V Select Soft Sembei (Salt flavor)

You can tell someone has spent a long time in Japan when... okay, I swore I'd never start a sentence like that because I hate when people talk like that. They mention things like you start to bow while talking on the phone or you gaze at, hold, and handle any business card you are given like it is a priceless family heirloom, blah, blah... For me, well, I'm afraid that there are residual things which show how long I was in Japan, but they are a little unusual. One is that, after more than 6 months in the U.S., I still am moving to the far edge of the sidewalk (the left side, of course, not the right as most Americans do) when I see a bicycle as I expect to have to let it pass me. For those who aren't in the U.S., I'll say that bikes aren't supposed to and generally do not ride on sidewalks at all here so it's a thoroughly misplaced response. Another is that I continue to be appalled that people wear shoes in their homes because it really does make the floors utterly filthy (truly, it does). Finally, I talk about "salt" as if it were actually a flavor rather than a seasoning, as is the case with these sembei.

In Japan, they don't talk about things like "plain" potato chips. They say they are "salt taste" or "salt flavor". The same goes for this sembei, which is, after all, the equivalent of a potato chip in Japanese culture. The front of the bag even says "salt flavor" on it in the little green box. So, I have some residual tendencies that I either need to get over or accept as ingrained parts of my personality. These are, "plain" sembei in American parlance. Incidentally, I struggle similarly when offering tea to guests. I ask them if they'd like it "straight", as if it were some sort of alcoholic beverage that one could take with a mixer or straight up. The first time I asked a guest how she's like her tea and she said, "plain", I was strangely surprised at that.

There was a time when I would have never welcomed "plain" sembei into my life. That's before I left Japan and have found myself hopelessly sentimental about many of my experiences there. My husband and I went to Nijiya Japanese market and he talked with a fellow who was putting out samples of fish cakes and choux cream (er, cream puffs) about how we patronized their establishment because it was so "natsukashii" (sentimental). As I perused aisle after aisle of over-priced snacks and food, my eyes were drawn to this because it was a mere $1.29 for 102 grams/3.5 oz./20 crackers. This priced it squarely at the same point as similar crackers at my former local Lawson 100. There's nothing more sentimental than cheap snack fodder, especially for someone who has been writing about such things for 4 years!

The company that makes these, "V-Select", let's us know that the "V" stands for "valor". There are three major lines, and "select" translates to "cheap". You'd think that they'd say the "V" stood for "value" in such a case, but I guess they wouldn't want to apply that so liberally to their "organic" or "quality" lines. This is actually a store brand in Japan for a market chain called, yes, "Valor". Their web site isn't very forthcoming about products, but the line includes things like jam and pork products. Unsurprisingly, store brands are no more exciting in Japan than they are in America. They just have different writing on them.

As for the sembei themselves, they are called "soft", but in Japan that means they are light and airy rather than dense and harder. These are still very, very crispy. There's really nothing "soft" about them. This mainly means they are easier on your teeth and less brittle. It's the difference between a cheese puff or ball and a Cheeto.

Since these are plain ("salt") sembei, they have a very clean baked rice flavor which I used to find pretty obnoxious in my early days in Japan, but now I'm not only nostalgic about it, but enjoy it. The saltiness level is just enough to add interest, but not so much as to make you drink glass after glass of liquid to compensate. The flavor has depth and is subtle, but is not boring, at least not if your taste buds haven't been flavor-blasted into oblivion such that you can no longer detect gentler flavors. Incidentally, that does happen to people.

All nerve endings or senses get saturated and loose sensitivity. If you read sex advice columnist Dan Savage, he'll tell you that this works for certain very sensitive areas of the body as well and he advises men in particular not to use a death grip on certain parts of their anatomy during certain types of activities or they will lose sensitivity and find it hard to enjoy other types of activities (this isn't an adult-content blog so you'll have to fill in the details with your fevered imaginations). The same goes for the tongue, and I don't mean when talking about the types of things Mr. Savage talks about. I mean in regards to detecting flavors of things. If you're the type of person who has been employing the equivalent of a "death grip" on your taste buds, rice crackers like this are going to bore you into a deep slumber.

