Sequoia Chocolate Milk Bar

Some products come across as the "poor man's" version of a better-known brand name item. Drinks like RC Cola or Shasta cola come to mind as Coca-Cola wannabes. The Sequoia chocolate wafer bar comes across as the poor man's KitKat, though I don't know if it actually came before everyone's favorite chocolate-covered wafer. The company that makes Sequoia, Furuta, has been in business since 1952, but Furuta doesn't have a full product history on its site so I can't give them credit for being first if credit is indeed due.



You can buy Sequoia bars in 3-packs for 99 yen ($1.16) or as single bars for about 40 yen (47 cents). The multi-packs are available only in certain types of stores. A single Sequoia is about the size of 2.5 fingers of a KitKat, so they cost quite a bit less.



Since I last tried a Sequoia chocolate bar, they seem to have changed. I remember them being coated in thing chocolate which had little flavor and was rather thin. I recall the wafers being very brittle and overly flaky. To be fair, this was 18-19 years ago so they may have changed a long time ago and I just took a long time to revisit one.



The bar now is covered in relatively thick, solid chocolate. It is covered in typical Japanese milk chocolate (marginally bittersweet) which includes cocoa butter. When you look at a cross section, it seems to have a layer of a different sort of chocolate above the top wafer, but I couldn't taste any difference in texture or taste. This is unlike the caramel Sequoia which had a rather softer bit of caramel above the top wafer which yielded easily when bitten into.

The bar smells faintly of cocoa and has a fairly strong, but somehow flat flavor. Some chocolate has a nutty, milky, or fruity flavor, but this doesn't. It's like a strong cup of hot chocolate made with cheap cocoa powder. It's quite sweet, though rich and slightly bittersweet and that helps offset the sugary nature. The wafers are crispy, but you lose the sense of them in the firm chocolate. I think that the KitKat formula works better to reveal the nature of the wafers because it's softer and yields as you bite into it.

In my opinion, this bar could do with less chocolate coating and more wafer and with a softer chocolate coating, but it's fine overall. The portion control is pretty good. One bar is 131 calories and it feels substantial enough that you won't want another. I think this is a resistible bar which wouldn't be bad to keep in your desk or kitchen for times when you really, really want something sweet. I'd buy it again, but only if I were trying to make it easier on myself not to indulge and intentionally bought a less than optimal bar. So, I can only provisionally offer a "happy sumo" (would buy again) rating.

Sequoia Caramel Flavor

Sequoia is one of those candy bars that has been around since I first arrived in Japan 20 years ago. In fact, I vaguely recall sampling it when it could only be purchased in chocolate and cost only 20 yen and being singularly unimpressed. I've passed on the numerous bars I've seen in both chocolate and strawberry flavor at the local 100 yen store despite their taunting me with their shiny plastic packaging and low, low price of 33 yen (35 cents) a bar. Because of this low estimation, I never would have chosen to purchase this caramel bar for myself, but my husband saw it as a new product and bought it for 40 yen (43 cents) at a Lawson's convenience store near his job.


The Sequoia brand bars are named for their resemblance to a log of wood (the Sequoia tree). This seems like a strange marketing idea as food products that bring to mind splinters, moss, and sap, not to mention something so hard you can't bite through it, don't tend to get mouths watering. All of the bars have simulated wood grain embossed into them. This works particularly well with the caramel bar because its lighter color makes it resemble a log rather than a chocolate bar with grooves pressed into it.

Sequoia is what I'd regard as the signature product of Furuta, a company which makes a lot of candy in small portions for kids. Furuta evolved from a chocolate and cookie business in 1952, though it didn't officially become a corporation until about 10 years later. Their original product line was "candy toys" and they make chocolate eggs with toys inside. They also make small Thomas the Tank and Mario toys as well as "collections" of various animals (dinosaurs, dogs, cats, etc.) that adults and kids alike collect and display in plastic cases in their homes. The toys are sold near the candy in supermarkets for around 300 yen ($3.25). Though I've never bought the toys so I can't say for certain, I don't think they contain any actual candy.


Since I had a so-so experience with Sequoia and rather bad experiences with caramel Japanese candy, I was expecting very little of this bar. I was surprised when I opened the wrapper and saw that it's not all caramel and that there's a chocolate base. I was also encouraged to not smell a super strong or fake caramel scent. There is a hint of caramel and chocolate, but mostly, it just smells "sweet".

One thing which is surprising about the bar is that the wafers have the look of authentic sugar wafers. While you can buy all sorts of wafers in Japan, none of them resemble classic sugar wafers with a firm white layer of cream between layers that you can buy in the U.S. This is likely because they'd be too sweet for the Japanese market. Most of the wafers in Japan are very bland and, for some reason, fortified with vitamin E.

