Karel Capek Sweets Teatime Set (product information)

During the holiday season, I was drawn to the gift baskets and packages that I saw on sale. I don't know how other people regard them, but I am always fascinated by the way in which items are chosen for these package deals. The obvious combinations like cheese, crackers, and shelf-stable cured meat, don't hold a great deal of appeal, but the ones that mix things up a bit pique my curiosity.

This set from designer tea maker, Karel Capek, is less interesting in what it includes than in the little fairy tale that is woven around the choices. They say this is a "once upon a tea time set" and talk about a Nordic King's caramel scones. It includes five kinds of tea, cookies, raspberry muffins, cherry jam, and a special bowl for the jam.

The set will set you back 4,200 yen (about $40). That's a pretty penny for 25 bags of tea, a jar of jam, a little pot for the jam, and a handful of cookies and muffins... and it's not even a particularly interesting assortment. 

Karel Capek Marron Tea (product announcement)

Year-round, we can buy nearly any kind of nut roasted, salted, or dried in markets. You can even get them in convenience stores. For reasons I'm not sure of, chestnuts have never taken off in America the way they have in Asia. This may have something to do with the fact that they can't be gobbled down by the handful with beverage and are a bit moist and often vacuum packed. This doesn't explain why they haven't penetrated American cuisine as deeply as they have Japanese (and I know what you're all thinking after reading that because I know you all have minds that are nearly as filthy as mine).

Chestnuts are a very healthy, relatively low calorie nut. They're creamy and similar to sweet potatoes in texture. So, why aren't we eating more of them? Well, this article in Serious Eats speculates that they fell out of favor when trees started dying due to blight. That writer believes that they were forgotten and never made their way back into people's regular diets. Personally, I think that people are too lazy to do what it takes to make dishes with them (and they aren't great just by themselves as they can be slightly bitter) and too conservative in their eating habits by and large for them to be popular.

All of this is my lamenting that chestnut, or "marron" as they're called in Japan and France, and chestnut-flavored items are so rare here. When I saw this new tea by Karel Capek, I wished very much to be able to get my hands on it. Unfortunately, even if I still lived in Japan, it would require some effort as I'd have to go to Musashino to visit their store (not a small hike from where I used to live) or do mail order. Chances are, appealing as this tea sounds, I wouldn't have troubled myself to do either. I guess that also speaks to why chestnuts aren't more popular. If even someone who loves them as much as I do can't be bothered to make some efforts to get goods made with them, then they probably aren't going to sell especially well.

Random Picture #172

Meiji's kinoko and takenoko no sato (mushroom and bamboo shoot) lines of cookie snacks is one of the most venerable in Japan. While I always thought that they were fine as a nice little morsel of cookie with some sort of chocolate, they were never the sort of thing I strongly gravitated toward. There were always bigger fish to fry than the generic combination of buttery biscuit and chocolate. For jaded sorts like me, Meiji has upped their game and released Bergamot Milk Tea and Honey Cafe Latte flavors of these snacks. If I were in Japan and could locate these for the usual price of around 150 yen ($1.50), I'd probably give them a try. Here in the U.S., as you can see, they're more than double that price. Since I don't expect a premium chocolate experience, I was unwilling to pay a premium price for them.

If any of my readers has a bigger wallet than me and popped for these, I'd be curious to hear what you thought of them and if they were worth the scratch.

Nittou Relay Plum Kombu Soup/Tea with Red Pepper

Sorry for the big label residue. There was an English label that was stubborn about being torn off.

There's an old SNL commercial spoof in which a couple argue over whether or not a product, Shimmer, is a floor wax or a dessert topping. Someone appears to be similarly confused about this packet of powdered foodstuff. It's referred to both as a soup and as a tea. The manufacturer's press information says that it has ume (plum) tea to refresh, but the package calls it "soup".

This actually raises a question that I've had come up recently in another context. It's the sort of question that only someone who reviews food for fun (not really "for a living", as the only living I could make would be sleeping over sewer grates and begging for pennies in front of Peet's Coffee based on my blogging income). That question is, "what makes "tea" tea?" This comes up because I have been sampling Numi's savory tea for review and those flavors include tomato mint, carrot curry, and broccoli cilantro. The Numi includes actual tea leaves as well as dehydrated vegetables, and, it's frankly, dreadful, but clearly there is no doubt that it can call itself a "tea". It may be horrible to drink, but there's no identity crisis to complicate the discussion.

This product is different because it includes no actual tea leaves. It has powdered kelp, red pepper, salt, sugar, plum, labiate leaf, MSG, citric acid, and labiate flavor. Techically, I guess this is a tisane, but it's not like we call anything which does not include tea leaves a tisane. Much herbal tea does not contain tea leaves, but nobody will call it anything but "tea".

