Botan Rice Candy

One of my favorite candies in Japan was Bontan Ame. This candy, which resembles fruit jelly candies, is widely available in Japan and considered rather old-fashioned. One of the main features is that it comes with an edible wrapper to protect your fingers from getting too sticky off of the gummy/jelly-like candy. They are covered in a type of material which is frequently used on capsules used for medicine.

The first thing I noticed was that the edible wrapper on this is a much more pleasant experience than the one you get with bontan ame. Where bontan ame turns a bit glue-like and melts a little slowly, this dissolves fast and is hardly noticeable. I always was anxious for the wrapper to get out of my way with the Japanese candies, but I hardly noticed it here. The second point I noticed was that the flavor is much more orange-like than bontan ame. The outside is also slightly crispy, though not really hard. As it warms up, it gets softer and chewier. It's sweet, but not overwhelmingly so and has a pleasant flavor in general tinged with a bit of a floury aftertaste. I imagine this comes from the cornstarch. The flavorings include both lemon and orange.

I loved this and could see eating an entire box in one sitting without hesitation. One box is only 80 calories, but it is also only 6 small pieces. With the price being about $2 (240 yen) per box in American markets (I've seen it in several), this is a financial indulgence. Since a box with 14 pieces of a similar size can be bought in Japan for a mere 100 yen ($1.20), I can't help but feel that this is exorbitantly priced. Of course, you do get a children's sticker which says "printed in Japan" on it, but I hardly think that is worth the extra cost.

The interesting thing for me about experiencing this candy is that it is an import to America from Japan. That explains, at least in part, why it's so expensive since labor costs in Japan are hardly cheap. That being said, I don't understand why Japanese bontan ame has orderly little cubes stacked in the box such that you can get 14 in it and this has a helter skelter sampling of 6 bits with plastic wrapping. Do Americans demand the extra wrapping at the expense of volume? It seems hardly likely.

The company that imports these is called JFC International, and they are responsible for a wide variety of Asian food distribution world-wide. Their web site indicates that they handle over 15,000 products and some of the most popular ones are Japanese. This is no surprise since Japanese cuisine is positively regarded worldwide, and a lot of what might be seen as "exotic" flavors 20 years ago are available even in some remote areas. I was surprised to find tonkatsu sauce in the small rural area I lived on in the San Juan islands, for example. Personally, I'm hoping to get a line on the oil-less sesame dressing that is featured on their front page at present. I used to buy that in Japan all of the time and loved it.

I would definitely buy these again, but not at Safeway supermarket where I paid too much. I would, however, order a 12-pack for $9.51 at Amazon. It's still more expensive than Bontan Ame in Japan because it is a smaller portion, but at least it drops below a dollar a box. I would caution those who know the Japanese domestic product that this is a little sweeter and lacking in the hint of sourness. It's not overpoweringly sweet, but clearly these are not the same formula as Bontan Ame. They're still good though, and I recommend giving them a try.

Lotte Ice Breakers (Product Information)

When I was living in Japan, one of the little things I enjoyed was sampling the various Mintia flavors. For those who may not recall, Mintia is the Japanese equivalent of a TicTac. It's tiny little pellets, not necessarily mint-flavored, which I imagine are supposed to be handy for breath freshening, but that I generally kept around to get that lingering coffee taste out of my mouth or the weird aftertaste of Japanese chocolate. While I loved the creamy milk chocolate in Japan in general, it always did leave a funky taste on the tongue and a bit of Mintia went a long way. It also helps those with an oral fixation who would like not to apply it to other things in the presence of civilized company.

In the last 6 months or so of my stay in Japan, I sampled a vast array of interesting Mintia flavors. I think I only reviewed a few here, but I sampled far more in my everyday life. In fact, one of my last acts of snack advocacy in Japan was to get my brother-in-law hooked on Mintia by sharing a mikan (Japanese tangerine) one with him shortly before we left. The advantage of tiny little mints like Asahi's Mintia and Lotte's Ice Breakers, which are the latter's attempt to slice out a piece of the Mintia market's pie, is that they provide a flavor pack for a low calorie and monetary cost. At an average price of about 100 yen ($1.20) per pack of 50 tiny little tablets, it's a pretty good deal.

The difference between Mintia and Ice Breakers is that Lotte's offering comes in pretty boring flavors. They offer sour grape, sour green apple and sour lemon. Like Mintia, you get 50 little tablets per pack and they are sugar-free. While there isn't much in the way of sugar-free candy in Japan, gum and mints tend to be the exception because of the possibility of their causing tooth decay (not because of concerns about calories). Lotte, in what I can only imagine is an attempt to draw attention to a product which seems to be utterly lacking in imagination both in terms of presentation (same tablets, same packaging, same product as Mintia), and pedestrian flavors, is using a flamboyant  actor named "Jonte Moaning" in the commercials. He's an interesting choice not because he was associated with Janet Jackson during his career, but because he is not too dissimilar from all of us other grunts who came to Japan and ended up teaching something. In his case, he taught dance in Hiroshima. There's an interesting interview with him here. I like how he laughs when the interviewer asserts that he is big in Japan. Many small time celebrities, musicians, and actors lie about being "big in Japan" in order to promote themselves and he seems to be acknowledging that their perception of him is a bit overblown. Prior to this promotion for Lotte, I never saw anything featuring him in Japan. Of course, I didn't watch much television (and actually still do not) and he could be the bee's knees in Japan and I might not know it.

