Cocoa Sakuri (rice crackers)

For the longest time, I have resisted the discordant harmonies of sugary sembei. I'm sure that there are many people who react to chocolate-covered potato chips in the same way. You grow accustomed to consuming a food prepared and spiced in a particular way, and it just seems too freaky having it sweet if it's usually savory or vice versa. However, one of my commenters encouraged me to be more adventurous and I have not been steered wrong by my commenters to date.


There are a lot of different sembei streaked with sugar in a way that resembles, well, let's just say you can choose one of two bodily fluids and use your imagination. The packaging just doesn't make it look very appealing because they adjust the saturation so that the sugar streaks look whiter than they really are. In real life, at least in the case of this cocoa version, they look like diseased pustules.

As our mothers told us, it's not fair to judge a book by it's cover so I picked these up for 188 yen (about $1.80) at the local supermarket. The entire bag is 60 grams (2.1 oz.) and has perhaps 12 or so 5 cm. (2 in.) in diameter crackers. If you put away the whole bag, it's 268 calories. Each cracker is individually wrapped to keep it crispy and fresh. These are made by Kameida Seika, and I chose these expressly because I've reviewed their sembei many times before and had very favorable responses. They do good work.


When you open the package and give a cracker a good, deep sniff, you smell cocoa. The ingredients include cocoa powder, almonds, cocoa nibs, and, of course, rice and sugar. Small amounts of crushed almonds are inside the cracker. The outside is "whipped sugar". When you bite into the cracker, you get a nice hit of cocoa and the nibs. The distinctive flavor of sembei is muted by the sugar and chocolate, but it does come through as an aftertaste.

These are very crispy and have a great texture. The chocolate in them is not rich because there is no cocoa butter in them. It's very much a chocolate cracker and not like a cookie though it is pleasantly sweet. The flavor is unusual, but very pleasing. I really, really enjoyed these and I'd certainly buy them again and strongly recommend giving them a try.

Sparkling Strawberry KitKat

Back when I was a kid, I used to watch "Let's Make a Deal" at 3:00 pm most weekday afternoons. This was when the host was Monty Hall. I hear that there is some new version out that is rather different than the one that kept my after-school-child brain occupied.



One of the things about this game show was that people would win pretty good prizes and the host would ask them if they'd like to trade what they had in hand for what was behind the curtain or for what was "in the box" that some leggy model would wheel out. Sometimes, there was a much better item in the box, and sometimes it was a booby prize. I think people often gave up the bird in the hand for the dog doo in the box because it's hard to pass up a mystery in a box.


Enter this sparkling strawberry KitKat. This is the second strawberry KitKat I've sampled, and the other was not great. However, I just had to find out what was in this particular box. What could Nestle possibly do to make this "sparkling"? Before I broke the seal, I mulled it over and thought that they may have put air bubbles in it a la the Aero chocolates or perhaps they would put little Pop Rocks type of candies in it so that it sparked in your mouth as we've had that type of thing before in Japan. I also wondered if there was glitter in the candy.


When I finally peeled off the wrapper, I was disappointed to see the same Pepto-Bismal pink color as other berry bars. There were no bubbles or glitter. This isn't the KitKat for "Hello Kitty" fans, it seems. (I have it on good authority that glitter is an integral part of that particular bit of fandom.) I looked up the information on Nestle's KitKat site, and I was still no closer to knowing why this is called "sparkling". They only mention that it's made with a particular type of strawberry.

This smelled like white-chocolate-based strawberry candy and that was not especially encouraging. The coating is, like many of these types of KitKats, quite soft. The main difference is that there is a strong tang to the strawberry coating on this bar. This almost citrus-like kick makes all of the difference in a sweet bar like this. It not only gave the flavor some depth, but made it seem more like real strawberry flavor.

This KitKat was introduced on December 7 and is at the standard price of 126 yen ($1.43) so it should be around for awhile if you're interested in sampling it. If you're a strawberry fan, this is a no brainer for you to try. If you don't like strawberry confections, you may still like this as I enjoyed it despite not being a great fan of such treats.

This was also reviewed at Pocky Watch.

