Daily Yamazaki

Crunky Ball Nude

2011-07-25T22:06:00.000-07:00

In the darker areas of my imagination, Crunky Ball Nude plays itself over and over. Myriad variations on some sort exotic Eastern sex thing. Like the three second blow job or thrusting buttocks loop going over and over and over and over and over the crunk takes hold.

The Crunky Ball disrobed, naked, revealed, stripped bare by bachelors even, all in it's obscene glory. The porn reel continues. A crunky ball is inserted by shining chrome mechanical fingers, the thick wet labia hungrily devouring it. Cut to a woman's face, eyes clamped shut, her red lips grimacing in both pleasure and pain, in mock ecstasy. "Oooh, baby, give me more!" she demands. The ancient mysterious (inscrutable) Chinese pleasure orb. So simple, yet so... magical! Undreamed of sexual pleasure are to be had with the clunky ball. A mandarin robed man with a Fu Manchu moustache observes discreetly from behind a silk curtain.

Or maybe... Crunky Ball is the pseudonym of a devilish or maybe churlish little fellow, like Willy, the unassuming 1920's Brooklynite stumbling into the ladys' bath or Ron Jeremy, that hairy pot-bellied shmoe who manages to peg all the right porn star babes. Hey he's just like me. Wait, I'm better lookin'! Why don't I get the babes? Like he does! Crunky Ball, whew, you look nasty, dude. All naked and shit! I hate you! What you got that I don't? And why can't I stop watching your fuckin' movies? You fucker!

Or maybe... Crunky Ball is a new high. Better than even bath salts. You take wallboard, crunch it up, mix it with Boraxo, spray it with Raid (use the whole can) and boil it in bleach until goo rises to the top. Then you take that goo, form it into balls about an inch around. Cut with baby powder to make it keep its shape. Take the ball and shove it up your ass. Be sure to take off all your clothes or you'll soil them with bodily secretions as the effect takes hold. The high is insane! The addiction immediate. It's a drug that knows what it's about. Oh Crunky Ball, you beguiling master. I will do anything for you! I would even kill for you. Even myself.

But no... I go to the darkest place of all. With the certainty of death - lungs crushed by pressure, water seeping in through all orifices, numbness and then collapse of all bodily functions. And that's what the Crunky Ball Nude makes me think of. Like little underwater mines, these confections are an inside out chocolate ball. Studded with crunchy rice puffs over a soupcon of a chocolate layer over some undefinable cereal center (something like dried white bread). Stripped of any pretense of flavor beyond sweet, likable textures beyond styrofoam, or even candy-ness, they're afterthoughts become objects. The scrapings off the candy room floor turned into another product to sell. A bitter and cynical vision of the future - now - hiding in a layer of sugar. And as I succumb to the deep dark I ask, "Can I have another Crunky Ball? And can you make it nude?"

三角蒸しぱん

2011-07-23T17:22:00.001-07:00

In the tradition of spotted dick and Boston brown bread Japan has its own steamed cakes. Appearing recently in my local (Walmart-owned) Seiyu was this thick and big wedge from our friends at Daily Yamazaki (the baking and convenience store concern). The 三角蒸しぱん (Three-Cornered Steamed Bread), the 黒 (dark) version is a spongy trifle flavored with brown sugar and rum-soaked raisins. Leavened with baking soda, it has that slightly acrid taste that actually complements the mild sweetness. The packaging markets in nostalgia with a simple drawing of the furusato in the corner. And the flavor, even for gaijin like me, takes one back to simpler times and tastes.

Steamed buns and cakes have a long tradition in this neck of the woods, but there's a more modern variation that, again, plucks on the heartstrings of Japanese of a certain age. Seems that in the 20's, some clever entrepreneurs in Kansai had the idea of baking up steamed cakes and sending small armies of underpaid workers out on donkey-drawn carts with strict orders not to return until all the cakes were sold. Fast forward a bit to the post-war years and these same baking concerns revived the ass carts. Even then it was banking on the nostalgia factor.

1955 - A clever songwriting team, Minoru Toyoda and Akira Yano, with hit-making King Records wrote a song, パン売りのロバさん (Bread-selling Mr. Donkey). With the treacly voiced Keiko Kondo, the loping rhythm and hee-hawing horn, they not only had a hit, but a cultural signifier to boot. The song, played loudly, as sellers blanketed the neighborhoods of Osaka and Kyoto, made a mark, probably stronger than Hound Dog (recorded and released the same year), on a young generation of Japanese.

The donkey carts are long gone. A handful of trucks still make the rounds in a few neighborhood in Kansai. But now, sans song, you can buy a much more limited and staler selection of steamed buns at your major grocery chains. Not to celebrate the exploitation of the sorry steamed bun sellers by their baking bosses, but a certain quality, a particularity of the Japanese landscape has truly been lost, replaced with a new marketing scheme that exists solely upon nostalgia and not a single new idea. I wasn't even around for the song and the street sellers, but I kind of miss 'em. But I guess I'll just have to settle for listening to the tune on youtube while munching on a mushipan with a glass of milk. And it I want to really wallow in yet another slice of nostalgia, there's Keiko-san's thick 1960's hit, Song of the Southern Cross to indulge in.

パン売りのロバさん (Bread-selling Mr. Donkey)

1.

ロバのおじさん　チンカラリン
チンカラリンロン　やってくる
ジャムパン　ロールパン
できたて　やきたて　いかがです
チョコレートパンも　あんパンも
なんでもあります　チンカラリン

2.

赤い車は　チンカラリン
チンカラリンロン　ひいてくる
ジャムパン　ロールパン
甘くて　おいしい　いかがです
チョコレートパンに　あんパンに
どちらにしましょう　チンカラリン

3.

いつもにこにこ　チンカラリン
チンカラリンロン　こんにちは
ジャムパン　ロールパン
さあさあ　みなさん　いかがです
チョコレートパンと　あんパンと
はいはいありがと　チンカラリン

4.