The texture is different based on what part of the bar you're eating. The top is very soft and yields easily. The white chocolate under the caramel coating is almost soft enough to be ganache. The bottom is solid and firm chocolate. The wafer is crisp and fresh with a super sugary cream. This is quite sweet, but with a bittersweet chocolate finish that helps balance out the sweetness. It has a mild caramel flavor which is not overly artificial or overwhelming. This bar completely works because the sweetness is carried by the wafers and their filling and not by the chocolate or the caramel coating.

I rather expected to hate this, but I loved it. It is very sweet, but it didn't burn my throat. The balance of flavors and texture just come together very well and the mix of caramel, chocolate, and vanilla adds depth to the flavors. If you can stand some pretty sweet stuff once in awhile, I'd strongly recommend this. I can say without reservation that this is the best caramel candy bar I've had in Japan.

Sequoia Baked Apple Chocolate

While Nestle is grinding out new KitKat flavors as if the bar's consumers had the gustatory attention span of a 2-year-old, Furuta releases a couple of new and unique Sequoia chocolate wafer bars a year. Even though I have been less than thrilled at times with the Sequoia offerings, the scarcity of new variants always makes it more exciting to come across one. Perhaps absence does actually make the heart grow fonder, even when the one you're missing is the red-headed stepchild of the wafer-based chocolate family.


I found this bar at Family Mart for about 50 yen (55 cents). It's the same size and weight as regular Sequoia bars which is about 10 cm x 2.5 cm (about 4 in. x 1 in.). These bars are pretty solid, but the weight is not given on the wrapper. The package describes the composition of the bar as an outer shell of baked apple chocolate (including cinnamon), "milk cream" around the wafers, and milk chocolate on the bottom. When you open the packet, you can smell the apple flavor.

This bar is good on some levels, and less so on others. On the plus side, the flavor has depth and the texture has complexity. You can taste apple, wafers, sweet white chocolate, and bittersweet chocolate to varying degrees. Unfortunately, the overly sweet white chocolate flavor dominates such that there are only hints of the apple and bittersweet flavors. The texture is an interesting mix of almost fudgey or ganache-like interior filling, grainy sugary goodness, crispy wafers, and a slightly firm chocolate coating. Both my husband and I were disappointed that cinnamon did not figure very much at all in the flavor profile despite it being mentioned as a relevant component.

I liked this despite the indifferent rating I'm giving it. The main question I have to ask myself though is, 'would I buy it again?' The answer is no and that's mainly because it's just too sweet. I only ate about 1/3 of it for this review and I consumed it in 3 bites with a cup of tea. I could easily see this being just too sweet if I didn't have a beverage or ate more at once. I would recommend this as a curiosity to anyone inclined to sample it, but I doubt anyone will be missing it when it's finished with it's run on convenience store shelves.

Sequoia Tiramisu Chocolate Wafer

Sequoia wafer bars (made by Furuta) have a lot to offer which is attractive to me. For one thing, I like the size and the bars look great and are nicely packaged. It's about the size of two and a half KitKat fingers combined. It also carries a fair amount of heft to it and has a more prominent wafer component than a KitKat. It's also cheap. One bar is between 40-60 yen. I got mine for 53 yen (about 50 cents) at a Family Mart near my apartment.


The main problem with the Sequoia bar is that the cheapness carries a lot of the same issues that cheap chocolate worldwide has. That is, it tends to mistake sweetness for good quality and flavor. I've tried 4 types of Sequoia previously (chocolate, strawberry, caramel, and salty vanilla), and the only one I was really pleased with was the caramel one. My expectations were pretty low of this bar.

Unfortunately, this was an okay candy bar, but not great. A really good tiramisu candy experience should have complexity to it. It should offer the coffee, chocolate, and Mascarpone cheese flavors in layers. Since this bar has a chocolate shell, a white chocolate filling, and wafers, you'd think it'd be possible to pull this off. Unfortunately, it all just tastes like coffee-flavored chocolate. If it was good, smooth, and deep coffee flavor, that'd probably be enough, but it tastes like instant coffee chocolate.

On the bright side, the texture of the bar is great. The chocolate is smooth and the wafers are fresh and crispy. The inner white chocolate is a little soft. The only thing is that my front teeth hurt after eating half of it from where the sugar built up on my teeth. It's that sweet.

If you like really sweet chocolate covered wafers and cheap coffee chocolates, this might really do something for you. If you want something with some depth of flavor, you might want to look elsewhere.