So, semantics aside, let's get to this product. And, incidentally, it's actually soup, not tea of any sort. It looks like a soup, tastes like a soup, and has the savory properties of soup (Numi savory tea be damned!). What is more, it's a very tasty, low calorie soup which I wish I could pick up regularly at any old American market. 

The preparation method is to take 1/2 cup of hot water and then stir the powder into it. This produces something like looks like water from your fish tank that has not been cleaned for far too long. After stirring, the cloudy bits of kombu (kelp) move around the glass like a murky lava lamp. Mind you, I generally don't make my soup in a clear drinking glass, but did so to get a picture for my readers. I wouldn't recommend doing this in anything which doesn't have a handle unless you want to burn your fingers.

The soup mainly smells like the plum. When I say "plum", don't think of American sweet plums, but Japanese umeboshi (pickled plum). It lends a piquant acidic flavor that is the first thing that hits your tongue when you taste the soup. This is quickly followed up by the red pepper, which is just hot enough to add spice and heat the back of your throat, but not burn a hole through your tongue. The balance of these two major elements is perfect. I couldn't taste the kelp at all. I'm sure it was there adding flavor depth to a limited extent, but it was pretty overwhelmed by the plum, pepper, and salt. In fact, salt is the first ingredient.

For the serving size, this is pretty salty, unsurprisingly. A 2-gram packet provides 360 mg. of sodium. Even though sugar is an ingredient (the second one), this is listed as having zero calories. I'm guessing it's one of those deals where there are few enough calories per serving that they don't have to measure them. If you're on a diet which allows lots of salt, this makes for a pretty handy option when you're craving salty food or, as the package suggests, might want to spice up your pasta or rice. You can stir a packet into pasta or dump the soup over rice for a tasty variation.

I bought this at Daiso Japan for $1.50. There are 7 packets so that's a pretty reasonable price per serving. I would warn anyone who decides to try this not only that it is salty, but also spicy in a way which may not suit just everyone. If you're a fan of umeboshi and don't mind a little heat though, I think this is absolutely worth a try.

Cafe Tirol Lemon Tea and Coffee Jelly assortment

My husband is not a very visually oriented person. In fact, I'll not infrequently point out something design or art-oriented and he'll say he did not notice. However, after I bought this, he picked the bag up and remarked that it was really designed well. We both thought it brought to mind two very famous coffee shops without going so far as to infringe on their copyrights. I thought of Starbucks because of the color scheme and he thought of Tully's because of the stripes. They did a good job of evoking the coffee shop experience while still avoiding being sued. 

In Japan, I imagine this sells for around 150 yen ($1.50) as it is the regular small chocolates rather than premium ones. It's still listed on Tirol's web site, but they don't offer prices for this. I paid $2.19 for it at Nijiya. The only way I could find to buy them online was via eBay for obscene prices ($7.49 and $4.00). Unfortunately, Candysan, which tends to offer some of the better prices on such things, doesn't carry Tirol chocolates of any kind. 

Even the little packages are nicely designed!

The lemon tea chocolate is an interesting blend of lemon and tea with a strong bitter finish. I'm not sure if the bitterness is supposed to represent the bitterness of strong tea or the pith of a lemon. This is not a bad thing, necessarily, but it comes on as a bit of a shock after the mellow tea and somewhat sweet lemons flavors. Inside is a bland little biscuit which adds a nice textural element and perhaps lightens up the sweetness of the candy in general. I like the cookie being put in the tea candy because it has shades of "afternoon tea" with tea and a biscuit.

The coffee jelly has a very strong coffee flavor coupled with some strong sweetness. The top is white chocolate, which is either supposed to represent whipped cream (likely) or milk (less likely). The thing is that, I had coffee jelly on occasion in Japan and this very much captures the taste of that treat. The jelly candy in the middle is soft and easy to cleave and, like the biscuit in the tea candy, adds some textural interest.

I really liked both of these for their strong flavors and textural variety. Though they aren't the most incredible, mind-blowing chocolates I've ever had, they have both high novelty value and are pleasurable. What I tend to ask of such candy is that they have solid flavor strength without being disgusting or overbearing and decent depth of flavor. These score well on both fronts. If you like coffee and tea, I'd say they're worth a try. The only risk is that the packaging will have you craving a latte or frappucino.

Random Picture #163

Every time I see something which says "straight" as an adjective for food or drink, I have to suppress the thought that this is somehow trying to clarify the fact that this product is not attracted to the adjacent bottles, but to bottles which are opposite of itself. If we're talking tea, I'm guessing "straight tea" is attracted to coffee?