晴れたお空に　チンカラリン
チンカラリンロン　鈴がなる
ジャムパン　ロールパン
よい子のおやつは　いかがです
チョコレートパンも　あんパンも
なんでもあります　チンカラリン

Song of the Southern Cross

復刻堂森永ホットケーキミルクセーキ

2011-07-22T04:28:00.000-07:00

Sometimes the idea is so grotesque, so faux retro and so insanely clever and good that you can only gape in wonder, shove your 120 yen into the vending machine slot, grab that can just as it drops and pop it open and go ohmygod this is so amazing because it smells and tastes so much like butter and syrup - even though it really doesn't have any of that stuff in it - and it takes you back to an ur-pancake state of bliss. You close your eyes and all those Krusteaz dreams, short stacks at IHOP after all night drinking binges, Mom lovingly servin' 'em up before sending you off to school with a kiss on your forehead, early morning breakfasts - we're talking before the sun comes up - with Dad filppin' flapjacks over the fire during car camping fishing trips, leisurely mornings - with lots of sweet sticky syrup - and your lover, it all comes back. The only thing missing is sausage. So here we're presented with Morinaga's "Reprint Hall" hotcake flavor milk shake. It's not a milk shake in the North American sense. Not so thick and ice creamy, but this baby's packed with enough different milk powders, cream, eggs, caramel color and emulsifiers to pack a mighty diary wallop of a casein rush. Coupled with a perfectly attuned Aunt Jemima flavor simulacra - no maple here, we're talkin' caramel colored sugar syrup - who needs to go to Denny's or any other places in Japan that sell pancakes - at a tremendous cost, I might add, since I'm adding endless clauses to all my sentences anyway. Morinaga's made the claim that by reprinting a nostalgic Showa era image of pancakes on the can they're bringing back something of the good old days, but pancakes just kind of remain timeless and nostalgic no matter when they've been photographed. It's all signification. On a box, on a poster, on a can, on a T-shrit, a pic of three (it's always three) pancakes with thick golden wedges of butter and molten bronze cascades of luscious syrup, as Pavlov suggests, just kinda makes you go all soft and gooey. Don't it? So this crazy hotcake essence in a can showed up about a year ago and still remains in a few choice vending machines around Tokyo. I've made a note of them, but I'm keeping 'em secret. This stuff is like pancake crack and I want it all for myself.

ブラックメロンパン

2010-11-16T18:47:00.000-08:00

I did a double-take when I first saw the Afro Tanaka Black Melon Pan (ブラックメロンパン) in the packaged bread and pastry section of my local Mini Mart. The cellophane sleeve had an illustrated image of a moderately Afro-Japanese man sporting a very big afro. There was no printed ink in the afro section so the roughly textured surface of the black pastry below filled in the color, shape and feel of retro hairstyle. A hairstyle that occasionally makes its comebacks.

My first thought was "this is some sick joke." A little research revealed that the character in question is Afro Tanaka, a manga character invented in 2002 by Masaharu Noritsuke. Afro Tanaka is a disaffected high school student who gets involved relatively boring and mildly funny situations. His afro remains unexplained. It's what makes him different than his peers. Whether this is slightly racist type of negritude or merely observation on the part of Noritsuke also remains unexplained. The manga, like the hairstyle makes its occasional comebacks.

This design and promotion are somehow linked to Mini Mart's 30th anniversary. Is Mini Mart actively working to break down stereotypes and promote acceptance? Japan is notoriously racist even as it consumes and reinvents everything it can from other cultures. One is unsure of Afro Tanaka's racial heritage. Is he mixed blooded? Is he just playing at blackness? Is it natural? And does it matter?

No matter, the cleverness of the packaging is arresting, The product itself less so.

Melon pan, or what one may call melon bread, is a ubiquitous staple of Japanese bakeries. Though it is often melon flavored, the name actually comes from the sugary crunchy cookie-like dough that thinly covers the lump of sweet cake that makes up the melon pan. The surface gets a leathery melon rind look. Black melon pan is merely a pastry of the same sort with a black sugar coating. In the Afro Tanaka version, the black "melon rind" covers a sweet/bland chocolate cake which encloses a standard chocolate custard. All in all, it's sweet, a little chocolatey, and not much else.

The current Mini Mart promotion also includes the Afro Tanaka Onigiri Bomb (アフロ田中ばくだんおにぎり) - a black rice cake, again with a clever package. As to what's inside and what it tastes like... I'm off to the Mini Mart right now!

北海道チーズ蒸しケーキ

2010-06-08T18:44:00.001-07:00

The Daily Yamazaki company (from which this blog gleefully and illegally has stolen its name) really doesn't make very good baked goods. Jumping on to the corporate food bandwagon in the immediate post-war period, they, like Wonder and Langendorf in the USA cornered the market on cheap generic bread products (shokupan and various cakes and sweet breads). As tastes changed over the years and desire for better baked goods claimed the market, their flagship bakery outlets lost even their middle-class glamour and the handful that one can find around Tokyo are best left passed by. Like all good megacorporations, the company has expanded into other areas, and they are even trying to compete against much better chain bakeries with their Vie de France outlets - probably the worst of the semi-French bakeries in Japan.

But their products do show up packaged upon shelves throughout the nation. And one in particular has become a bit of guilty pleasure for me.

The Hokkaido Steamed Cheesecake (北海道チーズ蒸しケーキ) is one of the most beguiling and strange things that pass for normal here. In truth, it's not really that good, but like a bad habit, I crave it.

Here's what it is. The most perplexing sponge cake. It tends to shear when broken or bitten in to. How do they do that? The "branded" reverse outline of Hokkaido on the top has a vaguely cheesy edge to it. Slightly funky. The steaming of the dough tends to make it a bit dense, but not quite as dense as cheesecake as we know it. Yet not quite fluffy. Oh, and it's sweet and filled with calories.

Research has come up goose eggs on whether this is a real variation of something traditionally made in Hokkaido or something made up in the laboratories of Daily Yamazaki in those heady years immediately after the war, when the US was flooding Japan with government cheese, flour and sugar. In my imagination, a certain Japanese ingenuity with the products at hand created this monster that can still be frightening and a friend of children after all these years.

Green Cola

2010-05-26T23:48:00.000-07:00

Lifting the logo from the real thing, Asahi Green Cola positions itself in the market as a "natural" product with a sort of "trendy" appeal. Of course when your main barker is a popular, though somewhat long in tooth, J-Pop star, one is convinced that the marketers at Asahi have no idea what the kids are into. Perhaps the marketing is toward boomers, who probably also don't care about Kiyosuke Himoro either.

As for it's green-ness, the bottle states "For you natural life" and a bit below "'Asahi's Green Cola' is made from selected raw materials derived from plants such as fruits, with cola's own dynamism and briskness." What's inside? High fructose grape sugar, sugar, lemon juice, malt extract, and flavors. I suppose in the literal sense, the marketing is somewhat honest. Still, it's a bit of a shill.