Fortunately for me, years and years of blandness in Japan and judicious protection of my palate since coming to the U.S. allows me to taste a plain rice crackers subtle pleasures. To me, this sembei not only tastes pretty good, but it taste like Japan. At 50 calories per two (palm-size) cracker packet, this satisfies a craving for a salty, crispy snack quite nicely. I'd recommend them to anyone who hasn't wrecked their ability to taste, and advise those who have to stay clear.

Regional Japanese KitKats (product info.)

All images are taken from Nestle Japan's web site.

Nestle Japan announced its newest in its vast line of regional KitKats on October 9, 2012. This one is for Tokyo and it is rum raisin. The blurb on their site for this says that it has a sense of sophistication and luxury, and that image is suitable for Tokyo. You know that's the truth because of the elegant snifter of rum that is part of the illustration on the box. I'm guessing that if they put a drunken pirate with a mug of grog on it, they'd believe it was a little less classy. This seems to be replacing the soy sauce Tokyo regional flavor, which has been around for donkey's years. However, I imagine the soy sauce variety will find its way back into the rotation at some point.

Regional Japanese KitKats are the holy grail for many aficionados of bizarre flavors. Part of the reason for this is that they're supposed to be something you only can get by visiting the region that it is introduced in. As I've said before, this is not always so. They are sold in Ameyokocho at Niki no Kashi as well as at Narita airport. The truth is that they are not reliably available anywhere, not even in the regions they're sold at. It's not like you can walk into any convenience store in Tokyo or train station kiosk and find this Tokyo regional variety in Tokyo. You always have to be at a shop that carries specialty or souvenir items. Such places are often at the major train stations of the areas.

Le Lectier (Niigata specialty)

Many of the regional KitKats are sold in boxes with 12 mini bars for 840 yen ($10.52). Just to refresh people's memories about them, they are marketed primarily for people to buy and give to others as a souvenir of an area they are vacationing in or doing business at. They are not really designed for the average snacker to take home and eat on her own. In my opinion, based on my knowledge of Japanese culture and tastes, the strange flavors are not meant to be the sort of thing you crave again and again in the future. They are novelties, much like cactus candy and venison jerky.

Though the regional varieties are supposed to be special, many of them have been issued as regular KitKats as temporary flavors (and you can buy most of them through Amazon Japan). The KitKat zunda (above) was issued as a regular bar after the earthquake on March 11, 2011 and continues to be available in the regional format. Similarly, the blueberry cheesecake KitKat (pictured after the 1st paragraph), was issued in several incarnations while I was in Japan (single finger, regular bar) and continues to be a Koshinetsu regional variety. The apple KitKat is also a regional issue (Shinshu), but was once a short-term flavor for a standard-size bar. My point is that, if you can't get a regional flavor, you don't have to really sweat it because chances are you will have or have had access to it at one point or another as a regular bar.

For those who need fewer souvenir bars, there is also a smaller box available for some flavors in some regions. Those boxes are 350 yen and include 5 mini bars. The one pictured above is hojicha flavor, of which there was (and may still be) a larger box available at one time. The wasabi KitKat that I reviewed came in one of these smaller boxes. However, there is absolutely no difference between the versions as sold in the various incarnations in terms of flavor.

In my experience, some of the regional KitKats also showed up in UFO Catcher games, though it tended to be something which was quite unpredictable. The yubari melon (cantaloupe) version seemed to be especially popular as a prize as I saw it several times over a long span of time. I wonder if it was chosen because it was especially desirable or sold poorly. My guess is that it was the former. This particular variety, I should note, breaks the general pattern of the way the regional KitKats are presented. It has 4 bars for 580 yen ($7.26).

I did not try every regional KitKat, but I tried a fair number of them. Frankly, I was rarely blown away, but I found most interesting and enjoyable enough to finish the box. The very best one and the only one I could say I'd actively want to buy again was the Golden Citrus blend. The rest were mere curiosities, some pleasant and some less so. The citrus blend is currently one of the few varieties which is on offer in both the standard 12-pack (pictured in the linked to review) and a 5-pack (pictured above).

