Haitai Sweet Redbean Bar

There's a scene in the second Indiana Jones movie in which he and the blond woman who kept screaming all of the time and the little boy they were running around with for some reason in which they are all served monkey brains. The brains are evocatively served in the heads they were once functioning within. The point of the entire dinner scene is to watch the hapless heroine, who was so annoying that I saw the movie once or twice and never watched it again, and the little boy, who was annoying but not nearly as much as the ditzy woman who later married Stephen Spielberg, freak out over the weird food. Their hosts nosh happily on these delicacies, but they are abhorrent to their guests.

One thing about food is that one man's feasting fungi is another man's toe fungi. The Japanese would eat live prawns, partially filleted but still living fish, poisonous blowfish, and offal. Some of these are delicacies and some are just plain people food (that'd be the offal). What one culture considers good eats, another finds disgusting. I've learned, for instance, that there are parts of the world that think mixing chocolate and peanut butter is a vile idea and that there are even more that find root beer truly disgusting (the Japanese certainly hate it, I know because I gave it to some to see how they'd react).

Even the most disgusting things can, over time, become quite palatable and even enjoyable with time, experience, and just generally allowing yourself to get used to the fact that it's something people find pretty tasty. In my early years in Japan, the idea of buying a brick of sweetened bean jelly for a snack would have seemed pretty gross. It's not monkey-brains-level gross, but I didn't even like beans in their more common savory presentations in America. I surely didn't think I'd like them mixed with sugar. Perish the thought!

Well, many Americans still recoil at the idea of sweet red bean paste (anko), but we're starting to see an awful lot of recipes for things like black bean brownies and cake as well as blondies made with white beans or chickpeas. There are entire blogs by fresh-faced, skinny, young white girls that are filled with sweets subbing in beans for flour to add moisture and density without the evils of flour. We're not through the sweet bean looking glass yet, but we're well on our way, kids.

Getting to the matter at hand, I had a moment that I thought I would never have at a grubby little Korean market located near Little Russia in San Francisco. Note, there is very little "Russia" in little Russia in that city and it was pretty disappointing. At any rate, I nearly "squeed" my pants when I saw this bar on sale and was even happier that it was only 50 cents for a 1.9 oz/55 gram bar. The reason it is so cheap is that it is a "product of Korea" that is marketed in both Japan and its native country. If I've learned anything from frequenting Asian markets in California, it's that anything made in Japan costs at least double what is made for Japan in other Asian countries. This is why more and more snack products aren't actually being made in Japan.

The company that makes this is Korean, but it used to be owned in part by big name brew maker Asahi. Two years ago, Asahi sold it's 20% stake in the company because it decided it would rather hitch its wagon to Lotte (who wouldn't? Lotte makes Ghana, after all!). Howver, Haitai makes a product called "choco homerun ball", so I find it hard to believe Asahi walked away from a product so named. Just think of all of the risky jokes they could have made! Though I linked to the English site, the Korean site is much better if you don't count the fact that I can't read any of it. Note that this bar isn't prominently mentioned on the site, but I guess that they have to focus on their more major products like the "Oh, Yes!" cakes and the aforementioned balls.

This bar is what the Japanese call "yokan" or jellied bean paste. It's very soft and I have to squeeze it up through its foil tube like super thick toothpaste to eat it. It is actually less "jelly" than "paste" and has a nice soft texture which feels like super smooth fudge without any of the pesky things like fat or chocolate. It is quite sweet, but not cloying, and does have that familiar undercurrent of red bean flavoring.

I'm not going to try and persuade anyone who sees this as monkey brains that they're going to love it. The truth is that you have to sometimes make a special effort to love some things that are outside of your general native cultural palate and many people aren't really interested in bothering (for which I can't blame them, really). I learned to love this after many years and really enjoyed this bar. I'd absolutely buy it again, especially considering how cheap it is. If you like anko, this is a treat. If not, this is not going to win you over.

Lee's Jaffa Bar

When I was growing up, my family was occasionally given a (usually 12 oz.) "Whitman's Sampler" as a Christmas gift. I realize now that these are the bottom feeders of the boxed mix chocolates out there, but poor folks like us found this to be a special treat. Of course, we only found parts of it to be good. That would be the candies with nuts or caramel. No one wanted the stuff with fruit fondant filling in it. More often than not, those pieces would have a bite taken out of them and then the remains would be left in the bottom of the box as testimonials to the disappointment of sweet, fruity poison hiding inside of perfectly serviceable chocolate. My dad found this habit particularly irritating and would yell at us when he'd open the box and find these rock bottom remains.

Things have changed since my impoverished youth. For one thing, I haven't touched a Whitman's Sampler in over 30 years so I don't know if they are better or worse than they once were. For all I know, they may even come with a little description of what's in the box so that children who want to avoid the fruit cream ones can do so without pissing off their fathers. 

My Whitman's Sampler experience comes to mind because this bar is like one enormous orange cream chocolate. Another change that has occurred since I grew up collecting old soda bottles for deposit so we could buy milk at the end of the month is that I like fruit fondant fillings now. Instead of approaching this as something to be reviled, I saw it with interest when I saw it for 30% off at an overpriced Palo Alto (California) market called "Miki's Farm Fresh Market" that was going out of business. My guess was that their high prices weren't what did them in so much as their horrible parking and the difficulty one had accessing the shop.