Sequoia Salty Vanilla Chocolate

My husband and I were meandering around a Family Mart convenience store when he spied this "salty vanilla" Sequoia bar. For those who don't know, Sequoia is an original Japanese brand of wafer bar. It isn't a KitKat knock-off. It just looks like one. He said, "this looks like something I'd like," and hence a review was born. I'm always much more likely to try something if I know I'll just have a bit and he'll finish the rest. This is one way to keep the sweets consumption under control for me, though I can't say it works so well for him. It's not that Sequoia bars are too huge for one person to eat, mind you. They're about the total volume of two and a half KitKat fingers.

I sort of wonder how someone decided that salt and vanilla would be a good combination. A comedic collision like the ones about gettings one's chocolate in another's peanut butter comes to mind, but I'm guessing this has more to do with the people at Furuta jumping on the salty vanilla bandwagon or just plain running out of ideas for what they could easily slap together without spending a fortunate on food coloring. I can see the buchos (higher level managers) brainstorming and talking about new flavors. Suggestions for grape, blueberry, or melon are bandied about but no one wants to buy purple, blue or green food dye. The guy who suggested salting down the white chocolate probably got an extra bonus.


I kept this bar in the refrigerator because the weather has been so hot lately. Nonetheless, this was very soft when I took it out for pictures. I wouldn't carry this around in my pocket for long in the summer.

The chocolate coating is advertised as "milk cream" and the "center is "vanilla cream". I think that part of the problem I had with this bar is that I couldn't taste either vanilla or salt much at all, and that is likely because the flavoring is not in the coating, but only between the wafers. Mainly, I could taste shattering white chocolate sweetness. This is an incredibly cloying bar. The strange thing is that I kind of liked it despite that, but probably only in the way that one sometimes really likes a super strong hit of sugar. The flavor had very little depth. I am confident that I wouldn't be so fond of it on a revisit.

Furuta Green Tea Sequoia

There's a video my husband and I shot in 1995 which we made to show our family and friends what it was like to live there at the time. I don't remember who we sent it to, but part of it includes a trek around our local shopping street (shotengai) and the shops that were on offer at the time. I recently watched that video again for the first time in a very long time and I was shocked at how few of the shops survived to 2012. In fact, I'm pretty sure that only the biggest markets (e.g., Peacock, Seiyu, etc.) made it to the present day.

One of the sites caught on camera on that video were several girls eating green tea "soft cream" (soft serve) in a tea shop. On the video, my response to the idea of green tea flavored sweets was "yuck!" At that time, the thought of bitter, grassy green tea being mixed with sugar rubbed me completely the wrong way. I think there are still plenty of Western folks out there who feel the same way.

I think green tea seems stranger as a flavoring for sweets as compared to black tea (English tea) or coffee because you don't see people putting sugar and milk in green tea, but you do find people adding them to those beverages which Western folks regard as more mainstream. Sweet coffee is common. Sweet green tea is unheard of, at least in Japan.

As time has gone by, the notion of green tea sweets has grown on me, though it still hasn't blossomed into the sort of passion that I've seen others display. I sometimes like it, and sometimes don't care for it. A lot depends on the intensity and the flavor mix. Generally, green tea plus chocolate isn't as good as green tea chocolate, if you know what I mean. That is, if it's white chocolate which has green tea flavoring, it's not as dangerous to the taste buds as milk or dark chocolate with some green tea component.

You can imagine my concern when I started to unwrap this Sequoia wafer chocolate bar and saw that the bottom was what appeared to be semi-sweet chocolate. The top is olive green (and had bloomed a bit to boot, that's the white stuff on it) and the illustration tells us that there is green tea cream between the wafers.

A sniff revealed a discordant mix of chocolate and tea aromas. A bite revealed that it was indeed semi-sweet (or bittersweet) chocolate on the bottom. This meant that there was a turf war on my tongue for which bitter flavor got to dominate, the tea's or the chocolate's. Neither one. They kicked up a lot of dirt, made a mess, and it was a draw. I really didn't care for the mixture of these two flavors. Though there is ample sweetness on hand to off-set them, it just tasted "wrong" to me.

On the best of days, Sequoia's wafer-based chocolate bars can disappoint, but this was really more unpleasant than usual from my viewpoint. I think that my reaction was an extremely subjective one. This isn't a bad bar overall, and I'm sure some people will enjoy it, but it simply was not for me. I ended up throwing the rest away after eating a little less than half.