Yatushashi KitKats 

The tricky question is how to get your hands on these if you are not in Japan. This is definitely a difficult one. Some online sellers, such as the Asian Food Grocer, occasionally carry limited edition flavored KitKats, but not the regional ones. You can get a regional flavor when it is issued as a regular bar if you get lucky. Rakuten also occasionally sells some KitKat specialties, but right now most appear to be sold out. You can get a Japanese KitKat ball marker from them for an exorbitant price, but that's a bit off the topic.

"Adzuki sandwich" KitKats ("Ogura Toast" from the Tokai region)

Frankly, what I would recommend to anyone who wants these  is to try and set up a food exchange with an ex-pat living in Japan or a Japanese person looking for a penpal and a cultural exchange. Many people pine for certain specialty foods from back home and may be willing to do a care package exchange and some Japanese folks are happy just to make a friend in another country or to practice their English.

Kobe pudding (purin) in a special souvenir box representing housing in a historical district (ijinkan) in that area. Note that this flavor was once issued as a big bar and a mini, albeit in milk chocolate rather than white.  

I know that there are some Americans who will send you Japanese snack packs in exchange for Reese's peanut butter cups, licorice, and Cap'n Crunch (all of which are hard to come by in Japan). As for how to find such folks, well, that's another issue entirely. You'll have to try out forums for foreigners in Japan and see if anyone has an interest. The main difficulty in such exchanges is that you cannot send anything via seamail from the U.S. anymore so postage rates are a huge chunk of change. You would need to negotiate an exchange value that incorporates that disadvantage (or both agree to pop for airmail across the board).

Beniimo (purple potato) KitKat representing Kyushu-Okinawa. Love this box design! Though I never tried this particular variation on sweet potato, I did sample two other sweet potato KitKats. 

From my point of view, and I know that I've had years of experience and am quite jaded, I don't think it's worth the trouble. Yes, it is a little thrilling and cool at first to try these things, but after awhile, the weird KitKat flavors all sort of blend together. In terms of long-term enjoyment, I'd recommend going to Cost Plus World Market and finding their British or Canadian bars (hazelnut, orange), and just having those. What they lack in freaky coolness, they make up for in flavor staying power.

Random Picture #135

No, this picture is not a representation of "Christmas creep" in Japan, though, frankly, it's a little more understandable if they experience it than Americans do. They don't have Thanksgiving between Halloween and Christmas so there is no other holiday stopping them from jumping in with both feet into "the most wonderful time of the year".

This is a picture from my time in Japan of some holiday items in a the Queen's Isetan bakery. This particular bakery was about 12 minutes on foot from my former apartment and many days my husband and I would walk there with hopes and expectations only to have them dashed. Queen's Isetan made lovely bread, but most of their pastries suffered from a terminal case of "breadiness". That is, there was a lot of bread, and very little of anything else the pastry's description promised. These cubes are supposed to have vanilla cream and the snowmen are supposed to have chocolate. What they tended to have was the merest hint of filling a whole lot of stuff that'd make nice toast. Still, the snowmen are cutely corpulent, and the cubes have a symmetrical beauty. Looks should count for something, too, after all.

KitKat Vanilla Ice Cream

With little chunks of ice and a waffle cone with a few scoops of vanilla ice cream on the package, it will surprise no one to learn that this is a summer leftover KitKat. It was introduced on June 25, but according to Nestle Japan's web site, it's still on the roster. On the one hand, thanks to climate change, we appear to be finding that we're generally giving autumn a miss and living in a prolonged summer, so those who continue to sweat into the early autumn may find the illusion of a cooling treat appealing. On the other, seasonal flavors in Japan are something all the natives and non-natives alike look forward to. I'd be saying, "bring on the sweet potato and chestnut", but right now the newest mini variety is a white chocolate "adult sweetness KitKat". I guess Nestle Japan isn't in the fall spirit yet.