As for the taste, it's very light in flavor, high in sugar. In the world of cola, there's the sugary maltiness of Coke, the citrus edge of Pepsi, and the pure kid's sugar fantasy of RC. This one approaches RC.

It just hit the market a couple of days ago. Between the US big boys, Kirin's Cola Shock and god knows what else shoves it's way onto the shelves, Green Cola's got a long row to hoe. Still it's better than Coke Zero. At least it's drinkable. And the big Zero seems to be having a fine shelf life.

Green Cola

2010-05-26T01:48:00.001-07:00

Asahi just joined the cola wars by releasing their Green Cola（グリーンコーラ）May 25, with a full on ad blitz. They are promoting this cola as soda made from natural sources, with zero colours, zero caffeine, zero preservatives and Asahi Brewery's black malt. Hmm, sounds a little zero-ish. Perhaps they're going up against Coke Zero for the nothingness and Pespsi Baobab, with a sort of "green" branding. I haven't found it in the stores yet, but will be sure to give it a taste someday soon.

That 50-something Brian Ferry-ish guy in the poster is Kyosuke Himoro, J-pop star with the band Boøwy.

ビーノ・うま塩味

2010-05-20T23:03:00.000-07:00

Here's an article from Just-food, an online food newsletter, from May 4, 2005.

"Genetically modified soybeans could hold the key to cure hair loss, say a team of top researchers at Japan's Kyoto University.

Led by soy and health specialist Masaaki Yoshikawa, professor of food science at Kyoto University, the team used genetic engineering technology to incorporate into the soybean a substance derived from egg whites that promotes hair growth.

After feeding the GM soy to mice that had lost hair after receiving chemotherapy the team concluded that it promotes hair growth, helps prevent hair loss caused by chemotherapy and encourages hair to grow back faster than normal. Despite public opposition the Japanese government is now granting licences to GM crop growers."

Apart from the genuine bad reporting - Who funded the research? What were the parameters of the test? What did the research say exactly? - the fact that this tidbit became some sort of isn't-that-fun news and was allowed to sully cyberspace is more important. The damage has been done. There's another chip in the wall by an apologist for GM food. Let's give another point to corporate food. Just remember that name, Masaaki Yoshikawa, torturer of rats, pseudo-scientist, corporate tool. And if you see his name associated with anything food wise, suspect the worst.

At this point, Japan imports GM soybeans from the USA, but only for non-human consumption. I bet the big boys are chomping at the bit for a GM entry into this lucrative market. Soybeans are huge (so to speak) in Japan.

They are one of the basics of Japanese cuisine.

Case in point is Tohato's ビーノ(Beano) line of soy bean cheetos. These baby's are some sort of soy bean and whatever's left in the chemical sink slush, extruded and fried to either a styrofoam peanut consistency (all chewy and melty) or to a crisp crackle. They offer the choice. Apart from straight ol' soybean flavor, they also offer shrimp, black pepper and nori variations.

The version sampled was the basic soybean and salt variation. Fairly bland, chock-full of umami and lightly salty at the end of the taste, they were moderately satisfying, but not quite the thing they were alluding to - fresh edamame, steamed and salted. One of Japan's finest treats.

Edamame is a classic accompaniment to drinking. And Beano products are marketed to go with beer. With their jejune and inoffensive flavor, their saltiness or sharp tastes, they make do when the real thing just ain't available. Their commercials push this idea with a catchy song sung and juvenile (broaching the offensive) subject matter.

The round-faced funny guy in the commercials is Asei Kobayashi, sometime actor and commercial jingle and songwriter. He (and co-composer, Micky Yoshino), though, may be more famous for scoring the nutty 1977 psychotronic classic, Hausu. Here's a scene from it.

ホームランバー

2010-05-13T22:51:00.001-07:00

The Japanese passion for baseball is famous. By 1920, Japan had gone professional. Living in Tokyo, I guess I must be a Yomiuri Giants fan, but I'm certainly fonder of the names Orix Buffaloes and Hokkaido Nippon-Ham Fighters. Of course, Nippon-Ham is a giant meat packer and the cross marketing potential of tagging its name on a ball team (not necessarily the best) means automatic advertising whenever a sportscaster or casual observers even mention the name. And of course, Nippon-Ham is one of the worst ham products available in Japan.

But we're talking about ice cream today. Specifically Mieto's ホームランバー (Home Run Bar). They're celebrating their 50th anniversary this year, so the fancified their package, made the bars a little bigger and costlier. They're still a deal. And the new plastic package pales in comparison to the old-fashioned foil wrapper on their original product. I imagine that once this promotion is over, they will go back to their very cool old design.

The bar itself offers nothing new or better than your average vanilla ice cream covered with a thin vanilla or chocolate fondant. Their cheapness reflects in their taste. Not much to write home about. But for nostalgia value alone, they have that sort of kid-blandness that brings me back to some unspecified youth in some baseball-loving country and the simple pleasures of a life that never happened. By the 60s, when this bar came out, baseball wasn't the national pastime, merely a reflection of it. Long gone were the days of the Babe. Now, it's more boring than golf, more corporate than ever and only the rich can afford to go to games. At least, for less than a buck (or 100 yen) you enjoy a Home Run Bar. And if you get a specially marked stick you can get another one for free.

ポテトチップス和風ステーキ味醤油＆おろし仕立て

2010-05-09T22:42:00.000-07:00

Returning from a recent trip to Spain, I was more than a bit dispirited at the Japanese food landscape. Apart from the beautiful and delicious food that permeates the Iberian peninsula, it was particularly noteworthy to notice that the iron hand of 7-11 has still to land in Spain. Convenience stores are a anomaly. In fact in many towns one is hard pressed to even find one. Of course there are large supermarkets proffering the same old same old - a quality cut above most stores in the USA or Japan - but between the mom and pop stores and the endless cafes, meat markets, bakeries and speciality shops, quality foods and drinks abound.

Vegetables, even in the off season of March were plentiful, robust, colorful and cheap - particularly compared to the anemic and overpriced greenery that gets sold at the yayoias of Tokyo.