OK, I'm just stupid. And I didn't take this picture because of the use of the word "straight". I took it because, though I'm not a Disney fan, I thought the designs on these bottles were simply adorable. I love repeating patterns with graphic images and the line clean line drawings of Disney characters repeated over the label was something I found aesthetically pleasing. They didn't please me enough to buy them, as I'm not spending nearly $3 for a bottle of tea when I can spend 3-7 cents and make my own with a teabag, but they were good enough for a little mention here on my silly little blog. Japanese manufacturers take something cute, like Disney, and somehow make it even cuter.

Glico Shall We Biscuits, now with tea included

All images from Glico Japan.

Recently, I was contacted by a woman at the BBC and answered some of her questions about Japanese food/snacks. One of the things I said to her when she asked about odd flavors of ice cream (think "chicken", not "sweet potato") was that things are not nearly as weird as people think. Just like all countries, there are regions in which oddities exist, but they are highly localized disturbances in the food continuum. I'm sure some place in Japan sells especially bizarre ice cream flavors, just as Gilroy in California has garlic ice cream on offer because they are the garlic capital of the state (country?), but it's not a mass market thing.

butter cookies

People who write about food in foreign countries tend not to concern themselves with the mass market stuff so much because it's actually pretty mundane. If 999 people are eating chocolate cookies, a journalist or blogger will choose to focus on the 1 who is eating the cookie with shrimp testicles in it (note: I do not know if shrimp have testicles, but if they do, I'm sure someone eats them as a delicacy). Well, 998 people would be eating "Shall We" biscuits by Glico and the 999th would be me generally not eating them.

chocolate chip macademia

I think I may have bought one box of these once while I was living in Tokyo. It's not that there is anything wrong with them particularly. They are actually pretty tasty consumer-grade shortbread cookies. It's more the case that they are a bit like a package of "Chips Ahoy". They'll get you there, but not necessarily in high style. I consider such cookies perfectly fine, but nothing to get excited about.

green tea (matcha) cookies

For me, part of the problem with these little blocks of cookie was that they always reminded me of the types of cookies that you bought in a roll and sliced off bits and baked to make them. The fact that they clearly were cut from enormous slabs of dough and mass produced without even trying to fool me into thinking grandma lovingly hand crafted them in her kitchen wasn't helping matters. They actually resemble micro versions of Calorie Mate.

That being said, there was something inviting about the name of the product. "Shall we?" is a question you ask as you sit down for tea with friends and prepare to gossip about people you supposedly like. It's the civilized start to verbally savaging your enemies and figuring out how to destroy their lives in the most passive aggressive manner possible. In furtherance of this illusion, Glico has teamed up with tea maker Karel Capek and is now including one bag of their custom tea blend in each box of cookies. Each tea is carefully selected to match the flavor of the cookie type it is included with. Butter cookies come with milk caramel tea. Something called "everyday tea" (which is mixture of teas from the Ceylon and Dimbula regions) comes with the green tea cookies and, strawberry (called "Girl's Tea") accompany the chocolate chip macadamia.

Karel Capek is a boutique brand and this is an interesting joint campaign which is meant to elevate the "Shall We" brand and raise recognition of a smaller tea maker. The target consumer is women aged 30-50 and the release corresponds with Mother's Day. I guess women in said age group presumably have nothing better to do with their afternoons that sit around and eat boxes of cookies and share a single tea bag with their friends. Actually, the cunning nature of including just one bag is that anyone who wants to share their 11 cookies (or a mere 9 if you choose chocolate macadamia) with others will need to go buy more tea if they want to have them with the special tea included in the package. This was released on April 23 and will be available as long as the limited supplies last (which Glico believes will be until mid-May). Each retails for 294 yen ($2.96).

Kondo Honey Factory Yuzu Jam

This is a review which is tricky to write because I know most of my readers don't know what yuzu is. Even if I tell you that it is "Japanese citron", that doesn't necessarily convey much as it's about a fragrance and a flavor which are unfamiliar to those who haven't been exposed to it. Taste-wise, the best I can say is that it's a little like a tantalizing three-way between lemon, grapefruit, and orange, with the first two dominating the flavor menage. 

This is often sold as "marmalade" rather than in the form I'm reviewing it as here. And even this is not actually marketed as "jam". The characters on the jar do not say "yuzu jam", but rather "yuzu tea". The reason for this is that it is common in Japan to use this marmalade for a tisane. It's a little like the way that Russians sometimes sweeten tea. You stir a spoonful of jam into hot water.