Since most of the new KitKat flavors are a crushing disappointment, I have been unwilling to invest in buying them despite having more reasonably priced access than most via Nijiya Japanese market. I'm particularly reluctant to pop for the $7 price tag on the standard large size bag of minis when I have a strong feeling that they'll taste like overly sweet disappointment. The only reason I went for this was that it is a smaller than usual bag of minis. With only 4 small bars and at a price tag of only $2.19 (175 yen), I figured that the chances that I'd be suffering buyer's remorse was relatively low.

I'm using my KFC Christmas plate for white food because they photograph better on a dark background, and this is all I have in my puny selection of dishes at present.

The bar does smell a bit like vanilla. Fake vanilla is, after all, a pretty potent scent. The bars have a very sugary, slightly gritty texture in addition to the trademark wafer crispness. The white chocolate coating is soft and yielding with no snap of its own. The first bite carries with it a potent, but not overbearing, vanilla flavor coupled with something which is reminiscent of frozen dairy confections. Subsequent bites, however, reveal an odd fake flavor which becomes increasingly reminiscent of powdered milk and the cheapest ice cream in the store. At the end of the second finger of the mini, it was potent enough to overwhelm the experience.

This is not a bad bar, but it's not an especially noteworthy one either. It is, like most of these white chocolate bars, extremely sweet. While I don't regret picking up this 4-pack for the price I did, I'm glad that I didn't buy a bigger bag as it'd feel like a huge waste of money. As it is, I sampled a bar, my husband will likely eat one, and a craving for super sweet candy will see us through the other two. However, I would not buy this again, and unless you truly enjoy artificial flavoring, powdered milk, and very sweet white chocolate, I would not recommend this to my readers.

Tolteca Japanese Peanuts (Regular)

On my other blog, I mentioned that there are lot of things in Japan which are labeled as "American" which an actual America would not recognize as part of their culture. This includes, but is certainly not limited to, "American coffee", which is what the Japanese call anemically watered down and weak brew. My experience with American coffee is that it is utterly rank and disgusting (cheap supermarket stuff sold in big cans) or fairly good (coffee house stuff like Peet's). It is generally not weak, though I wouldn't be surprised if some places are selling a puny distillation in order to save money, especially places with low prices and bottomless cups.

I figured that it is only fair that, if I'm going to point out all of the stuff that is labeled as American which is not actually American, I should also recognize that there are things in the U.S. which are labeled as Japanese which are not recognizable as being so. When I saw these "Japanese peanuts" in a local liquor store (no, I wasn't getting loaded, my husband wanted a beer to drink with dinner), I knew that this was a chance to even the score. I lived in Japan for 23 years and never saw a peanut that looked like these, and I see them for sale all over the place in California stores.

Word is that these were invented by a Japanese immigrant in Mexico, but I could not verify the truth of that story. I can say that these appear to be of Hispanic origin and are sold in areas which carry a lot of Mexican food. They're also usually pretty cheap. I bought this 4 oz. (113.4 g.) bag for $1.29 (104 yen).

When I opened the bag, they smelled vaguely of peanuts. Though the ingredients list includes soy sauce, I didn't really smell that component. It seems that the shell masks some of the nut scent, but not all of it. The outside of each peanut is coated with a smooth, super crunchy shell. It doesn't taste particularly salty or strong, but there is about the tiniest whisper of soy sauce, sugar, and flour (wheat an rice) flavor there. Frankly, I had hoped for a stronger flavor on the coating.

It seems that the coating on this particular brand and variety of Japanese peanuts mainly lends texture. You get a pretty good solid crunch and a bit of a shattered mess if you don't pop it into your mouth all at once. While there was certainly nothing so "wrong" about these, I wasn't compelled to think I'd want to buy them again. In fact, I'd strongly prefer regular peanuts if for no other reason than they'd be saltier than this and not offer so much in the way of useless carbohydrates. That being said, there are spicy "Japanese peanut" varieties out there which I believe may hold greater promise. If these weren't invented by a Japanese immigrant, then I imagine that they are "Japanese" mainly because they incorporate soy sauce and rice flour. The only thing I found particularly Japanese about them was that they were bland, and the Japanese tend not to like very strong flavors.