Fish in Spanish markets is clear eyed fresh and most often de-scaled at purchase and cut to order. It's a far cry from the sad shrinkwrapped of unidentifiable fish protein that one finds at the fish markets of Tokyo. And this is Japan ferchrissakes! The ravages of industrial food production and distribution has certainly made for acceptance of the least in this neck of the woods. Despite promotion. Despite culture. And don't get me started on the beef.

Or maybe I should.

Japanese beef may have been good at one time. I don't know. I wasn't there. Cruising a Japanese meat market I still marvel at the amazingly marbled cuts of Kobe and wagyu beef. The few times I've had the opportunity to sample these good looking things, I've been sorely disappointed. Insipid at best. It even makes American beef taste good, though it's probably not as dangerous for you.

I've had good, dare I say great, beef in Japan. In Hida-Takayama, a respected beef producing region where the restaurants specialize in the local provender. But in Tokyo, no. Too far away (actually only a few hours from the main beef providers of Japan). But production and distribution on this island have become so abstract and industrial that even their most famous products - after god knows what they do on the farm, freezing and storing for god knows how long, and then god know what happens until it gets to the store - are more famous because of their promotion, rather than their quality.

But enough of my screed. This is supposed to be about fast food. So, today I bought a bag of ポテトチップス和風ステーキ味醤油＆おろし仕立て (Potato Chips - Japanese Style Steak Flavor - Prepared with Shoyu and Grated Daikon). Yamayoshi, who specialize in meat-flavored chips are responsible for this one. The package, in Engrish, proudly emphasizes "Wafu Beef" (i.e. Japanese-style beef) and states "We always produce japanese Style Steak taste for all customer's smiles." They sucked. Salty, thin and a little soggy. They actually had a "beef" taste. But it was like the taste of old grease. You know the one. The one that means a mean case of heartburn. But what should one expect from Japanese beef. Not much, these days.

And as for fast food, I believe that the best of it is the stuff that comes most quickly from the farm to the seller, rather than from the convenience store to the mouth.

ポテトチップス明太マヨネーズ味

2010-02-08T20:58:00.000-08:00

You've got to love a culture that eats cod roe. In Greece, cod roe is increasingly used for taramasolata, the traditional dip originally and still sometimes made with carp roe. In Sweden, one can get cod roe in a tube. Mighty tasty squeezed onto a peice of knacke. And in Japan it seems to be everywhere. Plain (鱈子/tarako) or spicy (明太子/mentaiko), it shows up on many a dinner plate, either served with a side of mayo or in one of the most incredible crossover dishes ever, pasta with tarako sauce. And now in chips.

However, one must remain a little skeptical when Calbee's Mentai-Mayonaise Flavor Potato Chips (ポテトチップス明太マヨネーズ味) ingredients include mentaiko and mayonaise powder. Why, in the name of absolute control do industrial food companies insist on powdering, agglomerating or otherwise changing the basic nature of foodstuffs until they are nothing but unrecognizable additives that add up, ultimately, to a much lesser experience. And perhaps a little bit of a bad taste in one's mouth.

Calbee's recent offering in its Paripari (パリパリ/crisp) line of so-called adult flavors is neither all that reminiscent of mentaiko nor mayo. The chips themselves are decently fried super-slim slices of real potato. The flavor additives seem to be a bit of an afterthought. A slight hint of cod roe, a whiff of mayo and a longer lasting mild burn of hot pepper. But if you're looking for a real mentaiko experience, leave the chips on the shelf and go for something like mentaiko pasta.

Here's my recipe. It's about as simple as one gets

Mentaiko Cream Pasta

Serves 2

linguini or spaghetti

200 - 300 grams mentaiko

2 T unsalted butter

2 T finely chopped onion

250 ml cream (butterfat content to your desire)

shoyu to taste

shredded nori

finely chopped negi (Japanese leek)

Bring a large pot of water to a boil and add pasta. Cook for appropriate doneness.

Meanwhile, melt the butter in a skillet. Add finely chopped onions. Cook 2-3 minutes until soft. Add cream and bring to a low simmer while stirring with a whisk. Reduce cream to about 1/2. Scrape mentaiko from its connective membrane and add to reduced cream and onion mixture and mix until evenly distributed through the mixture. Add shoyu to taste.

In a large bowl, mix with cooked pasta. Transfer to serving plates or platter and garnish liberally with nori and chopped negi.

This can be done in about 9 - 13 minutes. It's that easy!

KitKat ジンジャーエール味

2009-12-02T17:49:00.000-08:00

Nestle Japan is justifiably famous for the endless flavors of KitKat that they foist upon the market. The well seems to be endless for the whacky food technologists that they hire. Kudos must be given to the corporate giant for at very least, hiring some creatively insane people. Forget about the sins of their tireless marketing of infant formula in the third world at the expense of undermining traditional nursing (we're talking breastfeeding here) and possible and probable contamination from unsafe water sources and unsanitary preparation conditions. Forget about melamine in your milk, slave labor harvested chocolate and frankenfoods. We're talking pure mindless celebration of consumer culture and nutty capitalism.

So, of course, tempted by constant novelty and having 100 yen sitting in my pocket, I had to buy the KitKat Ginger Ale Flavor (KitKat ジンジャーエール味). Can anyone resist? Cracking open the foil-wrapped inner package, an unmistakable whiff of ginger ale filled my nose. Wow! The scent soon dissipated. First bit revealed a lemony white chocolate amidst the familiar crunchy wafer. The ginger itself was overwhelmed. Though they use real ginger in the product, they also use real lemon powder. And as for ginger ale - as suspect as contemporary Canada Dry and Schweppes may be - you really don't need lemon. However as a lemony white chocolate concoction it ain't too bad.

A quick perusal of the Nestle Japan revealed that apart from the strawberry and blueberry cheesecake and apple flavors, hitting the market are some traditional Japanese flavored KitKats - wasabi, kinako (toasted soybean flour), and sweet potato. Plus shoyu, miso and wasabi! I can hardly wait!

Check out the new flavors here - http://www.rakuten.ne.jp/gold/e-nestle/kitkat.html

大樹の小枝

2009-11-30T20:54:00.001-08:00

The rather daunting English on the package of this white chocolate candy bar announces it as "A White Big Tree of Koeda Chocolate." In actuality it's Taisho no Koeda (大樹の小枝) - the twig of a big tree. Not necessarily a white tree nor from some mythical little place called Koeda, but made of white chocolate with cashews and bits of langue du chat (cat's tongue cookies) that makes for a quite pleasing confection - not unlike a high class Nestle's Crunch bar, but a lot better. And at a mere 100 yen a pop, a contemporary value.