Variety Friday: Snack "Reruns" and Tirol Present Campaign

I've been doing this blog for a little over a year now, and one thing I've noticed is that what has come and gone has now returned. Lately, while I've been perusing the snack shelves, I've been noticing a lot of reruns. As I mentioned in Monday's post, most of them are in different packages than their original issue, but the contents are the same.

This may sound like bad news, but it made me happy. I have had the sense since I started this that there would always be an overwhelming array of items to sample and that I'd never get to most of them. The fact that a lot of what I've already tried is getting reissued seasonally means that the field is getting narrower, but also that my old reviews have long-term, or at least "longer-term" value.

Speaking of reruns, Tirol fooled me with a repackaging of their yaki kinako mochi premium candy. The candy itself was reviewed in a previous post with a fairly "blah" response from me. I thought that I'd seen a third permutation on the premium kinako mochi when I saw the new packaging. Also, the product has a different name. It's called "attaka yutanpo presento" (hot hand warmer present). It says "yaki mochi kinako" (grilled roasted soy bean rice cake) in very tiny letters on the side, but you have to really look for it.

Image pinched from Tirol's web site for this campaign.

The new packaging is part of a campaign which allows people to enter a contest to win a hand warmer enclosed in a case that looks like the kinako mochi mascot. You collect 10 points from the packaging (which can have 2, 3 or 10 points per package - mine had 3) and then can enter the contest by sending in a postcard with your points taped to it. There are 3000 hand warmers to be won. The address appears on the site linked above. You can print it directly from the graphic if you can't write in Japanese and are interested in the contest, which ends on February 28, 2010.

I must say that it's rather cheeky of the folks at Tirol to package the same candy differently just to sell them for an advertising campaign. They could have at least put points on the existing premium candies or made a new flavor for the contest. One might think that I'm just too dumb to know it was the same flavor, but I showed the package to a Japanese friend and she also said, "it doesn't say what it is" when she looked at it (and, no, I didn't prime her to say that - I just showed her the package). Still, the hand warmers are pretty cute. It's not cute enough for me to buy more candy, but I would probably enter if I were going to buy the candy anyway.

KitKat Mild Bitter Mini (Okashi no Machioka exclusive)

In last Friday's post on Okashi no Machioka, I mentioned that there is an exclusive KitKat for sale at their shops. This is that very number. I do wonder just how "exclusive" it is, and whether or not it may show up at other outlets. It's certainly possible that the Machioka people will sell their stock to others. I guess it's also possible that the people who re-sell Japanese items to foreigners can buy up some of these and offer them. If any of my readers see these at other shops or can acquire them through mail order, please leave a comment and let me know.


As for the candy itself, I had seen it on a previous visit, but skipped it because of the necessity of buying 14 mini bars for a sampling. When it comes to minis, I usually try and locate a single one being sold at convenience stores for 40 yen. Since this is an exclusive, there was no chance of that, so I picked up a bag for 279 yen ($3.10) at Okashi no Machioka, and hoped that it was going to be enjoyable.


Each bar is 12.3 grams (.43 oz.) and 66 calories. Two fingers of these short mini fingers are about the same size as 1.4 regular KitKat fingers. The chocolate coating on these seems firmer, more brittle and flakes more easily than other types of KitKats. This is likely because there is less butterfat, milk, or milk products in the darker chocolate coating. This also means that they melt less readily than other types of KitKats I've encountered in Japan.

The smell is of dark chocolate, though it's not a deep scent. The bars are crispy and the chocolate has a nice snap. The chocolate coating sits cooler on your tongue than milk chocolate. The flavor is a very mild dark chocolate flavor with so little bitterness that I'm not sure that these have earned the name "mild bitter". They are actually mild dark chocolate rather than bittersweet, and that suits me just fine as I am not a fan of strong dark chocolate.

While I really liked the combination of the wafers, cream and mild dark chocolate, I think some people may find these to be too little variation on the regulation milk chocolate bar. The main benefit of this is that the chocolate flavor is a little more pronounced, the bar a bit less fatty, and the texture crisper. It's quite a tasty KitKat, much as plain KitKats are, so I wouldn't hesitate to buy it again. I'm just not sure I can recommend that anyone else go out of their way to track it down or pay more for it as an import.

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.