Bourbon Petit Tart Cookies

I was delighted to discover that Japanese markets tend to carry a portion of Bourbon's range of "petit" snacks. At present, there are 24 varieties in their line up, and I didn't count, but I believe about 10 of them are at Niijiya supermarkets for 99 cents a pack. Since they are sold for 80 yen in Japan, this makes them essentially the same price in both countries (at least at current exchange rates).

The bad news is that the available flavors are, for the most part, the most boring ones. While I'm hoping for the kinako wafers, they're giving me chocolate chip cookies and mini potato chips. The most exotic possibility when I last went there was shrimp crackers. Sure, these are fine things (except the shrimp crackers which are nowhere near fine), but I want something which I can't buy the American equivalent of in the local convenience store. Even the "jam cracker sandwiches" would do as a distraction from the more mundane options, but, alas, they're catering to the limited tastes of the pedestrian American palate (that's a joke, folks, so, please, unwad those undies before making comments).

Oh well, relative beggars can't be relatively choosey, and while they're not exactly exotic, these tart cookies did look like a nice tea time snack which could be eaten in modest portions. For those who aren't familiar with this line, both sweet and savory snacks are sold in small plastic sleeves. They are very tiny crackers or cookies that are a little bigger than an American quarter or a 100-yen coin. Each pack is 1.86 oz. (53 g.) and contains two servings (usually around 50-80 calories, these are 60 calories per serving). The packaging both makes it easy to share and to eat a little and set the rest aside, provided you're going to have a clip of some sort to clamp the top shut.

The cookies are like a cross between shortbread and a graham cracker both in taste and texture. While not as buttery or rich as shortbread, they have a somewhat earthier flavor and a very nice crunch which isn't too brittle. Of course, even if it was brittle, you can easily slip the whole cookie in your mouth so there an no worries about crumbs.

Since this is a "tart", there's a dollop of chocolate in the middle which is slightly firm and soft. This is where much of the interest comes from in terms of the flavor. The chocolate comes on sweet and mellow, then develops into a bittersweet taste and finally seems a bit strong. That assumes that you keep the tiny cookie on your tongue long enough to let the flavor do its thing. I'm not sure everyone has the patience for these and wouldn't be surprised if most people gobble them down in a munching frenzy. Trust me, I can empathize with the impulse, but these do have something going on and are worth giving your tongue a few extra seconds to appreciate the flavor.

While these cookies are not a "must have", they are nice enough for a snack that you keep around in your hand bag or office desk drawer. If you can exercise a little self-control, the small size should encourage sensible portions. If not, the most damage you can do is 120 calories for the whole thing. If you consider that most Oreo cookies are 75 calories for one cookie, this sure feels like a whole lot more cookie eating experience for your calories.

Note that Bourbon has a bear as its requisite cute mascot. You can download colorful wallpapers featuring it if you are so inclined. You can also view commercials featuring the Bourbon bear and lots of annoying music and infantile singing if that is the sort of thing that floats your boat. If not, perhaps you'll enjoy watching the animated bears gathering together all of their treats in some sort of pagan pastel bear ritual in which they finish by gnawing ineffectively at their snacks. There's a delay in loading (at least there was for me), but take advantage of it and turn off the sound before it crawls into your brain and starts scratching on your frontal lobe like nails on a blackboard.

Random Picture #138

 
One of the things that was quite uncommon in supermarkets in Japan, even relatively pedestrian ones like the Seiyu chain, was bargain tables. At the local Safeway (which I see as the American equivalent of Seiyu), there is always a shelf full of crap that didn't sell, is slightly damaged, or has seasonal items that didn't sell which are heavily discounted. Mostly, it's pretty crappy stuff, but I have gotten some great prices on a few things (bags of Peet's coffee for $4 when it is usually around $8-9).

The picture above was taken at Peacock supermarket around November during my last few years in Japan. Those sad specimens are Halloween treats that didn't sell next to some sweet potato KitKat minis. I should note that 30% off is a huge discount by Japanese standards, and it likely meant that these were near or past their expiration date. Peacock had such a discount table twice to my recollection and they were the only store that did this at all in my particular area. I believe that most stuff got shuttled off to dedicated discount shops like Tsurukame or simple returned to the manufacturer (or trashed).

One of the the things about Japan is that quality and freshness mattered so much to consumers that they'd rather pay more for those qualities than score a bargain. This was something that I had both a positive and negative impression of. Often the willingness to pay more meant that goods made natively supported small business culture. The desire not to buy things that were old, even at a discount though, meant that there was more waste. As with all things, there was a yin and yang effect to the Japanese spending habits.

Raspberry and Green Tea Adult Sweetness KitKats

As I mentioned in a previous post, November is KitKat month at SakuraBox. If you're interested in wrapping your lips around a good sampling of Japanese KitKats (5 different ones - pretty much the current line-up of non-regional options in Japan), this is your chance. With the weather finally turning more autumnal, it's safe for them to break out the chocolate, and, boy howdy, they are doing it right.

The two minis that I'm reviewing today are part of the monthly candy box. As full disclosure, I should mention that they send me one of these boxes gratis. You can consider me bribed, or you can consider me grateful for their generosity. I consider me lucky that after years and years of never getting one thing for free for review purposes, I can finally catch a ride of the small gravy train that I'd seen many other bloggers hitch onto.

