When I was in Japan, I saw plenty of knock-off products which aped American brands. In particular, it seemed for awhile there that every new coffee shop had a round, green and white logo which was working overtime to remind us of the one with the mermaid that sells coffee that aficionados claim tastes burnt and Philistines like me actually enjoy. Actually, it's pretty rare that I go to a Starbucks at all, but I do buy bags of their espresso roast at Costco and make it at home. I guess I just like "burnt".
At any rate, the Japanese did their share of knocking, but they also get knocked off a lot as the picture above demonstrates. There's a tiny little Asian market about a half hour walk from where I'm currently residing and they had this packet of cookies on the shelf. It's clearly a rip-off of Koala's March by Lotte. I've reloaded the picture I used in a recent review to allow for a comparison. Unlike Meiji's "Hello Panda," they aren't even bothering to hide the fact that they're stealing. The graphic on the box is nearly identical, as are the cookie shapes. They can steal the general look, but the graphics on the cookies are decidedly low rent and give away the fact that these are cheaply made. Still, I'd like to pick some up some day and complete a comparison of the three types (Koala's March, Hello Panda, and Golden Bear). I'm betting that Koala's March would win, but you never know when the long shot will come from behind and take the trophy. Also, with a company name like "Ego" (which almost certainly doesn't refer to the English word, but let me pretend), how can you not be a winner... at least in your own mind.
Recently, I tried protein powder as a standalone product for the first time. I'm sure that I've consumed food which has had the equivalent of such supplements before, but this was my first experience with scooping it out and stirring it into a beverage in such a way that I could really taste it. Incidentally, I didn't buy it, but was given it free for review. I don't normally eat protein powder, but that's not the point I'm getting to anyway.
The protein powder had a particular familiar taste which I could not put my finger on for quite some time. I looked at the ingredients, the first of which related to peas, which I rarely eat and have an irrational dislike of because my mother tried to force-feed them to me when I was a kid, and there was nothing there to clue me in on why it should taste like some sense memory lodged deep in the memory banks of my aging brain. After giving up on pinpointing it, the answer came unbidden into my mind. It tasted like a much more intense version of the aftertaste from cheap vitamin fortified cereal, likely a Cheerios knock-off that I had in my impoverished upbringing.
In a strange way, this made sense since I imagine one way in which cereal, which is really pretty bad for you, is "fortified" with nutrients is with vitamin powders. This protein powder had a similar taste profile. The weird thing was that the familiarity of it actually made it seem "better". It wasn't that it tasted good, nor that I had any sort of fond memory of that cereal, but just the fact that it was familiar made me like it more. Nostalgia is a potent modifier of experience.
That is a phrase that comes to mind because this Hokkaido Cream pastry roll, purchased at Daiso Japan for a modest $1.50, is all about nostalgia for me. No one, save my husband, whined more about the "bready" relatively shelf stable pastries in Japan more than me. They were not sweet enough, had too little flavor and were always composed of relatively bland white bread. However, that presentation is something which I'll always associate with living there. This roll tasted like life in Tokyo.
That is not to say that it tasted "great", but it was actually better than expected. I sampled a D-Plus Anpan previously, and found it disappointing. This was somewhat better for two reasons. First of all, the bread was fluffier and softer than the anpan version. It was suprisingly fresh in terms of the texture. That could be the nature of this sweet or I could have gotten the anpan at the end of its shelf life and the cream bread at the beginning. It's hard to say for sure, but it was actually pretty decent as far as being soft.
The "cream" part was where it really hit home as a carby slice of Japan. I thought that I'd cut it open and find a small anemic pocket of cream in the middle surrounded by a huge amount of bread. That wasn't the way it worked. If you look at the picture above, you can see dots of yellow that look like tiny bits of butter. You can also see that the cream bread is layered is sections. The cream is distributed in marginal amounts between each segment. This may account for how moist and soft the bread is since even a smattering of fatty cream filling may keep the bread from drying out.
In terms of the taste, I honestly liked it. It is ever so slightly sweet and had the barest hint of custard taste. Coupled with the fairly good texture, this was a serviceable breakfast bread or snack (and at 270 calories, it was a reasonable portion). The truth is that I'd buy this again. However, I think that this is not something I'd recommend for my readers unless they have the same nostalgia for Japan that I do. Objectively speaking, this is no great shakes and you'd be better off buying a nice bun or roll from a supermarket bakery. This was good, but only for what it is and for those who have a sense memory they'd like to relive. I'm sure that's how these D-Plus pastries remain in stock at Japanese markets. They cater to the desire of people who want the "Japanese taste" while they're not in Japan.
One of the clients which my company dealt with when I was working in Japan was a maker and distributor of vending machines. Prior to the March 11, 2011 earthquake, their main concerns were maintenance, distribution, and making the machines appealing to use relative to purchasing in shops. For example, they would build in little games that would reward people for buying a drink on rare occasions. They worked on the same principle as a slot machine, only with fewer wins.
After the big quake, setsuden, or energy conservation kicked in so that the nuclear reactors could be shut down and setsucden continues to this day so they can continue to keep them out of operation. When I spoke to employees of the client that made such machines later in 2011, their main focus shifted entirely to finding ways to keep drinks in the machines cold or hot while reducing the energy use. They were worried that the number of total machines would be reduced if they didn't lower energy consumption. If you make vending machines, the last thing you want is for fewer of them to be in use.
A man puts up a sign talking about Coke's power consumption efforts.