However, I would not waste a precious spoonful of this by diluting it into hot water. Unlike orange marmalade, which I find vile and bitter on a bad day and barely tolerable on a good one, this is much more palatable with a delicate balance of citrus bite and sweetness. Whatever bitterness there is is balanced out of the equation, but the qualities of the fruit stop it from being cloying. The truth is that, I could eat this by the spoonful if I were inclined to allow myself. I couldn't eat the entire jar at once, mind you, but I could put away 2-3 spoonfuls at a sitting before I'd feel overwhelmed. It's just like candy to me.

Note that this is a pretty high quality yuzu jam compared to what is on shelves in most markets in Japan. This is 250 grams/8.8 oz. for about 800 yen ($9.60). The reason it is so expensive is that it is made with honey and because it is made with more yuzu. Usually, there are stringy bits of peel in a sugary base. This is more like a puree so the concentration of yuzu and the sugar component (honey) are higher quality and therefore more expensive. The nutritional profile is almost certainly better than the cheaper versions, and the flavor is a bit nicer, but I can't necessarily recommend this for a casual consumer.

Incidentally, this jam came directly from Tokyo, and it can be bought online as well, but I didn't make the purchasing decision. I asked my brother-in-law to buy some yuzu marmalade for me and carry it over when he came to the U.S. for a holiday visit and he brought me two jars of this. It is fantastic, but I'd be too cheap to make such a decision for myself. 

Though I relish eating this straight or on toast, pancakes, or scones, I can't speak for others. I can say that this is delicious and I'd be surprised if anyone who likes something which is similar to candied citrus peel (lemon, orange, citron, of course) would not enjoy this. If you're looking for a holiday treat for a foodie in your life, this would absolutely make a high quality and unique, but approachable gift. I imagine a really upscale eater would enjoy it with certain types of cheese or a good cracker. 

Temple of Heaven Gunpowder Green Tea

I've heard for years that the Chinese eat all sorts of weird things, and I've known for some of those years that things like 1,000 year old eggs aren't actually as nasty as they sound. Some other things, like bird's nest soup, are even worse than they may appear. FYI, 1,000 year-old eggs are preserved for a mere 100 days, which is somewhat less gross than those ten times older. Bird's nest soup, which sounds like some sort of crunchy Euell Gibbons bark-eating extravaganza that'll keep your bowels in working order, is made with a nest that is made with saliva, which is an incredibly disgusting notion.

Keeping in mind that oddly named Chinese food is an adventure, I found it hard to walk away from this box of "special gunpowder" green tea when I found it on the shelf of a middle eastern market for a mere $1.89. The market, if anyone is interested and in the area, is in Santa Clara, CA and is called "Zad Grocery". I mention it mainly because this is a very low price for this tea compared to what I found for it via online sellers. Amazon carries it for $5.69, but I'm guessing that ethnic groceries in various areas would offer a more competitive price just as Zad Grocery did for me.

When I bought this, I didn't really believe it was going to include gunpowder. Well, I sort of felt it might be. After all, bird's nest soup does include a spit-based bird's nest. Sometimes things are what they sound like. However, before I set the tea a steepin', I investigated it to see what the deal was and it is one of those things which has a name based on appearance rather than on ingredients. The tea leaves are rolled such that they resemble gunpowder. No actual gunpowder was to be ingested. Part of me was relieved. Part was disappointed. The latter part must be some sort of suicidal streak for which I should seek some sort of psychological intervention.

As for this tea, one thing I was careful about was the steeping time. I know from experience that over-steeping green tea of any sort can render it undrinkable. While overdoing black tea (English tea) can make it bitter and involve large lashings of milk to off-set the tannin overload, it completely kills green tea if you let it soak too long. I used a timer and watched the color and it seemed that around a minute and a half worked well for my tastes. It was strong enough for some distinct flavor, but not at a funkified state. Note that I used a tea ball infuser and only about half a teaspoon of tea leaves so there was plenty of room for them to bloom as it steeped. I also swished the infuser around several times during the steeping. The water was a shade below boiling.

I usually don't make hot tea in this sort of glass, but I had to use something clear to show the color. I risked burning my hand for my dubious "art". 

Note that I read awful reviews of this on Amazon from people who claimed that there was "dirt" in the tea. My guess is that they expected it to be like Japanese green tea which is, well, green. I've had "golden" green tea from Hong Kong before and it is actually brown. This tea is also brown. That's not because it's dirty or has dirt in it, but because that's rather a natural color for certain types of tea including black teas. You'd think people would be a little less freaked out by brown tea after years of Tetley and Lipton in their cups, but I guess they took the "green tea" part literally (though I'm guessing they didn't get nearly so worked up that it wasn't a box full of gunpowder and that that was not something they took literally).