About 35 some years ago, Morinaga, introduced the original Taisho no Koeda, short and uneven pencil diameter stubs of milk chocolate roughly mixed with nuts and stuff. These are the original twigs. They even looked like 'em. White chocolate versions came later. Now they've got the bars. Considerably larger than your average twig, but not quite stumps - let's say branches - they're fully packed for modern consumption, worthy of a few healthy chaws.

The white chocolate of the bar sampled, though not as complex as a good dark chocolate, had a fine mouthfeel, almost buttery and with the liquory tastes that gives good white chocolate its elegance. Coupled with the light nutty taste and gentle crunch of cashews and the vague give of cat's tongues, it's quite a beautiful bar, even if it looks a bit lumpy.

A few kudos must be given for the commercial. It's haphazard direction and editing, along with the absurd premise and striking situation is a grabber. The man in the middle of a ravenous dog and hungry spy is a strange place to put the potential consumer, but isn't advertising - and what advertisers want you to desire - basically about fear?

Cratz メキシカンサルサ＆チキン

2009-11-15T16:04:00.000-08:00

From the people who brought you Pocky Sticks, Glico, a more adult version, made for scarfing down with beer, Cratz works a similar paradigm - crunchy baked dough cylinders with flavor coatings. Cratz, though are little hard biscotto (twice-cooked) pellets with intense seasonings, mostly built around salt - and thus demanding a good swig of beer or shochu to wash it all away. The Cratz flavor pellets always come with a few toasted almonds in every package. Pocky Sticks, on the other hand, are delicate wands with dipped in sweet fondants (mainly chocolate) made to indulge the sweet tooth.

For what it's worth, both Cratz and Pocky products are true winners in the junk food sweepstakes, Pocky Sticks actually having become a cultural signifier of Japanese sweets.

Cratz's flagship products come in a few basic flavor combos - Spice Cheese and Pepper Bacon being the year-round favorites. And then there are changing flavors to keep the consumer interested in the product. Hitting the racks recently was Mexican salsa and chicken (メキシカンサルサ＆チキン). Among the ingredients listed to give you that truly Mexican taste are chicken extract powder (can we say bullion cubes?) dextrin (can we say hydrolyzed starch?) salsa seasonings (?) and bacon extract (now we're talkin' Mexican!).

In endless variations the strange and novel concoctions that come out of food labs throughout the world, this one vaguely hits the mark. Granted, the Japanese really don't get Mexican, but a vague hint of jalepeno (most likely chemically created) with the slightest hint of tomato and plenty of salt, brought back vague recollections of some some sort of Mexican bizzarro world of Doritos, Old El Paso Taco Seasoning and Pace Chunky Salsa. But wait! That's what most estadounidenses think about when think of Mexican food! Maybe the Japanese food scientists hit the mark spot on.

And of course, any product that signs on Matsumoto Hitoshi, the comic genius responsible for the films Dianipponjin and Symbol, is definitely cratzin' the zeitgeist.

ドリトス　ウィンターチーズ味

2009-11-12T19:36:00.000-08:00

Fritolay Japan, like Kit Kat Japan, likes to have it's fun creating novel seasonal variations in order to keep the brand "fresh," even if the ideas are a bit stale. Case in point is Doritos Winter Cheese Flavor (ドリトス　ウィンターチーズ味) chips. Pringles Japan makes its own winter cheese product too, but since Pringles isn't food, it's not in the purview of this blog.

What we got are your basic Dorito corn chips cut into cookie-cutter evergreen tree shapes, dusted with generic cheese powder and a few other taste bud abusing chemicals. From the look of the package, there's a definite holiday theme - snow flakes, a Christmas wreath, a gold star not unlike the stars that front Chinese army issue Mao caps - preferably the big thick winter ones - and a conceptual cheese (white rind for the Japanese proclivity toward soft creamy ripening cheeses and big holes to say Swiss) that's all wintery in look.

The question, one may ask, is what does the pairing of cheese and winter mean? Is winter the time one should be eating cheese? Getting that extra butterfat to keep warm. Is there some tradition yet to become manifest of the Christmas cheese? Perhaps nice gooey cheeses left in Christmas stocking by the fireplace? Or perhaps a particularly ripe and stinky cheese as a replacement for hard black coal to be put in naughty children's sabots? Or perhaps a large wheel of brie as a replacement for the Christmas turkey or ham?

Traditions have changed hugely in the age of advertising. Santa as a fat bearded guy all dress in red can be traced to Coca Cola. Valentine's Day seems to exist only because of the flower and chocolate businesses. So, why not a big cheese to remember the Big Cheese's birth. After all, isn't that what the wise men brought for Him?

島豚ジャーキー

2009-07-20T04:35:00.000-07:00

You won't find this at your usual konbini - unless you're traveling in Okinawa. I discovered this one in a wonderful little Okinawan store/cafe, Okinawa Souko, along the Pal Center shoutengai south of Asagaya on the west side of Tokyo.

Island Pork Jerky (島豚ジャーキー) is the product at hand. Jerky exists in many traditional cultures. The modern word for it comes from Mexico, from the Quechua. Ethiopia has a version of it made with either lamb or beef. But one of the commonalities of these places is dryness and plenty of sun. Neither of which exist much in Japan. And above all, hot and moist is the catchword for the Japanese islands, particularly the Ryukyu Islands (Okinawa Prefecture), the southernmost chain of greater Nippon. Not particularly good or safe weather for drying and preserving meat products.

However, here we are in the 21st century and traditional or not, Japan does have the technology.

Pork jerky makes so much sense. It's surprising that I've never seen it in the US market. This wonderful little package of slightly smokey salty dried pork goodness comes from an Okinawan producer, Asahi. They're a small company that also makes a black pork jerky, pigs' ears jerky, chicken gizzard jerky, among a host of fine products munchable with ice cold Orion beer or awaomori. Perfect for a hot and sweltering summer day.

Cola Shock

2009-07-13T15:58:00.000-07:00

It was only a matter of time. Since its invention, cola has been a favorite mixer with any number of liquors. Note the continuing popularity of Cuba libres, Jack and Coke and the kalimotxo (a favorite of Basque youth - equal parts coke and red wine). Kirin has cut to the quick with premix Cola Shock (コーラショック), a chuggable mix of vodka and cola.