All of that being said, I should say that how I feel about the snacks SakuraBox sends me has nothing to do with them. I already reviewed their service, which is the thing that directly reflects on them. How I feel about the KitKats is all on the fine folks at Nestle Japan. Today, I'm going to review two of the "adult sweetness" line which I have not reviewed before. The theme of this line is these KitKats are not as sweet as the regular ones. Therefore, they hold the promise of not being as cloyingly sweet as some of the other ones, especially the ones made with white chocolate.

In the past, I have favorably reviewed the white chocolate and regular chocolate ones, so I had high expectations of these ones. Note that, among the regular offerings of KitKats at present, the adult sweetness ones are quite prominent. It's my guess that these are going over pretty well with the Japanese market. This is no surprise as one of the big points that Japanense folks who visit America whine about is that the food is too sweet for them.

The first bar I tried was the raspberry adult sweetness bar. I was really hoping that this wouldn't be painfully sweet, and, happily, it wasn't. It smelled very intensely of raspberry so I was concerned about some strong artificial flavoring, but it actually was on the subtle side. It was ever so slightly tart and had approachable raspberry flavor. The outside was very soft and the wafers were crispy and fresh. This was very tasty and I appreciated that those who formulated it didn't feel it necessary to make it an avalanche of intense berry flavor and went with something that felt more like raspberries mixed into white chocolate.

As for the other bar, I sort of think of green tea as "mundane" in terms of flavors. I guess only someone like me who lived in Japan and was spoiled by the plethora of green tea options would consider a green tea variety "mundane". Sometimes, it is easy to forget that not everyone has had access to such goodies and that, yes, this may be exotic for some folks. After the subdued sweetness of the raspberry bar, I was actually slightly concerned that the bitter green tea might not be sufficiently offset by sugary goodness.

Fortunately, there was no bitterness nor was it overly sweet. There was a nice pure green tea flavor that was mellowed not by sugar, but by milky notes from the white chocolate base. Like the other, the wafers were nice and crispy, but this was mixed with a slightly grainy, finely gritty (but not at all unpleasant) texture in the chocolate. I loved the contrasting textures, and was surprised at how present but not overbearing the green tea flavor was. 

I really liked both of these bars, but found the green tea to be slightly better because I enjoyed the strength of the flavor more. I would certainly recommend either of these for anyone interested in flavor depth. They are absolutely better than some of the overly sweet bars I've sampled in the past.

I have been keeping an eye on the KitKat site off and on since I left Japan, and I'm wondering if Nestle Japan is changing their approach to the market place. While they may be selling weird flavors on occasion, I haven't seen any regular bars that are very esoteric on their web site for quite some time. Either they're not advertising them (unlikely), I missed them (somewhat likely), or they've figured out that too many of the bizarro flavors were ending up in candy bargain bins so they're reducing the frequency of issuing them (more likely). If this is so, this is good news for those who actually enjoy eating them, but not so good news for those who are tickled by dreams of wasabi or ginger ale KitKats.

Coke and Pepsi Beverages Round-up (product info.)

 No, Pepsi is not coming out with yet another weird flavor. They are, however, encouraging people to join the dark side of the force. The timing, given that Disney recently bought the rights to the Star Wars franchise, seems rather ironic. Pepsi released an energy drink on October 23 which shows Darth Vader on the packaging and encourages people to join the dark side.

The drink is promoted with the fact that it contains 5 different energy boosters: royal jelly, Arginine, guarana extract, ginseng extract, and good old-fashioned caffeine. I'm not sure what Darth Vader has to do with legal stimulants, but it does allow them to make cool black packaging.

Note how distressed he looks? I'd be pretty freaked out, too, if women in giant food costumes were following me around.

Pepsi is also releasing a "Pepsi Special". It was released on November 9 and is supposed to reduce absorption of fat. Yeah. That'll work. Part of the advertising includes a commercial which has a woman dressed as a giant slice of pizza. I guess the whole idea is that you eat the pizza and drink the soda in order to not absorb all of the fat from your piece of pie. 

While Pepsi wants to boost you up, Coke wants to help you regulate your life. They are selling a Latin Biorhythm tea. Instead of ponying up the dough to license Darth Vader's image, they're using photos of a buxom Latin babe "playing", "eating", and "drinking", because these are the things that you need to do to have balance in your life, at least if you aren't in need of using the Force to get through your day.

Random Picture #137

One of the things that I did on a semi-regular basis when I was living in Japan was pick up a bag of frozen imagawayaki to keep in my freezer for breakfast or snacking. I liked the compact size and the fact that it was well-formulated such that it didn't suffer much (or at all) in quality for being a frozen food. In fact, I think that there were some ways in which it was superior to fresh versions.

Of course, that does depend on precisely how fresh it is. The picture above, taken in Asakusa, shows a man operating a machine to make these filled-pancake-style sweets. This shot was interesting not so much because it's a form of street food, but because it's so mechanized compared to the way that such things are usually made. All of those Borg-like tubes that plop batter and bean paste into molds represent a step up for the usual guy with a funnel and a spatula that is more common.

The entire set-up reminds me of the whole melding of the old (doing it by hand) with the new (but using modern equipment) that really is a tightly woven part of Japanese culture.