 The smell and taste of the tea reminded me strongly of oolong tea. It had just a hint of chlorophyll which moved it a notch closer to Japanese green tea, but it's such a vague whisper that I may even have imagined it. This is a very serviceable tea for those who like it straight and with a vague almost "roasted" flavor and earthy highlights. I've heard that oolong tea is made by allowing the leaves to wither on the vine a bit, and I think that is what separates it from Japanese green tea.

I wouldn't say this is the most incredible tea I have ever had, but it is tasty and suits one on a cool autumn evening or a cold winter night. I imagine it'd be just as good or possible better served cold in summer. If you can get it economically, as I did, it's absolutely worth a try. I'm not sure I'd pay more for it than oolong tea, but I wouldn't mind always having a box around for when the mood strikes me, and I'm guessing drinking it may have some health benefits as well. Besides, having a box of it on your shelf is sure to be a conversation starter for those evenings when you're entertaining boring guests or relatives.

Random Picture #111

There were many perfectly reasonable and innocent word combinations in Japan which, because of different cultural connotations, were funny to native speakers. These cans of jasmine tea, sold without milk or sugar, and marketed as "Asian Straight" would be fine if it weren't for the fact that it makes it sound like they are marketing heterosexuals of Asian origin. When I saw things like this, after the initial smile of amusement, I was reminded of the complexities of gaining true fluency in a language. The nuances and the fluidity of pop cultural references make it nearly impossible. It was good for a laugh, of course, but also a moment of empathy. No wonder my students never felt their English would be adequate. If a huge corporation like Kirin was tagging their products in a slightly funny way when they used English, what hope did my students with their limited resources to get their English perfect have?

Random Picture #81

I'm not sure if this is as funny to others than it is to me, but the name of this product makes me think of some lewd interaction between a boss and secretary during lunch time. For those who are less perverse about what it might me to "take a break on the desk", I will say that it's a zero calorie tea (hence the big zero in the lower left corner) which I'm sure would provide a less than impressive break experience as I've had several of these before and most of them taste like weird Kool-Aid and artificial sweetener. Still, the Bergamot Lime looked interesting, but I've had a bad time with bergamot in Japan so I gave it a pass.

Tea's Tea Stick Latte Ginger Chai

Thanks to a trip up a mountain, the Tea's Tea brand has hooked me as a repeat customer. If they could just get everyone to climb a mountain in winter with a vending machine offering their drinks as handy hand warmers, Ito En might sell a lot more tea. Perhaps I should offer that idea to them as a marketing solution. It's a little convoluted, but I've seen worse in Japan like a politically incorrect actor dressed up like a stereotype of a Mexican stutter-stepping his way through a "Don Tacos" commercial.

Given my enjoyment of the soy milk tea I previously reviewed, I jumped at the chance to sample this 4-pack of instant ginger chai tea when I saw it at Seiyu supermarket for 187 yen ($2.24). Most of the chai mixes you see available in Japan are supercharged with sugar, but this was only 34 calories so I figured there was a good chance that it wouldn't be quite such a blood sugar bomb.

Each packet makes a 150 ml. (3/4 cup) serving of tea. This is a relatively small portion, but very much in line with the norm in Japan for individually packaged portions of instant beverages. In a former review of Maxim's Oreo and Mont Blanc lattes, I mentioned that those packets only made 130 ml. of coffee (and at nearly double the calories of this tea). Note that this tea can be mixed either as hot or cold tea, but I only tried it hot.

My main concern with this was that the ginger element might end up overbearing and that the chai aspect masked. Fortunately, though the ginger was strong, it didn't obliterate the chai flavoring but rather competed with it. The blend is potent, but very gratifying. It contained not only good solid elements of ginger and chai, but also the slightly floral notes of good tea. The only criticism a person might have of the entire balance was that it was a bit on the sweeter side, but frankly, I prefer my tea quite sweet.

From an economic viewpoint, this isn't much of a bargain over buying bottled tea since you can generally get a 500 ml. bottle for about 100 yen. From a pure volume perspective, this is about half the tea for almost half the price. That being said, ginger chai isn't sold as a prepared tea so this is the only way to get it. It's also convenient for tossing into a desk and making on the fly at the office when you're in the mood for a flavorful tea blend. It'd be a great thing to distract you from a sugar-craving when you're starting to drag in the early afternoon and crave chocolate.

I loved this, and will definitely get it again, but it may be too sweet for some and/or too intense for others. Unless you are extremely sensitive to either of these, I'd recommend giving this a try.

