that these types of "traditionally" flavored rice crackers carry a particular scent that my husband finds very off-putting so I can only eat them when he's not around. If your mate doesn't mind such things, I'd say give these a try. Since I got mine as part of my New Year's grab bag, I can't say for certain what the price is, but I'd guess they are between 180-240 yen per bag and can be had at a supermarket.

Kingodo Fukurekko Sembei

There's an episode of the old T.V. comedy "Roseanne" where she and her husband spent the night at a hotel for a romantic night away from their kids. The hotel was cheap and cheesy and they ordered a pizza. The characters aren't really the champagne and caviar types. Anyway, there's a piece of pizza which has a "brown bubble" on it and Roseanne says that she wants that piece because it had the bubble, but Dan took the topping off of it.

I mention this little scene because I can understand the appeal of bubbles on food and that was pretty much the reason I decided to try this Fukurekko (ふくれっこ) sembei. Fukurekko, incidentally, appears to mean "swell", so the idea is that these sembei have swollen up. When you translate it, it doesn't sound very appetizing actually. I think I'll stick with the idea that these are like bubble sembei.

These are made by a company named Kingodo. It's a new one to me and appears to mainly be a rice cracker maker with a limited range of products. It was founded in 1950, and has a head office in Nakano in Tokyo. This is actually an area very close to where I currently live (about a 5 minute-train ride) and a place I used to stop by often when I was working at Nova conversation school about 19 years ago. There's a great yakitori place there which we favored. Anyway, the company has 140 employees and is relatively small. I'm surprised that I even found their products on shelves at my local shops since the competition for shelf space is so fierce and the big boys usually get all of the glory.

The flavor of these crackers is actually pretty typical for Japanese rice crackers. It has a nice savory soy-sauce-based flavor and pretty much smells like usual sembei. The first ingredient is rice and the second is soy sauce. The main selling point of these is the crispy texture which is enhanced by the bubbles. It provides more layers of thin, crispy cracker without actually requiring another cracker.

I really liked these. They're perfectly salty and don't have the strong baked rice smell that some types of sembei have. I loved the texture and they're only 17.5 calories per 5-cm. (2 in.) cracker. I'd definitely buy these again. There's only one point which didn't work so well and that's the fact that they're not individually wrapped and if you don't eat them, they start to get a little stale quickly. I can't believe I'm actually saying something in Japan that isn't over-packaged should be packaged more, but the gel pack in the bag didn't quite manage to keep the crackers crispy in the 3 weeks it took me to eat the whole bag.

Bakauke 40-piece Sembei Assortment

In Japan, variety packs are called "asooto" (アソート) which is the Japanized version of "assortment". This Bakauke pack of 40 sembei in 5 flavors has been in my line of sight for some time. I resisted it because of the hassle associated with reviewing such packs (more pictures, more writing, same number of posts), but also because I think it'll take me a very long time to eat all of this myself and my husband doesn't eat sembei.

In the end though, the price and the fact that I could sample a lot of flavors that I've been considering purchasing individually made me take the plunge. I found this at a discount snack shop for 269 yen ($3.12). I'd also seen it for a somewhat higher price at Peacock supermarket, but it's not the sort of thing that tends to show up in just any old market. I think this would be a good thing to have on hand if you tend to have a lot of visitors to your home or have a family and can eat it quicker than the likes of me can consume 40 sembei.

Like all bakauke sembei, these come in a banana shape. The package doesn't offer nutrition information for each flavor, but I'd guess that they are similar to the other flavors I've reviewed and are about 20-35 calories each per cracker. My guess is the black sesame one is higher in calories than the other varieties.

Spicy Soy Sauce:


The strange thing about this soy sauce cracker is that it neither looks nor smells like the typical "shoyu" variety. It's not covered with a semi-sticky veneer of soy sauce. This does small very faintly of soy, but also vinegar. In fact, the predominant taste is a mild vinegar one, not a soy sauce flavor. This reminded me more of a very subdued version of the "Happy Turn 200%" sembei. That's not a bad thing at all, but I think this could have been a bit more intense in flavor. Nonetheless, this was perfectly enjoyable despite its lack of strong spice.