The commercial is currently available on Lotte's "CM" (what the Japanese call commercials) page. You can view it from this page by clicking on the appropriate thumbnail while it lasts. Note that the link won't be there forever as Lotte rotates out the commercials after the products get new promotions or are withdrawn from the market. They even have a Facebook page with a little under 70 "likes", which sort of makes me sad. Mintia has about 3,400 on theirs. I wonder to what extent using Jonte Moaning in a very eye-catching (and slightly disturbing) commercial reminiscent of a less heterosexual Ruby Rhod in The Fifth Element will amp up their product recognition. It certainly made me take notice.

Random Picture #116

Click to view a larger image.

I don't know if my readers think that I carefully select my random pictures from a distinct set of photos, but I can tell you that the process is, well, very "random". I have thousands of pictures from my time in Japan and I choose a folder and just poke around in one until I find something I want to show people. For reasons that I cannot begin to fathom, it is not infrequently the case that the random picture I stumble upon is related to a recent review. In this case, I reviewed a rice bar sandwich cookie on Monday and happened upon this picture of rice cereal sweets for sale in Asakusa. Perhaps the rivers of fate flow in a particular direction, or I'm just exercising selection recognition and fooling myself (likely the latter).

Since breakfast cereal isn't very popular in Japan, it always seems odd that there are these cereal-based sweets though it really shouldn't since there is no reason why the Japanese can't puff or crisp rice for cereal as well as anyone else. These bags of cereal snacks are blocks of crispy rice glued together with rice syrup. The silver bowls contain samples and this was an unusual display because there are actual economies of scale at play here. It was extremely rare to see any sort of meaningful price reduction for buying more in Japan. One bag is 400 yen and three bags are 1000 yen. That being said, I think that even at 333 1/3 yen per bag, these were overpriced. 

Sugar Butter Tree Sand

The tagline under this poster advertising "Sugar Butter Tree Sand" says, "the cereal sweets". I like how they use the definite article in English, as if they need to differentiate it from all of the other cereal sweets as the one and only. 

There is a category of snacks and sweets in Japan that I haven't really seen in the United States which this particular snack falls into. Granted, I've been back in the U.S. for only two months and I've spent that time largely on one small island with two stores in the San Juan Islands, but I'm not sure that I'm wrong when I say that there is a layer of snacking in Japan that lies between what you buy at the local market or convenience store (like a KitKat) and what you buy in a department store (e.g., Godiva or Leonidas chocolates). The closest I can come to something akin to this in the U.S. is the Whitman's Sampler, though that's probably a low-rent purchase compared to the sort of mid-priced, elegantly packaged type of food that is sold in Japan. In general, I'm talking about the sort of thing you might buy for someone else, but are unlikely to buy for yourself and which is not a regional souvenir food gift.

My feeling is that this level of snacks exists because of the way in which gift-giving operates in Japanese society. There is a fairly big niche market which does not exist in American culture because they lubricate their social relationships with nicely wrapped parcels containing atypical delights. If you visit your in-laws or have a reunion with your childhood piano teacher, these types of snacks are one of the more appropriate offerings. The "Sugar Butter Tree" line (by Ginnobudo) falls into this category. They aren't pedestrian, but they also aren't high class. They're just right to show respect, but not to embarrass the recipient or the giver with an ostentatious display of a big label or an indication that you inappropriately spent a lot of money based on your relative statuses. No, you save ostentatious displays of wasted cash  for your valued clients or sucking up to the boss.

Image taken from Ginnobudo's site, because my infamous issues with taking pictures of light/white food ensured that my picture pretty much sucked.

It's important not to confuse the nice packaging and the high price tag with some sort of amazing gustatory experience. I've had a lot of these types of snacks and they are surprisingly pedestrian in their tastes. In fact, one of the reasons I wanted to review the "Sugar Butter Tree Sand(wich)" cookie is that it really is a classy, modified version of a Rice Krispies treat. It lacks the marshmallow component so it is not gooey and sticky, but it does taste an awful lot like a version of said cereal with a white chocolate filling that packs a sweetness punch. The crispy cookie planks are even slightly soft like the infamous cereal treats. There is a funky flavor to them which I might identify as fake vanilla, but I think is actually something about the white chocolate used in the filling.