Korean Corn Tea (Oksusu-cha)

This blog is called "Japanese Snack Reviews", but it's my blog and I'll cover non-Japanese products on a very infrequent basis if I want to. Also, I'm guessing this is the sort of thing that anyone can pick up in a Korean or Asian grocery store and may be of interest to at least a few of my readers. To make a tenuous connection to Japan though, I will say that, if it weren't for one of my students, I would never have sampled this tea so living here is responsible for this review both in terms of my discovering the existence of corn tea and my having ready access to it (as there is a tiny little Korean goods shop not a minute from my apartment).

The student who told me about this said that she bought it because corn tea is supposed to be good for your skin and overall beauty. I did some research and corn tea is loaded with Vitamin E. It's also supposed to be good for digestion, high blood pressure, and to help those with diabetes for reasons I am unaware of. Only at the end of one article about corn tea and my second big cup of this tea did I learn that strongly brewed corn tea is supposed to be a potent and expedient laxative. I'll get back to you on that particular effect by the end of this review should it prove to be valid.

The import shop I bought this at sold this box of 15 bags for 230 yen ($2.76). At first, I thought this was a tad on the expensive side, but the truth is that I pay similar prices for about 10 bags of flavored teas made by Lipton such as maple, caramel, or mint tea. Lipton, incidentally, is considered more of a "premium brand" (especially the "yellow label" variety) in Japan than it is back home, where I consider it the dusty sweepings off of the tea leaf processing floor.

I only realized after getting the box home and turning it over that this isn't a box with 15 tea bags for 15 cups of tea, but that each bag prepared 2 liters of tea. This makes this much better value, but presents a bit of a pickle for the likes of me. I live with a devout non-tea drinker and putting away two liters by myself is going to take at least 3 days, if not longer. Also, I have no room in my small Japanese refrigerator for lots of drinks of any sort. Finally, I don't even have a 2 liter-size vessel to make the tea in!

Since necessity is the mother of invention, I improvised and made the tea in a pot and then poured it into two 1 liter decanters (which I couldn't fit in my fridge, but never mind). The leaves smell of roasted grain and the prepared tea smells a lot like popcorn. In its default state, it has a hint of Japanese barley tea (mugi-cha) as well as roasted corn flavoring. I think the roasting is what brings on the resemblance to mugi-cha since both oksusu-cha and Japanese barley tea use roasted grains. I didn't take a picture of the brewed tea, but it is a pale gold or deep gold color depending on how long you brew it. It can be drunk either hot or cold (though I marginally preferred it cold).

Plain, this is good, but with a little sweetener or sugar added, I would upgrade it to "great". It is tea, however, and one mustn't expect it to blow ones socks off, but the flavor is really very pleasant and carries a good deal of the essence of roasted corn. I'd definitely buy it again if I could get individual teabags rather than these monster 2-liter-making bags which force me to drink a lot and store a lot. If my refrigerator were less puny (and if I had a 2-liter container), I wouldn't even hesitate to buy these monster size teabags again. And that fast-acting laxative thing? It doesn't seem to be the least bit true, fortunately.

Dydo Peter Rabbit Fruit Tea (Season Blend)

Dydo is one of the first Japanese drink companies that I heard the name of, though I didn't come across it firsthand. My husband, before he was Mr. Orchid64, spent a year in Japan alone as a teacher and sent me a picture of a Dydo vending machine and with our inexperience with Japanese culture at that time, we thought it was a funny-sounding name. Little did we know that there were far more amusing words to be discovered.

I don't see many of their machines in my particular neighborhood, and honestly don't recall seeing many of their drinks on store shelves. This was a little surprise to me when I discovered it in the cold drink case at a 100 yen ($1.20) shop in a neighboring area. The inclusion of grapefruit as a flavor is what drew me in, though I haven't had the best experience with grapefruit drinks in the past.

Peter Rabbit is pretty popular in Japan among the young women set. Kids don't seem so much into that character, but university students and young OLs are known to pick up Peter Rabbit goods at expensive import shops like Sony Plaza. Unsurprisingly, this is promoted as "woman friendly" due to its zero calorie status. They catch your eye with Peter Rabbit, and get you to buy it because it won't make you fat. The character is so popular that about 25% of visitors to the cottage where the character was created are Japanese. I find myself wondering just how much Dydo had to pay the estate of Beatrix Potter to use this character.