At any rate, I've reviewed a lot of food, most of it from Japan, but some of it from other places and this is my first option from Scotland. People like to say that America has super sweet candy, but, if this is any example of what the Scots are ingesting, they've got us beat. This is very, very sweet stuff with a nice vibrant hit of orange. The chocolate coating is little more than a brown wrapper for the almost fudge-like center. It's thick, cleaves, nicely without falling apart, and can be quite satisfying in very small portions. Oddly, the entire bar 2.1 oz./60 g. has only 230 calories. For something that seems like it's packing a bigger sugar wallop than your average Hershey bar, it weighs in on a similar level when it comes to calories.

I liked this a lot, but I ate it over a 5-day period in very small bites. I think that you would find it oppressive if you ate too much of it at once, and it isn't really the highest quality confection on the market. There's a reason it brought back my sad nostalgia for Whitman's Samplers, and that's because it has a similar quality going on with it. This doesn't have to be a bad thing, but it certainly could be depending on your tastes. I'd buy it again, but I'm not necessarily recommending that others try it unless you like your candy super sweet, nicely fruity, and low rent.

Blog Changes (and the death of Google Reader)

Here kitty, kitty...

When I left Japan, I wasn't sure what would become of this blog in particular. For one thing, I didn't know what my access to Japanese snacks would be like. I knew I might be able to find a few things here and there, and had hoped to make some connections to sellers who might shower me with freebies to promote their services (ahem, that did not happen), but my crystal ball as to the future was very foggy.

Now that I've been in Northern California for about 8 months, I know that this is a pretty good place to be to review Japanese (and other Asian) snacks. While they're not exactly sold in every market, there are plenty of markets that sell a variety of food items. That being said, it's not quite the same as actually being in Japan from certain viewpoints.

The main area of difference for me isn't access because there were always many more things than I could possibly sample and review in Tokyo. Having a wealth of options didn't mean more posts because there was only so much time I had to devote to blogging. In fact, even with my more limited (but still very wide) access, there is more stuff available than I could possibly review so I'm not exactly hurting for things to try.

The point which has changed the most has been my ability to size up the snack market in Japan. While I used to be able to stroll through markets or convenience stores and see the new releases and inventory at a glance, I have had to work rather harder at that since returning. It has taken me awhile to get up to speed in this regard, but I've got my finger a bit more on the pulse at this point in time and it's actually a lot of fun tracking new releases through the means I currently have available. It's changed how I blog in a way which makes the experience fresher for me and creates new challenges.

Because of this new way of dealing with following what's out there, there is every chance that more "bonus" posts will be showing up more often. It's not out of the question that I'll be posting something every weekday at times. There will always be the three scheduled posts every Monday, Wednesday and Friday, but those of you who are using bookmarks may want to also pop buy on Tuesdays and Thursdays from now to see if there are extra posts. I do anticipate more of that sort of thing in the future.

The frequency of posts leads me to the topic of Google Reader's imminent demise. If you are tracking my blog's updates via RSS using said interface, I hope you will migrate my feed to another reader or bookmark the page. My concern, as I'm sure is the concern of many bloggers, is that the death of Reader will mean a great loss of regular readers. Clearly, having more readers encourages me to continue the blogs and to build the content more, so I kindly ask that you find a new way to keep me in the rotation if you're a user of Google Reader (as I am) as this blog isn't going away any time soon and I'm quite diligent about posting at least 3 times a week on the days previously mentioned. Hopefully, you'll find that you'll be getting even more for your money in the future. ;-)

As always, my thanks for continuing to read this blog.

Random Picture #157

I used to think that the displays of soy milk flavors in Tokyo were a bit ridiculous. Do consumers really need the level of choice that tends to be displayed? In this picture, which by no means represents every possible option, we have chocolate, red bean soup (oshiruko), coffee, ginger, banana, sweet potato, green tea, black tea, chestnut, and various types of plain old soy milk. It seems, however, that the selection of soy milk seems to pale in comparison to the types of coffee creamer sold here in America (chocolate, vanilla, caramel, hazelnut, plain milk, mocha, amaretto, coconut, cinnamon, creme brulee, peppermint, pecan, pumpkin, etc.). I'm all for variety, but sometimes it seems that there's more to choose from than even the most fickle consumer should require.

Condensed Milk Strawberry KitKat (product announcement)

Image from Nestle Japan. 

Yesterday, Nestle Japan released a "new" big bar flavor, condensed milk strawberry KitKat.  It was placed on convenience store shelves yesterday, and takes its rightful place among the dozens of strawberry KitKat bar releases which inspire this blogger to yawn in ingratitude. I wouldn't buy this if I saw it, because I'm already sure that it tastes like overly sweet powdered milk with some fairly decent, but unimpressive strawberry flavor. If I'm proven wrong, feel free to say so in comments. I can take it.

I should mention that condensed milk and strawberries are a very popular combo in Japan. When the berries come in season, bins or baskets of toothpaste-tube style condensed milk are usually not far from the tony (read: expensive) homes of the juicy red beauties. The packaging is designed to let you squeeze some disgusting goo on the precious fruit as you eat it. In the U.S., condensed milk is sold in cans because we don't tend to think of it as something we slather on unsuspecting fruit, but rather as something we roll into sugar-laden, hyper-fatty baked goods.