My husband bought a box of 10 of these cookies and it took us a very long time to eat them. It wasn't that they weren't relatively decent as a snack. It's merely that they weren't all that spectacular and, at about 80 calories each, we often felt we'd rather "spend" those empty calories somewhere else. Still, I think that curiosity seekers and Rice Krispies treats fans who can't get their fix in Japan may want to give them a try. At the very least, you could buy them as a hostess gift if you go to a Japanese person's home as they'd likely fit the bill without embarrassing yourself or the host.

Variety Friday: Happy Meals in Japan

The offerings for Happy Meals toys in Japan at this time cater to both cute-o-philes and car lovers. All images pilfered from McDonald's Japan's web site. 

There has been a lot of hand-wringing and teeth-gnashing in the United States over the past decade or so about nutrition. The devil in most cases is luring you beneath the yellow arches and trying to convince you to inflate your belly and clog your arteries with his salty, fatty patties and starchy fried sticks of death. Nowhere is there more concern than when it comes to what is marketed toward children and what their parents purchase for them. Won't somebody please think of the children!

In America, the way in which the children have been thought of has encompassed a variety of changes at McDonald's including offering sliced apples instead of fries and soda being replaced by milk (low-fat, naturally). For reasons that I'm sure are logical to people who actually have children, they also decided that toys had to be taken out of American Happy Meals. Perhaps, they want to be sure that kids aren't nearly as happy as they could be about a Happy Meal and are therefore less likely to want one. Certainly, no one thinks that the toys are making kids fat, do they? Well, maybe they do. Sometimes the logic of some people escapes me and, for all I know, plastic crap made in China may be transmitting contact calories.

I had several discussions with various Japanese people with children about food at McDonald's and the "Happy Meals" in particular. Incidentally, "Happy Meals" are called a "Happy Set" in Japan. By no means are the people i spoke with a representative sample of parents and their opinions of McDonald's food or the inclusion of toys with said sets. However, the fact that the toys were displayed prominently in front of my local Mickey D's for years would seem to be an anecdotal indication that there wasn't a public outcry against using them to market fast food to innocents. 

As for what my conversations seemed to reveal, not one person felt that toys were the proverbial apple leading children out of the gustatory Eden of traditional Japanese cuisine. While they did believe that the toys may make kids want to buy the meals in order to get the toys, they said that it was the parents responsibility to make a choice about what to do. In fact, they said that, if they wanted the toys for the kids, they could simply buy the food to get the toy and throw the food away if they were so worried about the nutritional content of fast food. Indeed, many of the parents felt the kids weren't all that interested in the food in many cases anyway.

Menu options for a "happy set" in Japan. Click to see a larger, more legible version. 

The usual "happy set" in Japan does not offer the same "healthy" options as American "Happy Meals". In fact, it arguably offers less healthy options as you can choose from among a hamburger, cheese burger, chicken nuggets of small ("petit") pancakes as the main part of the meal. I can only imagine the cries of protest if pancakes were to be an option in America. As the side dish, one can choose fries or sweet corn and the drink options are any small beverage including soft drinks, tea, milk, juice, and milkshakes. Of course, you can also choose a toy option. Currently, people can have "Hello Kitty" toys or "Voov" miniature vehicles. The 15-second promotional commercials for these toys are very stereotypical in that only little boys are shown with the cars and mainly little girls are with the kitty-chan toys. You can view these commercials on the lower right hand side of the "Happy Set" page at present (but I'm sure they'll vanish in the future after this promotion ends). 

(Warning: Subjective conclusions and editorial commentary ahead!) One of the things that I concluded about living in Japan is that overall food culture as opposed to specific aspects of that culture is extremely powerful in shaping the health and bodies of the people and that the causes of the lifestyle problems in the U.S. which relate to lifestyle diseases (heart disease, diabetes, etc.) are not the result of the presence of unhealthy or fast food. There is a load of equally unhealthy food in Japan. When Americans try to fix childhood obesity by offering kids apples instead of fries, milk instead of soda, and taking away their toys, they're fixing a broken finger by putting a band-aid on a stubbed toe. Sure, they're both on the body, but one doesn't fix the other. The problem isn't the presence of empty calories being marketed with things kids will nag their parents to get them. The issue is an overall food culture that sees the frequency and volume as such things as being much higher than can support a healthy body. The Japanese, at least for the time being, are still in a place food culture-wise where they don't eat too much of such things too often. Parents don't care about the contents of a Happy Meal/Set because they care about food otherwise. They're not looking at taking their kid's to fast food places often enough for it to be an issue. They're looking at the whole day and entire composition of their children's diet. That's not to say that they never will care, nor that obesity rates aren't increasing in Japan, too (they are). However, for now, the kids can keep their toys, their fries, and even have pancakes if they want them and no one is going to scream "won't somebody please think of the children!"