A whiff after opening the bottle reveals both tea and citrus fruit, unsurprisingly. The ingredients include grapefruit and the scent really confirms this. The taste is a balanced blend of grapefruit and plain tea. The grapefruit flavor hits the tongue first and the tea after, but both are there clearly and cleanly. The bottle mentions that ginger and honey are also flavor components, and one can detect the faintest hint of honey and ginger. Since this is a zero calorie drink, I don't understand how both "grapefruit sugar" and honey can be ingredients and keep the calories at nothing, but there is a note that says that this is not absolutely zero but less than 5 calories per 100 ml.

This is a pretty nice tea. I can detect complex flavors and everything that is promised on the bottle's label is present. If you are sensitive to artificial sweeteners, you may not want to try this. If not, it's certainly worth a taste. I'd buy it again if I found it and was in the right mood. It's refreshing and has the right amount of pretty much everything to make a tasty fruit tea.

Morinaga Lemon Tea Cookies

There are two ways to read the name of this product. One is "lemon" tea cookies and the other is "lemon tea" cookies. In most Western countries, "tea cookies" are a category unto themselves. In fact, you can find a lot of recipes on the internet for tea cookies and tea cakes. It was with that thought in mind that my husband picked up this box of sandwich cookies. He loves lemon cookies and was keen to give these a try.



I should have paid closer attention to the box design when we picked this up at Seiyu supermarket (157 yen/$1.75). The illustration is the same as the one that appears on bottles of Morinaga's various tea beverages. These are cookies flavored with tea, not cookies that are lemon and designed to be eaten with tea.


When my husband opened the first packet anticipating a nice lemon cookie, he gave it a sniff and said, "oh no." These smell strongly of Earl Grey tea and not at all of lemon. The biscuit is a nicely crisp butter-cookie-style-cookie. Since they're made with shortening and margarine, they don't have any real butter taste. The tea flavoring is carried in the cream filling in the middle and it's relatively strong. The lemon portion is incredibly weak. You mainly detect it as a faint aftertaste.

These are very nice cookies if you like tea flavoring, and I do, but my husband hates it. The only thing that makes me hesitate about buying these again is that they are 64 calories each for a cookie little bigger than an Oreo. That's a bit on the hefty side for a small treat. I really like the cookies themselves though, and would recommend trying them if you want a nice tea time snack without the tea.

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My husband caught these bottles of Jasmine tea in a vending machine. He couldn't help but make a certain connection between the English name and sexual preference. These are part of a series of very nice tea made by Kirin. The milk tea in this series is excellent, but like many bottled drinks in Japan is full of sugar and quite sweet.

Note that the price on these bottles of tea is 150 yen, which is a usual vending machine or convenience store price for 500 ml. (about 16 oz.) bottles. I rarely pay this price though since most supermarkets offer drinks at a discount relative to vending machines and "conbini".

Lipton Grape Tea Zero

I think that I'm starting to have a stimulus-response reaction to anything in Japan with a big zero on it. Like the Pavlov's dog that drools when it hears a bell, I whip out my wallet when I see something with a zero. Though diet foods are more common than they used to be in Japan, something which is zero calories is still uncommon. I'm particularly drawn to drinks, as one can see by my track record thus far with reviewing beverages.



This is the third zero-calorie flavored tea that I've come across. Previously, I've tried orange and peach teas, and I think the shine is starting to wear off of the novelty of these drinks. While I feel this is no worse than the other two teas, I didn't feel that it was as enjoyable. The tea smells strange in that it doesn't smell especially like grape or tea but some sort of chemical concoction in between. It tastes a lot like someone stirred in a powdered packet of grape Kool-aid drink mix with some ice tea. It's really not bad at all. It's refreshing and mild, but it just isn't all that interesting an experience.

If you're a fan of powdered fruit drink mixes, you may like this more than I did. I finished the carton with no sense of discontent and with mild enjoyment, but I wouldn't buy it again.

Lipton Peach Tea Zero

Occasionally, people will write me an e-mail or leave a comment asking how, as a reviewer, one might score freebies for review purposes. My answer is, "when you find out, let me know." Since I don't get paid for this blog, and make pennies on each post from advertising most days, I'm very cheap about acquiring the food I review. Take this Lipton Zero Peach Tea for example. I had seen it at several convenience stores and pondered sampling it, but thought I didn't want the experience enough to fork over a whole 100 yen ($1.10). Yes, I'm really that cheap.

I was cruising the dairy and juice aisle at the local market when I noticed that they had a carton marked down to 80 yen (88 cents) with an expiration date of tomorrow. I decided that was the price at which they'd pry the yen out of my grubby, cheap fingers. The thing I can't figure out is what can go bad in this tea. It's essentially water, peach juice, and chemicals.

