Irubii Grapefruit Vinegar Drink

As I mentioned in the apple vinegar KitKat, many Japanese people believe that drinking vinegar has health benefits. I had never taken the plunge and purchased such a drink before, but I was trolling for a new sugar-free drink at a convenience store (in this case, Family Mart, where this cost 105 yen or about a buck) and came across this carton of grapefruit-vinegar drink.

I'm not actually a fan of real grapefruits, but I do like grapefruit-flavored things. In fact, it's one of two exceptions to my liking the fruit (strawberries, bananas), but disliking the foods flavored with it. For the record, I also like orange-flavored things but dislike oranges. It's a pulpy citrus fruit thing, I'm sure.

Anyway, I usually take a picture of the drink I'm reviewing poured into a glass, and I did take a picture of this. That is because it looks exactly like water. There's really nothing to see. It smells faintly of both grapefruit and vinegar. The vinegar element is very subdued both in scent and taste, but tends to show through when you drink by burning the back of your throat.

The taste is a combination of bitter grapefruit and artificial sweeteners with a whisper of vinegar. It's not awful, but it's not great. I probably would have finished it if it weren't for the fear of third degree vinegar burns from drinking 500 ml. of this. It would be very hard to recommend this both because of that and the heavy taste of chemical sweeteners.

Happy Turn 200% Happy Powder Sembei

If you could buy a product which says it now contains 200% more "happy powder", you'd buy it, wouldn't you? Of course, my idea of what might constitute "happy powder" and what Kameida Seika believes it is are almost certainly different. In fact, I'm guessing talk of "happy powder" in the U.S. might end up getting you arrested by the undercover vice detectives.

The brand for this, Happy Turn, comes with another crudely-drawn, simple mascot. It's one of the few food items that Kameida Seika releases that has a character attached to it. If you look at the large number of their products that I have reviewed, you'll see that the rest of them are pretty sedate in their packaging. The design is hard to understand at first, but Happy Turn's head is actually one of the rice crackers wrapped in plastic (like a hard candy with the edges crimped off on either side).


While there are several package styles and presentations for these listed on the web site for the product, this 200% happy powder version isn't listed so I can't know for certain if it is appreciably different aside from having more powder. I found this at Seiyu supermarket for about 100 yen (about a dollar). The bag weighs 50 grams and has 253 calories worth of crackers. One of the advertised attributes of these crackers is the fact that they have little crags and crannies in them to hold on to more spice.

When you open the bag, you smell a strong, distinctive smell which is common with sembei in Japan. It's a mixture of that baked rice cracker scent and whatever spices are commonly used. I thought these may actually be fishy crackers, but they are not. Their ingredients list is pretty vague, but my tongue detects a lot of seasoned vinegar flavor as well as a touch of sweetness. This makes them immensely savory and compels one to just pucker up a bit from the sourness. The crackers themselves are fresh, extra crispy and really quite perfect for a puffy ("soft") style sembei.

I really enjoyed these. I liked the strong vinegary flavor and love the texture and crunch of the crackers. I ate half the bag in one sitting and had to resist the urge to eat even more. The flavor may be a bit intense for some people, but it was to my tastes. If you're not a fan of really strong flavors, you might want to forgo the 200% happy powder and go for the regular version of this sembei. I do recommend that you give it a try in one variation or the other.

Note that there was a desktop pattern for this product, but I couldn't get the link to work from my Mac. I'm not sure if the site is set up incorrectly or if it uses code that my Mac doesn't recognize. Either way, I'm afraid those who want a sembei-headed mascot wallpaper are going to be left high and dry.

Apple Vinegar KitKat

This particular KitKat has a few fewer calories than the average one. Most of the other varieties are 110-120 calories for two fingers. This one is only 100. That vinegar must be good for you!

Yes, you read that right. This is a vinegar flavored KitKat. This sounds a lot stranger to us Western folks perhaps than to Japanese people, who actually have "drinking vinegar" which they consume for health purposes. That is why there is a picture of a refreshing glass of iced vinegar on the front of the box.

If you're interested, there's a survey about the vinegar drinking habits of Japanese folks on the excellent web site, What Japan Thinks. According to the survey, about 56% of Japanese people have at one time or another drunk vinegar. The biggest reason they drink it appears to be to relieve fatigue. Mind you, I don't believe vinegar necessarily helps with anything health-wise, but I'm betting that it probably isn't bad for you and there's probably a chance it's beneficial.


The packaging is interesting because they're using the same inner package wrapper design as the apple KitKat. However, this is a white chocolate-based KitKat rather than a milk one like the plain apple variety.



The bar smells mildly of apple. There is no scent of vinegar that I could detect. The first bite of this tasted like apple cider. I didn't have much of a sense of the vinegar taste until the second bite where it leaped up and tickled the back of my nose. As I finished off the first finger, I had a strong sense of apple vinegar flavor building up.

The surprising thing about this is that it's really not bad. It's not the sort of thing that you'd sample and think the flavors are discordant. The apple vinegar flavor offsets the sweetness of the white chocolate without creating a weird combination. My feelings about this are similar to the ones I had with the Muscat of Alexandria KitKat. That is that I think it's interesting and am happy to have sampled something unique, but I won't be craving it or buying it again. Once is enough.

Note that there is also a lemon vinegar KitKat on the market, but I haven't run across it yet. Both the apple and lemon vinegar KitKats are part of a campaign by Nestlé to get people to use chilled KitKats in summer sweets preparations. There are recipes for concoctions on the cooking web site. The apple vinegar recipes include one for "healthy ice" which is a frozen concoction including (among other ingredients) apples, sugar, condensed milk, cocoa powder and the apple vinegar KitKat. There's also a recipe for "refreshing mousse" which includes the same KitKat, tofu, honey, and yogurt.

This was also reviewed at Snack Love.