One of the ways in which they accomplished this was by using LED lights, using better insulation and by reducing refrigeration during certain times. They rotate turning off the machine for 3 minutes during peak hours. Apparently, their attempts to reduce the energy footprint were so successful that they have been awarded the energy conservation grand prize. This may not sound like a big deal, but there are a lot of vending machines in Japan and the aggregate savings not only helps cope with the diminished capacity to supply energy, but also lowers Japan's carbon footprint. Every little bit, especially on the corporate level, counts, and they've reduced the energy their machines use by 33%. (Let us all collectively pat, Coca-cola Japan on the back for a job well done.)
Though it may seem that they have done nothing but toil on energy reduction engineering, they're continuing to try to find ways to make using the machines more fun. To that end, Coca-Cola Japan has introduced an AR "apply" (app) that allows smart phone users to have an "augmented reality" (AR) experience with a vending machine. That would be a lot more scintillating if the vending machines were dispensing marital aids or adult materials, but what kind of AR would make using a Coke machine better?
This is a video showing some of the capability of the AR app for smartphones when used with a Coke machine. By the way, at the very end, I believe the guy holding up the hats is trying to say, "coming soon" in English, but I could be wrong. It comes across as very garbled to me.
It turns out that the bonus is that you can interact with the cute little polar bear graphic on the machine using your smart phone. If you touch him in various spots (and I know what you're thinking you perverts), he'll sneeze, giggle, etc. You can also see commercials for a few of the products stocked in the machine because, you know, you would like more chances to view advertising.
Coke makes a big to-do about choosing the polar bear image because it is a symbol for the effects of global warming. However, the polar bear has been in Coke ads since long before anyone ever started talking about climate change. Though there is a connection to melting polar ice caps, I think the real reason is that they're just so darn adorable that they're hoping you'll want to install their app so you can rub his tummy and watch him laugh.
Cheese sweets in the U.S. are synonymous with pretty much only one type of cheese, cream cheese. Most of us would not think of adding sugar to any type of pungent (savory) cheese. Oh, I guess in a pinch one might go nuts and sweeten up some tangy goat cheese, but you know how things are with goats. They'll do or eat just about anything.
In Japan, one of the things which was a challenge for me was accepting that they liked to offer cheese sweets with Gouda, Camembert and cheddar. Every single cheese pastry I ever bought was made with one of those cheeses. I tried hard through the years to expand my palate, but I never quite got into the idea of cheesecake made with traditionally savory cheeses. I'm sure that meant that I missed out on a lot of opportunities for unique snacking experiences, but I can't say I'm full of regret at those missed chances.
The sign above was in Tokyo station and the food on offer is cheesecake made with Camembert. I love Camembert cheese, either on its own or a cracker. I even love it as part of an open-faced sandwich. However, I was not prepared to eat it in a cake like this. This particular "treat" was on offer as a souvenir (to give to friends, family, or, most often, office mates) rather than as something a person might just buy for their own consumption, but I'm pretty sure that if I picked up one of these for the folks back home, they'd regard it as the equivalent of a cockroach lollipop or some other such weirdness.
I haven't been to Europe, but I do wonder if this notion of using cheese that we regard as only having savory applications in the U.S. originated there and the Japanese picked up on it, or if this is a merging of the occidental and the "oriental".
I'd seen these rice crackers (sembei) hanging around the racks at Daiso Japan for awhile and ignored them because they had a fluorescent pink $1.00 sticker on them. I figured that, in a shop that usually sells things for $1.50, there had to be something wrong with them for the price to be marked down.
However, my desire for cheesy goodness coupled with what I saw as a funny name overrode any apprehension I had. And, yes, I realize how ridiculous it is to have any hesitation about spending a buck on a bag of snack crackers, but I've had far too many unfinished packages in my life from a lack of judiciousness in these situations. As someone who is borderline obsessed with not wasting things (I save broccoli stems and asparagus stalks to make soup because I can't stand to toss them out), I feel bad about just tossing things out. That's probably why there are so few of the "unhappy" and "very unhappy" ratings on this blog as they mean that I decided simply to throw something away. I always try to finish.
At any rate, the name of these reminds me of Japanese police boxes which are called koban. I imagined that these were the snack of choice for men who spent their days giving people directions and stopping people to ask if they'd stolen their bikes. In essence, I liked to imagine that these were to Japanese cops as donuts are to American ones.
However, my banal little fantasy is stopped in its tracks by the fact that the words are the same, but the kanji (Chinese characters) are different. This isn't this koban - 交番 it's that koban - 小判. If you can't read that and it shows up as gibberish for you, it doesn't matter because I'm just going to say that the latter refers to an oval coin used during the feudal Edo period in Japan. Bummer. It was funnier to imagine portly cops with salt-covered fingers talking about the latest results of the Yomiuri Giants while ordering a young compatriot to go chase down a foreigner and make him prove he's not a criminal.
My lazy cop fantasies dashed, I sat down and tried my super cheap sembei and was pleasantly surprised. These crackers are a flavor burst of pleasantly pungent cheesy goodness with a nice dose of what I can only call a meaty (umami) kick. The second bite starts in with some smoked cheese flavor. They are not too much of anything and that allows the flavor depth to come through.
The meaty flavor probably comes courtesy of MSG, but cheese is nowhere to be found in the ingredients list. It does include a handful of chemicals including "artificial flavor" and aspartame. Though they don't taste especially sweet, they do include sugar and glucose syrup in addition to the aforementioned artificial sweetener. All in all, these could put the "junk" in junk food.
Despite their nutritional shortcomings, I've already bought these twice and would buy them again. I love the cheesy flavor with savory undertones as well as the good portion control of the individual packages with two crackers each (25 calories). They're also very economical as a sembei option and the Daiso Japan is one of the easier haunts for me to reach if I'm in the mood for some rice cracker lovin'. While Amazon carries a lot of Shirakaku's Japanese food products, they, unfortunately, do not carry the cheese sembei.