Furuta Torukeru White Chocolate Bar

"Torukeru" means "melty" or "melting" and is often used by Japanese candy makers to say that there is soft, ganache-like chocolate involved in their candy-making alchemy. Often, that means it's either oozing all over your fingers or soft, but solid. You can see by the illustration on the package above that they're trying to convey the idea that there is soft, creamy filling trying to escape the evil clutches of the brittle wafers in which they are trapped between. 

The problem with this concept is that you're putting something which is essentially absorbent between something absorb-able. Over time, the wafers are going to suck some of the moisture out of the cream and disable all of its capacity to be anything resembling "melty". That is what happened to my bar, if indeed it ever was full of soft, melting cream in the first place. Fortunately, this in now way detracted from the textural elements which included the easily cleaved exterior chocolate coating and several crispy wafers with a very thin layer of chocolate cream between them.

This was surprisingly good considering its white chocolate exterior and my general aversion to said substance. The not so sweet and slightly bitter interior wafers and chocolate filling balance out the fairly sweet white chocolate exterior. Surprisingly, at room temperature, the outside is quite firm. I've had problems with Sequoia chocolate bars being too soft, but this was good and reminded me of one of the better KitKat variations that I've experienced in the past.

One can pick up Sequoia bars for near a dollar at Japanese markets in California and they're quite cheap in Japan as well. The "specialty" bars like this one tend to be about 50 yen or about 50 cents at convenience stores. They are a cheap way to try something a little off the beaten path and I was not disappointed in this. At 141 calories for a single large finger-sized bar, it also offers good portion control.

Though I liked this quite fine, it wasn't exotic enough or "good" enough to make me want to have it again. As a one-off sampling, I have no regrets, but I wouldn't recommend you go out of your way to try it. Though it's a nice enough wafer-chocolate combo, it's probably not worth choosing over more interesting options. Still, if you're in Japan and crave a KitKat, but don't want to have a whole bar around to tempt you, this is a really good alternative and better than the regular chocolate Sequoia bars (which are actually pretty good, too) by a small margin. 

Sequoia Strawberry

There's something about a multi-pack that makes food more attractive. I'd normally refuse to buy a strawberry Sequoia bar, but seeing 3 of them for 100 yen (a dollar) at the local 99 yen shop lured me into an impulse buy. It must be the aesthetic of the repeated packages lined up so nicely. It helps that my husband will at least try almost anything that is strawberry flavored and sweet.


The main problem for my husband is that a lot of Japanese sweets aren't sweet enough. He's pretty much in line with the market that makes candy bars back home whereas I'm always whining about things being too much. At any rate, anything that is based on white chocolate has a higher chance of meeting his approval and a lower chance of meeting mine. With that in mind, let me say that he liked these quite a lot, and me, well, not so much.


A sniff of these bars revealed the vague smell of strawberries and sugar. The flavor was decently of strawberries, but it's very sweet. There's not quite enough of a tart strawberry edge to offset the sweetness. The texture was pleasant enough because the wafers were nice and crispy. The pink and white coating though was quite soft.

For my tastes, this was too mild on the strawberry front and too strong on the sweet chocolate going on. It reminded me quite a lot of the Senga Sengana KitKat, though it actually didn't possess the same throat burning sugary qualities. I wouldn't buy this again for myself, but if you love super sweet candy and strawberry, it may be something worth sampling.

Furuta Tiramisu Chocolate

I had a few friends over for lunch yesterday and they mentioned that they had tiramisu for dessert over the weekend. I don't know how popular it is in the U.S., but I can only say that tiramisu will always be linked to Japan for me as the first place I encountered it was in Tokyo... in a convenience store. When I first arrived there in 1989, it was sold pretty much everywhere as a chocolate sponge cake, a layer of whipped stuff that was supposed to mascarpone, and some chocolate shavings or powder. The coffee flavor of these "konbini" offerings was always too subdued or overbearing (usually the former) and the "cheese" flavoring usually had a very chemical in taste.

Despite the fact that I like all of the components of tirsmisu, I was mainly drawn to it for the texture of the cheese. I like anything that is rich and fluffy. It didn't matter that the taste of the low rent tiramisu I usually (but not often) bought in Japan was less than impressive as long as I got that textural feedback. Most of the mass market tiramisu in Japan was simply "ok" and I never tried it at a restaurant.

Anything tiramisu has a real sense of nostalgia for me in terms of remembering Japan, as does "Furuta", a company that makes a wide variety of low profile snacks and sweets. The one with the greatest longevity and popularity is the "Sequoia" wafer bar. It's like a poor man's KitKat, especially if that poor man likes cheap, very sweet chocolate.

I bought this at Daiso Japan for $1.50 (117 yen) as part of a buying frenzy. There are 10 tiny candies, about the size of a Hershey's Kiss, individually wrapped in green foil. Each candy is 36 calories. That makes them more fattening for their size than the average chocolate.