Note that I'm overstating my cheapness a bit here. I will pay more for things which I'm really keen to sample, but beverages that are not carbonated are close to lowest on my list of things to try as I can make pretty much anything which isn't fizzy. It's hard for me to pay for tea when I can make it with a teabag for about 7 yen (8 cents) and add my own artificial sweetener.



Like the Lipton Zero orange tea, I can't figure out how peach juice can be used in this and it can still be zero calorie. Still, the carton says that this has 3% peach juice and I believe them based on the flavor. It smells lightly of peaches and has a nice, refreshing peach taste coupled with slightly bitter straight tea flavor. Perhaps I'm getting used to the way artificial sweeteners are mixed into zero calorie Japanese drinks, but I wasn't really troubled by any aftertaste. In fact, I thought this was a really good fruit tea blend and would definitely consider buying it again if I'm too lazy to brew my own tea and feeling like a bit of a spendthrift.

Royal Milk Tea KitKat

Before I came to Japan, I had never heard of "royal milk tea." You find it sold in bottles in some refrigerator cases, at coffee and snack shops, and in vending machines both hot and cold. I'm not sure what is supposed to make this "royal", but what it really is is tea with loads of milk and sugar. I'm pretty sure that's what the British tend to give children to break them into tea drinking.

The odd thing about royal milk tea is that it is often portrayed as being British, and the packaging on this KitKat is playing up that particular image, but I couldn't find any reference to it in my research. I think it may actually be a Japanese thing. The closest thing in English tea culture that I came across was what is called "Builder's tea".


I will go on record saying that I love royal milk tea, but sometimes find the Japanese bottled versions too sweet and I have to be in the right mood to have one. Lipton makes some especially nice versions, but it can be like liquid candy. I rarely buy it because it has as much or more sugar in it than Coca-Cola. It's one of the few things that makes me think that one can contract a blood sugar disorder from drinking a beverage.


Given that royal milk tea is so sweet and full of dairy, it is an excellent candidate for a KitKat variation. While many white-chocolate-based KitKats are too sweet and this drowns out the flavors, it's difficult to over-sweeten and not hit the mark on royal milk tea. Being very sweet is what it is all about.

The bar smells of tea and has the same distinct flavor of the bottled teas you get in Japan. The tea flavoring is vaguely floral and not incredibly strong. As expected, the bar is very, very sweet and I think it'd be really hard to eat an entire box at once. By the end of the second finger, you throat will be burning if you don't have a little beverage on the side to wash it down.

Despite the intense sweetness of this, I liked it, but I wouldn't recommend it to anyone who hasn't had royal milk tea in Japan as it may be overwhelming.

Lipton 0 Calorie Orange Tea

I've been told that Lipton yellow label tea is considered one of the more premium varieties of what the Japanese refer to as "black tea" that one can buy in Japan. The label seems to carry more prestige here than it does in other countries. Personally, I strongly dislike Lipton's yellow label tea and never buy it.

That being said, I adore their fatty, sweet, decadent cartons of milk tea. It is rich and has an edge of coconut flavor in it. Drinking a whole carton is an indulgence I rarely allow myself, but I really do love it. With my positive experiences of the calorie-dense milk tea, I decided to give this zero calorie carton of orange tea a try.

To be honest, I'm not a huge fan of flavored tea. I like tea with milk and sweetener and can do without all of the infusions of herbs, flowers, and fruits that you sometimes find. That's not to say I've never met a flavored tea I didn't like, but just that I'll always choose plain tea. However, I'm so desperate for any sort of new no calorie beverage in Japan, that I was willing to set aside my lack of enthusiasm for flavored tea.


The tea smells very good. In fact, it has a distinct bouquet of orange juice. The tea seems to have just the slightest hint of syrup when you pour it. This may be due to the fact that one of the cocktail of chemicals that sweeten it is maltitol syrup. There's also Erythritol, Surcralose, and ascelfame potassium. Though the ingredients sound pretty dreadful, the tea is good. It is sweet without being too sweet and carries a strong flavor of orange capped with some tea bitterness. The orange tends to overwhelm at first, but the tea finishes.

This did seem to taste a little like orange Kool-aid at times, but I still enjoyed it. My feeling is that, while I would certainly buy this again if the mood struck me, it may not be for everyone. In particular, I think that the high amount of sweeteners may be a turn-off for those who are sensitive to them. Personally, I'm so accustomed to drinking diet sodas that I tend not to notice any but the worst chemical concentrations. It could be that the melange of sweeteners is used to mitigate the strong aftertaste of any given one, or it may be that I simply can't tell. At any rate, I can't wholeheartedly recommend this for others, but I can do so with caveats and say that I liked it.