In an ever competitive market for canned liquors, Japanese booze giants are constantly filling the drink aisles of konbinis and grocery stores with the next seasonal brew or chu hai, often competing with their own brands. But in this consumer paradise called Japan, there must be something new all the time. It keeps the economy going and consumer consuming.

Cola Shock is reminiscent of RC. Quite a bit on the sweet side, but with a big cola taste. And with 5% booze a pretty potent little number. Of course, cola fans have their favorites and rarely is there any crossover in brand loyalty. Coke drinkers drink Coke. Pespi folks love their Pepsi. Does anybody still drink RC? No matter, Cola Shock could well become a favorite for underage drinkers and let's-get-drunk-'til-we-puke partiers. It goes down pretty easy and wallops with a potent sugar and alcohol rush.

エアイン　チョコバー　バナナ

2009-07-05T02:53:00.000-07:00

The somewhat unwieldy name, Air-in-choc bar (エアイン　チョコバー) and the design by committee package belie the fact that this frozen confection is one of the best things to be found in the freezer cases of Sunkus and Circle K stores throughout Japan this rainy season.

Chocolate and bananas, a classic combo of New World and Asian flavors, far too often falls a bit flat. Under-ripe bananas coated in insipid chocolate are a staple at matsuri stalls. Even the frozen chocolate bananas on a stick from their supposed birthplace at Newport Beach, CA just aren't that good. So, it's a real pleasure to see theory and praxis come together, revivifying a dwindling belief in what should have been assumed.

It's even made me a bit less skeptical of the uses of food "technology."

Here's what makes this thing so good. A wonderful fondant of dark chocolate wrapping a thin layer of banana sorbet (using real bananas!), all around a core of the air-in-choco - a sort of cocoa-y crumbly frozen confection. There are a brilliant mix of textures, tastes and basically a lot of chocolate. It's great!

The Circle K (name licensed from the Canadian convenience store company, Alimentation Couche-Tarde)/Sunkus empire, a division of UNY Co. LTD, markets it under the UK+KACHIAL brand. It seems to be manufactured by Akagi, though there's no mention of it on their website. And God knows how many other corporate folks have their finger in this ice cream pot. But, God bless 'em this time around.

Pepsi Shiso - ペプシ　じそ

2009-07-01T03:45:00.000-07:00

Pepsi's been trotting out different summer promotions in Japan for the last couple of years. In 2007 they released Pespsi Iced Cucumber (too bad I missed that one!) and last year, Blue Hawiian. They've also been flaunting the genuinely undrinkable Pepsi Nex - a zero calorie soda designed to get market share from Coke Zero. I'm completely down with Chavez in banning Zero from the Venezuelan market. The revolution was not won on asapartame. I hope he does the same if and when Nex tries to conquer Venezuela.

But in a continuing travesty of trying to keep Japanese consumers interested in their market imperialism, Pepsi recently launched Pepsi Shiso on Japan for their summer enjoyment (?).

What it is is an electric green, artificially sweetened and shiso-flavored analog that gives a very strange blast of funky shisoness* and metallic punch at first sip, turning into a heavier and heavier drinking task as one tries to get through the 500 ml pet bottle. As it is, after a couple days, I could only get through about 1/2 the bottle.

I gave up today.

* Known in the west as perilla, shiso is strong herb - a bit minty, with a slight cilantro edge and a long taste. It comes in green or red leaves. It's used as a garnish for sushi, for flavoring sakes and sochus, and is a prime ingredient in umeboshi, the wonderful pickled "plums" that are a staple in the world of Japanese garnishes.

ベビースタードデカイ焼そば夏しお

2009-06-15T04:20:00.000-07:00

Oyatsu seems to the company that takes the most pride in the recycling of seconds from the factory floor and turning it into junk food. On their website they happily promote the concept of "re-born" food.

Their big brand of packaged snackables is the Baby Star line of chips. Reforming and repackaging the remains from the manufacture of their instant ramen they launched the brand in 1959. From that time, they've taken this highly successful "noodle" chip, adding different "seasonal" flavors to keep consumers coming back over and over again for more.

ベビースタードデカイ焼そば夏しお (Baby Star Dotekai Yakisoba Natsu Shio) is an early summer rainy season chip that hit the shelves in June. Little sailor boy, Captain Beichan - a variation on their Beichan and Bichan vaguely Chinese kewpie doll mascots - smiles from the package, announcing a world of wet summer fun.

The chips themselves are thin little ribbons of crisp fried wheat noodle dough - this one gussied up with the vague taste of squid. All things considered, they're innocuous enough, crispy crunchy, not too salty, just squiddy enough and fairly enjoyable.

Japanese food culture has been brilliant in the recycling of food products. Look at the humble soybean, for example, and the myriad variation on this legume. The process of making tofu leaves several by-products - tonyu (the milk), okara (the leftover pulp) and yuba (the skin) - all adding more to an already remarkable cuisine. It's no wonder one of Oyatsu's main marketing ideas is in the idea of using everything, leaving no waste - which fits perfectly into national self-identification by the Japanese of mottainai (もったいない) culture, the culture of thrift.

MR．BRAIN　脳トレパン

2009-05-28T16:48:00.000-07:00

The inspirations of co-branding can take the consumer down strange and winding roads. One of the more absurd, and thus ultimately clever ideas has come from the folks who inspired the title of this blog, the Yamazaki Baking Company.

The article in question is the Mr. Brain Nou Torepan (MR．BRAIN　脳トレパン). As far as I can tell, there's a clever bit of punstery going on with the name. In my own misreading it looks like MR. BRAIN brain trepan, or Mr. Brain's brain core (the meaning of trepan). But of course, pan means bread, so trepan and pan become a bit conflated and one's left stumped and mystified as to what's really going on here.*

The bun actually looks a little like the remains of a cranial trepanning. A disc of bread with a bumpy brain-like texture on the top. As if you got a decent cross section of skull material with a soupçon of cortex attached. Inside a a layer of caramel chocolate cream topped and another of whipped cream. And beyond that is the addition of DHA (docosahexaenoic acid), a popular fad chemical that supposed to be good for memory retention and a counter for alzheimer's disease. All well and good. But why?