It was only after tasting a candy that I remembered that I'd already sampled the company's tiramisu Sequoia bar and found it lacking. That bar tasted to much like the coffee component and not enough like the chocolate and mascarpone. This candy suffered from the opposite problem. It tasted not at all like coffee and mainly like cheap, but fatty, chocolate and fake mascarpone cheese. I guess that the "cheese powder" can't really do for me what the fake mascarpone did in my little plastic-wrapped konbini tiramisu.

This isn't a horrible candy at all. The chocolate is slightly bittersweet and has better depth of flavor because it's not too sweet. The chocolate on the outside is a bit on the softish side which isn't helping the contrast between the white filling and the outer shell. The inner white stuff seems firmer than the outside, which is simply wrong as the white stuff in tiramisu is supposed to be fluffy and light compared to the denser brown stuff. It's the law, after all. As a chocolate, this is "blah". As a tiramisu chocolate, this fails because there is so little of a coffee component.

Tirol Premium Apple Pie Chocolate

It's been awhile since Tirol has hit a slam dunk with me. When I stopped by 7-11 to pick up some of their cheap (100 yen) 16-oz. cans of Coke Zero and noticed the box of these apple pie chocolates by the register, I was skeptical that they'd impress me this time around. My previous experience with apple chocolate in Japan was with Sequoia's offering and I don't think the Japanese have quite the same concept or taste for apple treats as those whose culture derives from Europe.

I'm very pleased to say that this one was a home run (and I mix my metaphors between basketball and baseball...I'm sure there will be a football one in the near future). This was a heavenly little square of apple delight on multiple levels.

First of all, the apple flavor is good. It's a bit on the strong side and some may find it artificial, but I felt it was not fake at all - just strong, and well tempered by a very noticeable presence of cinnamon. The texture of this is unique and varied in a way that delighted me no end. First, the square is riddled with crunchy little bits of "pie crust" and interspersed with chewy bits of apple nestled in softish white chocolate.

All Tirol premium candies are about 1-inch (2.54 cm.) square. This candy was 55 calories, which puts it in the ballpark of most of the premium chocolates. One thing which caught my eye as a former Apple (computer) geek (I'm fully recovered now... really... yeah) was the little white icon of an apple on the back. I don't think it was an attempt to copy Apple's trademark, but it did remind me of it.

These are available in a wide variety of convenience stores for 32 yen right now and I strongly suggest giving them a try. It is sweet, so I recommend having it with some coffee or tea between bites (I favored it with a very strong skinny latte). That being said, it is small, so you'll have it finished in 4 tiny bites. It's hardly enough to be overwhelmed by cumulative sweetness. Oh, yes, I forgot to say this was a Tirol touchdown (had to get in one more sports metaphor).

Tirol Air In Salty Vanilla Premium

The Japanese are crazy about "soft cream". That's the sort of processed non-dairy product that oozes out of machines in family restaurants and Dairy Queens. By the way, does anyone else think that there should be a royal marriage between the Dairy Queen and the Burger King? Okay, maybe not. Anyway, putting a picture of a "soft cream" cone on one of these candies is sure to evoke memories of creamy artificial deliciousness.

The Air In aspect of this means that it is an aerated chocolate like Lotte's Airs. That means less candy for your yen. Given that this is a small, single piece candy, I think introducing air into the equation is grumble-inducing. For those who don't know from my other reviews, Tirol premium candies are about 1-inch square (2.55 cm) candies what are sold individually for about 30-40 yen (about 35 cents).


This was on offer at a local Family Mart convenience store. It's the second "salty vanilla" snack I ran across at the same time. The other was a Sequoia bar. This makes me think we're seeing the makings of the next food fad in Japan.

This smelled strongly of vanilla and white chocolate. When I cut it in half for the detailed picture, it was very crumbly and soft. Usually, the air bubble-filled chocolates are firm and the bubbles provide a somewhat "crispy" textural sense, but this was just soft all the way through, even though I took it right out of the refrigerator.

The flavor at first was intensely sweet vanilla followed by very, very salty. I'm not sure, but I think I actually crunched on a large bit of kosher salt. This was good in that it's the first salty vanilla treat where I could actually taste the salt. It was bad in that the flavors were really intense, too intense. Where most of these sweets are too bland and don't go far enough in laying on the flavors, but this one has gone too far in the other direction.

I wanted to like this and came really close, but it's just too much. I don't regret sampling it because it was interesting. However, I don't think I would go for it again.