Black Sesame and Soy Sauce:


For some reason, this cracker is wrapped individually while the others come two to a pack. This is the most "fried" one and is bumpy and super crunchy. It smells lightly of sesame and of soy sauce. The exterior is very shiny and quite appealing to look at. These have a mixture of sweet and savory flavors including honey. All of the components come together well to present a multi-layered taste experience with all of the flavors complimenting each other well. I really enjoyed this.

Seaweed and Soy Sauce:


This was the flavor that I had the lowest expectations for because I'm not a huge fan of nori (seaweed). It's not that I can't eat it or find it gross. I can certainly consume it, but if I have a choice, I'd prefer not to have it included in foods that I eat. That being said, this is the sembei for those like me who are indifferent toward nori. The base soy flavor is deep, savory, and complex. The amount of small flakes of nori are enough to make the flavor present, but not overwhelming. The only bad point about this one is that the outside is a bit sticky so you need to eat it with the wrapper on or be prepared to wash your hands after touching it.

Spicy Curry:


This smells lightly of Japanese curry roux blocks, which is to say that the scent is somewhat different from actual curry powder and miles away from real Indian curry. The flavor is mild at first, but builds up a bit on your tongue by the end of a second cracker. There is no heat whatsoever in these and they're mildly salty. I get the sense that these were designed for people who have what is called a "cat's tongue" in Japanese. That is, they are sensitive to foods that are hot in a spicy way. While certainly a nice enough and completely enjoyable cracker, I have more of a "dragon's tongue" (I made that up, it's not Japanese) and would have liked some heat.

Cheese:


I'm going to be a bit lazy on this one and tell you that this is exactly the same as the Bakauke cheese sembei that I reviewed previously. There is no difference between what you get in the bag devoted to "5 cheese" sembei. This is a good thing because I gave those a "happy" rating and thought they were like a higher quality Cheeto cheese flavor.

This was a great value and full of high quality, flavorful, fresh, and crispy rice crackers. If you like sembei, or are going to buy some to send home to people who enjoy it, this is one of the best choices you can make. Despite my initial reservations about buying so much at once, I wouldn't hesitate to buy this assortment again, particularly if I wanted to serve some to guests or keep a stash on hand for late-night T.V. viewing accompaniment.

Kameda Seika Special Soy Sauce Sembei

These days, the old sembei well has been running dry. Lately, it seems that the only things of interest that I haven't tried are those which are made with shrimp or has little dollops of fake cheese on it and an almond. I hate shrimp, and those little fake cheese ones scare me a little. They look like someone put hardened Cheez Whiz on them. My guess is that I'll get to those scary crackers eventually, but I decided to try some conventional soy sauce (shoyu) style sembei. Often, I shy away from the mainstream items because they seem less interesting than the limited edition products.

Strangely enough, this is a "limited edition" soy sauce sembei. According to the Kameda Seika web site, it'll be around for only 120 days. I'm guessing this is a spring flavor release. Loads of wasabi and pepper showed up in winter and I guess soy sauce is more of a warm weather thing when it comes to rice crackers.


This is promoted as an "original" and "special" sauce. Perhaps I should try it with lettuce, pickles, and onions on a sesame seed bun. Of course, "special sauce" can conjure up all sorts of far less savory associations, but I leave those for Marvo at The Impulsive Buy. He's the king of bodily fluid joke writing. And, I mean that in the best possible way.

In the past, I never cared much for soy sauce sembei because it always seemed too heavy on the salty sauce and too light on complex flavor. These sembei are quite a bit more complex than what I've experienced in the past. They do have that familiar baked rice cracker smell and taste that a lot of people dislike, but the crackers are crisp, fresh, and spicy. They even have a little heat in them that you can really sense by the end of a two-pack of crackers. The spices aren't detailed in the ingredients list (likely to prevent trade secrets from being revealed), but I'm pretty sure I detect garlic and Chinese red chili.