The why is the co-branding with a new TV show, MR. BRAIN. Simultaneously with the release of the bun last month was the premiere of the new TV show, in which TV superstar and pop group SMAP member, Takuya Kimura, plays a gigolo who suffers a brain injury and becomes a crime-solving sleuth. Both the TV program and the junk food seem a little half-baked in concept, but in the first couple weeks of being on air, MR. BRAIN got upwards of 25% viewership. Smarter than I thought!

There are no records of the popularity of the baked good - it's a rather cloying and heavy puck of dough and filler - but I imagine after buying one for a sample, one will be a little smarter the next time walking down the grocery store aisle and will reach for something else instead.

* It has been brought to my attention by Rachel (see comment below - Thanks!), that yes, I really did misread the meaning of name of this product. It actually means "Mr. Brain brain training bread." However, I do like to think that some serious double-entendre was in action while they were deciding what to call the damn thing.

エルビーナタデココホワイト

2009-05-26T18:38:00.000-07:00

In 1993, with a push toward the slimming effect (no calories) and a specious claim for cancer curing properties, nata de coco, a jellied food product produced by the bacterial fermentation of coconut water and carrageenan (click here to find out how it's made), became an overnight fad in the Japanese market. Junk food producers fell all over themselves making drinks, desserts and what-have-you for a huge market.

This boom created a bump in the relatively small and independent producers market in the Philippines, where nata de coco originates. The demand from Filipino producers was too much to meet in 1993. But money was made. Production was capitalized for the ever increasing sales. It was boom times for poor coconut farmer and the smart entrepreneur. By 1994, the bottom fell out of the market. The fickle Japanese fad consumer had already moved on to something new. The poor Filipino farmer returned to being poor.

Years later, memories of the big nato de coco times linger in a handful of seasonal products that hit the shelves. This May, エルビーナタデココホワイト (LB Nato de Coco White) can be found at the local Family Mart. It's an unremarkable cooler that has a yogurt-y Calpissy milky quality with little floaters of nato de coco. Oh and there's aloe in it too.

Nato de coco - what can we call it? a neotraditional food product - itself seems to be a bit of overkill on what plain old coconut meat can do. But I would imagine, in the Philippines, its production is probably built around preservation. I'm sure nato de coco lasts a bit longer in the larder than a freshly opened coconut.

Still the cynicism of marketing, in this case, the fading memory of a so-called health product over and over again. - adding aloe, adding yogurt, adding whatever the fad of the day is into the same old same old - is endless and yet another disposable product appears and will disappear from the shelves. It's the modern cycle of the seasons.

カフェインスナック　キャラメルマキアート味

2009-05-18T01:10:00.000-07:00

In general, even when reaching for a novel snack food, the primary function of eating plays an important role. We eat for nutrition. Corporate food does its best to destroy and then re-add nutritive value to its products. Ultimately though, even with the most frivolous of junk food concoctions, we grab it because we're hungry. What drives one, generally to choose one chip over another, is that we know or think we might enjoy the taste of one over the other.

The concept of food as delivery system has been on corporate and "scientific" minds for several decades now. The affront of all sports drinks (delivering antioxidants, electrolytes and things you didn't know - guess what? you didn't - need), cigarettes and other products that serve as delivery systems of nicotine and beverages that deliver caffeine (the massive misstep of Jolt Cola comes to mind). Products (I dare not call them foods) that make no pretense of delivering even a hint of nutrition, let alone a pleasurable taste sensation keep rearing their ugly heads in the aisles and refrigerator cases of the konbini.

As a rule of thumb, I usually stay away from these products, that offer neither comfort, nutrition, nor satisfaction. However, every once and a while something so horribly conceived, so against the idea that humans learn from mistakes and there is something real called progress, crawls onto the shelf (the bottom, this time) and the world must be reminded, once again, that the forces of evil are still working day and night to make this world a lesser place.

The snack in question is the カフェインスナック　キャラメルマキアート味 (Caffeine Snack Caramel Machiato Flavor). Deer pellet sized corn puffs, lighter than air (just so one has no illusion that there's anything substantial about these), with a light dusting of mildly acrid coffee powder make for a taste sensation that is truly awful. The snack boasts about 150kg of caffeine per pop. In English on the package it says " Vitalize your day with Caffeine Snack. Caffeine increases your performance, concentration and alertness." A perfect snack for a perfect worktron. More caffeine! More output! There is N-O-T-H-I-N-G even remotely redeemable about this snack. These hateful things also come in macha latte flavor. The corporate giant responsible for this is Frito Lay Japan. Nuff said? Frito Lay has managed to demean potato chips, tortilla chips and nearly everything else it has laid its filthy hands on. Basta ya!

That said, I think I'll grab a cup of coffee and catch what MARISAnoele, who's been posting her video reviews of Japanese junk food on YouTube, has to say about カフェインスナック　キャラメルマキアート味.

LacLac

2009-05-03T15:56:00.000-07:00

The unholy alliance of Calpis (they of the badly named lactic acid and milk-based soft drink) and Ajinomoto (the MSG kings) have been flooding the market with yet another strangely named beverage, LacLac (ラクラク). In Japanese, that's pronounced as "rakuraku." Perfect nonsense syllables for a perfectly nonsensical drink. Ajinomoto actually bought Calpis a few years ago and this co-branded effort is one of the first results of the absurd levels that design, development and marketing can descend to.

Something of a sports drink*, a health drink and a sort of playful Pepsi generation-ish quencher, it is certainly none of those. What it is is a watery, appley and artificially sweetened something-or-other. Ostensibly a mix of good lactic acid ferment apple juice, phosphorus and other healthy stuff, it's a bit of a stretch in justification of this sugar water.

The company press release boasts of its ingredients coming either from Turkey, Germany, Poland, Austria, Ukraine, Brazil and/or Israel. This faux internationalism is merely about the reach of capital. Instead of making a coherent statement about taste, quality, nutrition or the simple fact of thirst-quenching, LacLac, even in its Babel-esque nonsensical name, remains hubristic, absurd and ultimately a product that will go the way of Pepsi Clear and New Coke into the dustbins of history. The sooner, the better.

Konishi Manami, disposable television and film starlet flacks for LacLac

*The subject of "sports drinks" and the triumph of marketing artificial and useless concoctions over true human need is perhaps worthy of a longer essay.