Incidentally, Tirol is doing desktop pictures showing ice cream for May as well as have added some new pictures to their previous line-up. If you're interested in downloading them, they can be had here.

Fujiya Peko Wafers

There's a new blog which I started following a few months ago called "Food in Real Life". It takes pictures of the box illustration of a dish and the way the food actually looks and then rates both how closely the real food resembles the illustration and how it tastes. I must say that Japanese processed food as it appears on the package generally resembles the food as presented inside.



That being said, these Peko wafers as pictured don't look anything like the way they are portrayed on the bag. In fact, they look further from the illustration than most things I've reviewed. They look thick, airy, and have a clearly defined filling on the bag and are rather compressed and dense in real life. The looks don't really matter though. It's going to be the taste and texture.


There are 16 individually wrapped bars in the bag. I picked these up at a local supermarket for 198 yen ($2.22). Each is about 7 cm (2.7 in) long and slightly wider than a KitKat finger and is 42 calories. So, the bottom line is going to be whether or not I enjoy these enough to pay 12 yen (13 cents) apiece and view the calories ingested as worthwhile.

Both types of bars are light and crispy. The wafers are what I'd call "softly crispy" like sugar wafers rather than crispy in a brittle way. They yield more easily when you bite them. This isn't a bad thing, just different. The vanilla bar smells very much like nougat to me. It also has some caramel notes. It mainly tastes like nougat with very, very weak chocolate flavor. It's more of a sense of a chocolate "wash" than serious chocolate flavor. The chocolate bar smells weakly of chocolate and has a mild chocolate flavor, but is quite pleasant. Neither is overly sweet.

These are actually quite pleasant for someone who likes wafers, but doesn't want something as sugary or as heavy as a KitKat or Sequoia bar. These are lighter and I liked them a lot, but I adore wafers without too much smothering sugary coating. I'd definitely consider buying them again since I like lighter treats and things that are not so sweet. I prefer the chocolate ones over the vanilla though. The caramel/nougat notes don't do as much for me. I think someone with similar tastes would really enjoy these, but they may not be bold enough for some people.

ZenPop Movie Date Pack Unboxing

Recently, I took a trip to Seattle and shopped at no less than four Japanese markets. The experience reminded me of something which I'd started to forget and that is that, even if you live close to Asian markets of any sort, the selection is often limited and the price greatly inflated. Despite my high level of interest in Japanese snacks, the prices were often 200% of that I'd pay in Japan. A bag of my favorite sembei was between $6.00-$8.00 when it'd sell for as little as 170 yen in Japan.

Though I get my ZenPop boxes gratis for review purposes, I am reminded of what a good way this is to get a wider selection of snacks after my foray into Seattles Uwajimayas and other Asian markets. The only things I bought were things like shokupan (Japanese milk bread) and baked goods because they were not shelf stable and I couldn't get them via other sellers or subscriptions. It is definitely cheaper to get snacks from ZenPop than it is to go to the types of markets that I visited. Of course, it's not as cheap as buying them in Japan, but it's cheaper than a plane ticket.

The theme of this box is "movie date pack" and it ironically arrived the day before my husband and I planned to see Avengers: Endgame for a second time. I don't know if I can sneak if the somewhat big bag of popcorn that is in the box, but I might try if I can find a purse large enough.

In this box, here is what is included:

Savory:

Mike Shoyu Butter Popcorn: I have never bought pre-popped popcorn because I'm a snob who only eats popcorn that has been freshly made. That being said, the flavor on this (soy sauce and butter) is intriguing. It's a flavor combination which I've enjoyed many times on kabocha (Japanese pumpkin/squash).

Sweet:

Grape Puchi Gum: Behind the little bean-sized bits of gum, there is a piece of paper in the center of the box designed to let you play a tennis game. I'm not sure how it works at present because there is too much gum in the way, but I'll give it a better look when I review the gum.

Juice C Fruit Color Balls: Though these look a lot like the grape Puchi gum, they are more of a Skittles-type candy fromt he look of things. I have not had these before though so it'll be a new experience. The flavors are pineapple, melon, grape, strawberry, and orange.

Bontan Ame: I had these many times when I lived in Japan and am pleased to see them appear in this box. I reviewed them nine years ago in this blog and they haven't changed a bit in all that time.

Puccho Ibaraking Melon: "Ibaraki" has been made into a verb/gerund for the name of this because it's the name of a prized melong originating in that prefecture. This is a chewy candy reminiscent of a Starburst. It has little flavor spots in it which look to be liquid-like.

Mr. Ito Vanilla Cream Cookies: I've eaten with Mr. Ito before and found his chestnut tart cookies quite appealing. We will see how these simpler cookies are.