Each bag has 24 crackers and two crackers of about 7 cm. (2.8 in.) in diameter and have 35 calories. These are a bit on the strong side flavor-wise, so they are best consumed with a beverage and in small portions. I count this as a good thing as you can be satisfied with just two or four because they're so flavorful. I recommend them to anyone with a taste for salty and slightly hot sembei.

Kameida Seika Dashi Sembei

Doing this blog has taught me many things and one of the most recent is that all of the individual and double-packaging in the world will not protect crunchy, savory snacks from going stale... no matter how solidly sealed it appears to be. This bag of sembei was consumed largely in the first month, then one cracker perhaps in the first six weeks. The final cracker, which I saved for tasting when I got my lazy ass around to writing a review, sat in the package alone for 6 months.


Now, perhaps it got lonely up there and decided to punish me, but it was horribly stale. It seems that the sealed individual packet and the outer plastic bag being loosely closed were not enough to keep the ravages of the atmosphere from dampening it's rice crackery appeal. Once you open the bag, do not count on the individual packets to keep things fresh. This is the newest wisdom that I impart to you, gentle readers.


Fortunately, I do recall that this cracker was crispy and had a lot of snap when I ate most of them, so I can vouch for the texture if you buy them and consume them within about a month. They smell slightly soy sauce-like with a vague hint of something difficult to pin down. I believe that is the mixture of flavors and spices that come with the "dashi" portion of this. Dashi is Japanese soup stock which is composed of various ingredients depending on the region it is made in and the tastes of the person making it. The flavor on these is very savory and meaty with hints of garlic, fish, and, of course, soy sauce. The melange of flavors is really quite pleasant, and I'm not a particular fan of fish.

I really enjoyed these, but I had a little trouble choosing between "indifferent" and "happy" because, while I'd be delighted to eat these again if offered one, I'm not sure I'd buy a whole bag of my own volition again. It's not that they aren't tasty, but rather that I think I'd go for some other type of sembei over this if I had a lot of options. Part of the problem is that one cracker, though generously sized, is 64 calories, which seems like a lot for one cracker when I can have two brown sugar sembei crackers for the same number of calories. However, I wholeheartedly recommend these if you particularly enjoy Japanese soup flavors.

Calbee Kikkoman Collaboration Soy Sauce Chips

When I reviewed the yuzu soy sauce chips, the great and powerful Marvo from The Impulsive Buy wondered in the comments about soy sauce flavored chips and if they were black. His wish was my command, but only this once. Frankly, I'm a little frightened of what his other wishes might be. If you read his reviews (and you should), you'll understand that that fear is well founded.

Calbee is one of the best known makers of chips in Japan and Kikkoman is known around the world for its soy sauce. Brand name awareness being what it is in Japan, their collaboration is written on the front as if it were a pairing worthy of much rejoicing. I did a little digging around to get some more information about Calbee. The "Cal" refers to calcium and the "bee" to vitamin B1. I'm not sure what chip production has to do with these nutrients, but I'm guessing that at least some of their products are fortified with them. The company was established in 1949 and started out in Hiroshima, but moved its headquarters to Tokyo about 14 years ago. I've been told that companies having a Tokyo address, particularly in one of the major business districts, carries more prestige.


I can now say with certainty that soy sauce chips are not black. In fact, they look and smell very much like plain potato chips. There aren't even any discernible flavoring specs on them. In fact, the soy sauce component in the chips is so faint as to nearly be undetectable. If you cram a few in your mouth at once (not recommended), you get a better sense of the soy sauce flavor, but it's very subdued.

Don't get me wrong, these are very good chips. They are thin, super crispy, and not too oily. Calbee has always made great basic chips, but making these soy sauce flavored with so little soy sauce flavor seems pointless. Perhaps the flavor is so weak because they wanted to push the whole "simple" flavor concept that is mentioned on the bag. These chips will be on sale until early June and I'd recommend interested parties grab them while they can, but you'd probably be just as happy with regular chips and they (plain chips, that is) are not going anywhere.