Kabaya Mini Melon Pan Cookies: This is my favorite item in the box as I love melon pan and the idea of a cookie that resembles them, even if it's only in appearance, makes me smile. They look like they'd pair well with some tea as they are described as "dry" with a "sugar crust."

Pokemon Wafers: This is a dagashi (kid's sancks) item so I'm guessing it'll be a pretty basic wafer. That doesn't mean it won't be good. I'm a huge fan of wafers, but I'm guessing the main appeal of this is the collectible sticker inside the package.

Ume Sugar Sembei: I had problems deciding if this should be in the savory or sweet section because this has sugar on the outside, but plum flavoring as well. Most people think sembei is salty, but there is a market for sweet ones as well. Though I think this will be of less interest to readers, it's my second most interesting item in the box.

Caplico Mini Cone: As the information sheet for this snack mentions, these cones have been around forever, but I never tried one during my 23 years in Japan. I think one of the reasons was that I usually found them in supermarkets in enormous bags. It'll be interesting to (finally) give this a try and see what the "ice cream" is made up of.

Ice Ramune: This appears to be little sugar candies (like a hard candy), but I'm not sure because it has opaque packaging. The first ingredient is "grape sugar" and the second is erythritol which I'm assuming is the source of the promised "cooling" effect of the candy as that sweetener leaves a cool feeling on the tongue.

Puka Puka Taiyaki Mint: The cooling from this snack will come from the mint. I've had some puka puka taiyaki before, but, unfortunately never reviewed it. I have liked past interations of this very much, but I'm a little concerned about how the chocolate with mint might be presented. I'm also a bit disconcerted by the blue color of the fish as it looks so fake.

Sequoia Chocolate Bar: This is a classic and I have reviewed this iteration (as well as many others) before.

Poiful Drink Mix: Poiful are a type of jelly bean that are a little smaller and chewier than American jelly beans. This presented a problem for me when I reviewed two other varieties in the past because trying to chew something so small generally ended up with me chewing my cheeks. We'll see if I've developed better masticating skills now. This is called a drink mix because these are cola, lemon squash, cider, and white soda flavored.

Cola Up: This is a tray of cola-flavored gummy candies. I have exceptionally low expectations for this snack both because it's dagashi (kid's snacks) and it's cola flavored. In my experience, cola-flavored sweets tend to be terrible because they have an odd flavor (think off-brand cola) and cola without carbonation is rarely a tasty thing.

I am a little disappointed with the heavy emphasis on sweet over savory in this box, but this is a "sweets" box so I can't say it's an unfair distribution. I just am accustomed to more salty items in the mix than this one provided.

As for what I'd take along to the movies, if my puny purse can't take the popcorn, the Poifull and Color Balls are looking pretty snackable.

I hope to review most of the items in this box in the coming weeks!

If you're interested in ZenPop's Japanese snack service, you can reach them here. 

ZenPop date night box - All the Reviews!

Things in life don't always go as planned. I had hoped to do proper reviews of everything in this box, but two people who were important to me died suddenly and unexpectedly shortly after I received it. One of them was my best friend in high school and her husband was flying a small plane and they both died in a crash. The other passed away after years of health issues. I wish I could say the latter was more surprising than the former, but death is always a surprise, even when you should reasonably "expect" it. I just could not get in the mood to talk about snacks.

Though it's been quite some time, I'll give some abbreviated reviews of these items here and then move on to a more cheerful set of reviews of other snacks soon!

Savory:

Mike Shoyu Butter Popcorn: This was my favorite item in the box. The savory notes of the soy sauce were well-rounded out by the buttery flavor, It was also very light and fresh tasting despite being shelf stable popcorn. That being said, I make a lot of my own fresh popcorn and there is a certain quality that is lost when it's been pre-popped and bagged. Though this was very enjoyable, I'm likely to stick to my own popcorn-making, but I have to give them props for managing to introduce soy sauce into the mix in a way that I could not. It's not like I can buy powdered soy sauce seasoning! (very happy sumo rating)

Sweet:

Grape Puchi Gum: As I mentioned in the unboxing, there is a little "game" in the box which you can play, but the game never really functioned well for me. The gum was also disappointing. It had a weird flavor, but I guess it's lucky that it didn't last very long as gum that is designed for kids so rarely does. I'm sorry to say that this neither worked as a novelty nor as a gum for me. I didn't finish the box. (unhappy sumo rating)

Juice C Fruit Color Balls: I liked the texture of these quite a lot. I'm not a big consumer of candy-ball-style candies in the U.S. so I can't compare these well to anything other people may know. I like the crispy texture as well as the fruity flavors, but melon was over-represented relative to some of the flavors that I like better. As melon goes though, these worked a lot better than some things I've had (read on!). (happy sumo rating)

Bontan Ame: I had these many times when I lived in Japan and am pleased to see them appear in this box. I reviewed them nine years ago in this blog and they haven't changed a bit in all that time.

Puccho Ibaraking Melon: I'll be honest and say that I'm not a fan of melon-favored candies in general. I think melon is something which is enjoyed less for it's flavor than for it's overall texture, moisture, and sense of refreshment. Watermelon is the only melon flavor I think really works in candies (and it doesn't work all the time). Cantaloupe and honeydew can often be a disaster as they are often overbearing. In Japanese sweets, it can be especially jarring and cloying and that's how I found these. They weren't sickly sweet, which was a plus, but the melon didn't work for me. (very unhappy sumo rating)

Mr. Ito Vanilla Cream Cookies: It's hard to mess up a crispy cookie with a white chocolate filling and these were good. They were lovely and crispy with a sweet filling (that actually didn't provide much vanilla, but was still good). These are the types of delicate, tea time cookies that were common when I lived in Japan, especially as souvenirs that coworkers. (happy sumo rating)

Kabaya Mini Melon Pan Cookies: This was my favorite item in the box when I got it, but it was my least favorite when I tried it. As I said before, I'm not a fan of melon-flavored sweets, and it may seem strange that I didn't expect this to be melon-flavored until you learn that "melon pan" isn't always melon flavored, but just refers tot he appearance of the crackly top of the bread. Much as conchas (the Mexican version of "melon pan") don't taste like shells, melon pan doesn't taste like melon if you buy it at a bakery. These were not only too odd in their melon flavoring, but the texture didn't live up to expectations. There was supposed to be a "sugar crust," but mine had gone soft. They were just boring and not to my tastes. (unhappy sumo rating)

Pokemon Wafers: It is hard for a wafer-based treat to go wrong with me because I'm a texture junky. This was very pleasant. It was lightly sweet and the chocolate wasn't too intense, but it was good blend of a light, crispy wafer and some lightly sweet soft filling. I like how these types of treats usually aren't overly cloying in Japan. (happy sumo rating)

Ume Sugar Sembei: One of my students once gave me an umeboshi hard candy in Japan. I like umeboshi very much. I like hard candies. I don't like the combination of the vinegary notes of a pickled plum with sugar. The combination of flavors just didn't work for me. This is a nice rice cracker in terms of texture and the base flavor, but the flavor combination didn't suit my tastes. (indifferent sumo rating)

Caplico Mini Cone: Something went amiss with my cone in transit because it had almost no filling. It seemed to have sunken down inside of the cone. Maybe it was meant to be a whipped/aerated chocolate filling that melted in warm conditions? This was good in terms of the flavor combination, but the texture really let me down. I would love to try one that had a proper filling and don't feel I can give it a fair review given that mine seemed to mostly be chocolate-line "cone." (indifferent sumo rating)

Ice Ramune: This tasted mainly like carbonized erythritol. I liked the crunchy texture, but it tasted like sucking on chemicals. I have used erythritol in cooking before so I know its distinctive notes and about it's cooling effect. The flavor was just too artificial for me. (very unhappy sumo rating)

Puka Puka Taiyaki Mint: These taiyaki sweets, of which I've had a few now, are one of my favorite kid's sweets (dagashi). The filling is whipped and airy so it's easy and soft to bite into and has a slightly "creamy" mouth feel as it sits on your tongue. The soft "monaka" (like a cake-style ice cream cone) provides a bland textural contrast for the more flavorful filling. (very happy sumo rating)

Sequoia Chocolate Bar: This is a classic and I have reviewed this iteration (as well as many others) before.

Poiful Drink Mix: These were very tasty "jelly-bean-like" candies. The texture was a bit softer than the jelly beans that I buy in America. There's more of a slightly crisp outer shell to conventional jelly beans and these had a more consistent texture throughout. I liked these, but the flavors referred to alcoholic drinks I'd never had so I can't speak to the authenticity of how they taste to someone who has had those drinks. (happy sumo rating)

Cola Up: Cola as a flavor works even more poorly than melon in my experience and I really did not care for these. I put them in my mouth and soon thereafter spit them out. It tastes like the cheapest off-brand cola you could buy after being boiled down to a stronger flavor. (very unhappy sumo)

I'm sorry to give shorter reviews for these, though I think, given my tendency to be verbose, there are some who might be relieved! ;-) I'll be back with more usual reviews soon.