BLACK - ブラックブラックチョコレートアイス

2009-04-19T16:06:00.000-07:00

Frozen confection maker Akagi, which seems to have cornered the market in Japan for popsicle- like variations with their ubiquitous and cheap Gari bars also market the basic fudgesicle found in konbinis throughout the nation - the BLACK Chocolate Ice Bar (ブラックブラックチョコレートアイス). Like Unilever in the USA, they are the main supplier of this particular niche. The BLACK bar is as good or not better than the US version. A refreshing chocolate bar that's not too creamy rich, but tasty in a sweet dark chocolatish sort of way - unlike the more milky taste profile of the American.

BLACK seems to be a somewhat favorite way to brand dark chocolate in Japan. One of Meiji's line of chocolate candy bars is called BLACK. Of course "black" in chocolate denotes "not milk" - dark and perhaps a bit more adult. The Akagi ice bar and the Meiji candy even go so far as to use similar serif typefaces. The Times New Roman variation that boldly announces the BLACK ice bar is like an old-fashioned headline, though simplified to a primary adjectival statement. No frill on this bar. You know what you're getting. Black. Chocolate. Ice.

あさりバターポテトチップス

2009-02-26T18:23:00.000-08:00

Fresh baby littlenecks with a slathering of butter - just what you want your potato chip to taste like. Right? OK, maybe not, but in the seeming endless variations and inventiveness in creating adding umami to chips, you gotta give to the folks at Calbee for trying. Some work great. Nori and ume flavored chips come to mind. And in fact the Asari Butter Potato Chip (あさりバターポテトチップス) is not all that bad. The chip is basic - thin, moderately salted, unexceptional. And the butter taste is not nearly as rancid and cloying as in many a butter-flavored Japanese potato chip.

The clam taste is nearly non-existent. But a strange thing happens. As you eat the chips, take a little sniff of your fingers. Smells like shellfish! Or...? Mmmm. Salty, fishy, a little funky and buttery - seems that Calbee may be working another angle on satiating desire. I imagine the food techies at Calbee in their spare time working on how to chemically recreate the smell of sex and... bingo! But what do you do with it now? Hey, let's put on a chip and call it clam butter.

ふわ丸

2008-10-18T18:27:00.000-07:00

Tohato's Fuwa Maru（ふわ丸）corn snacks are these oddball semi ninja star/fleur de lis shaped thingamabobs, slightly stale feeling in da mouth, but oddly compelling. Especially after a long night of drinking nihonshu. And just as the fleeting feeling of drunkenness will pass, these corn snacks have a very ephemeral quality, almost instantly disappearing at first contact of saliva. In fact, the clever marketers at Tohato are banking on that disappearing act. Promo for the product makes statements to the effect that like a clever ninja, the Fuwa Maru are as quick to disappear as they appear.

Drawn to this quite insubstantial - even by junk food standards - corn puff by it's admittedly handsome package, a somewhat ukiyo-e-y illustration of a darkly garbed ninja, in the konbini aisles it stood out head and shoulders for eye catchingness. A quick peruse of the Tohato site made me realize that in this big ol' world of packaging and repackaging similar things and calling them different, that the package is where manufacturers make their cases. And Tohato excels in this area of branding.

These are the same folks who market Bokun Habanero chips. A year ago they created a campaign that involved mobile phone multiplayer game playing and a traditional advertising media to determine the winner of the "world's worst war" - Tyrant Habanero Burning Hell Hot or Satan Jorquia Bazooka Deadly Hot. Hmm. You may have thought snack foods were simply about satiating some immediate desires. Looks like the stakes can be pretty high these days.

きなこもち

2008-10-16T05:11:00.000-07:00

Marunaga's Kinako Mochi (きなこもち) bar is one of those wonders that tries, somewhat unsuccessfully to mashup a very traditional food to a new technology. Granted, ice cream bars have been around for some time now, but the venerable tradition of kinako covered mochi is, well, ancient.

A couple of definitions are in order. First, mochi. Cooked rice well beaten, preferably with wooden mallets, until it has become very sticky and glutinous. Kinako? A fine powder ground from roasted soybeans. Often compared in taste to peanut butter, it has a bit more of a caramel-y taste. Fresh mochi covered in kinako is a favorite old-fashioned treat, mildly sweet and chewy with a round nutty taste.

The ice cream bar in question has a thin amber colored fondant redolent with kinako, covering a layer of ice milk which surrounds a core of mochi. It all makes some sense, but on the whole, its mild flavors and textures just don't quite deliver. And there's a fascinating thing that happens when mochi is frozen. It kinda gets like silly putty. If you grab a bite and pull slowly, it stretches. However, if you pull quickly, it breaks! A great idea for some simple childish fun, but as food, it's novelty wears off quickly. I have yet to experiment, but I wonder if it can transfer comic images, like silly putty does?

フレンチ　セーキ

2008-10-09T17:36:00.000-07:00

Tokyo based Kyodo Milk Industry Co., Ltd., under the Meito brand supplies a mess o' milk to the Kanto market. Apart from the usual, seemingly infinite variations on plain ol' milk - they have recently been touting a zero fat milk - they specialize in any number of flan and pudding products. So it only seems right that they would spin off some of these ideas into drinkable form. The フレンチ　セーキ (French Shake) is a quite sweet - sugar, fruit sucrose, and grape sugar are all listed as ingredients - moderately low-fat milk drink. Egg yolk and vanilla Frenchify it.

From years ago, I recall my first taste of French vanilla when the first Baskin Robbins stores crept out of California and hit the upper west coast. French vanilla was the exotic premium version of plain ol' boring vanilla ice cream. The cloying egg custard taste was certainly offset by a somewhat real tasting vanilla. Plus it had little brown specs as further proof of its true vanilla roots... or rhizomes... or whatever. All I really recall, was that despite it all - and that very strange yellow color - it somehow started my love affair with vanilla flavored milk products.

How's Meito's French Shake measure up? Not bad in that sort of Proustian way that makes me want to write six volumes of filler between the first and last lines. Sweet it is. It's got a moderately cloying eggy taste. And it reminds me of something from way back. Exactly why egg vanilla custardy things become French, I'm not so sure, mais longtemps, je me suis couche de bonne heure, after a nice glass of vanilla flavored milk. Never was that much a fan of the egg though.

カラフルラムネバメロソーダ

2008-07-09T21:42:00.000-07:00

One of the stranger enigmas to hit the frozen food case is the case of the カラフルラムネバメロソーダ - the "colorful ramune bar melon soda," from Morinaga. What exactly does this all mean? At the heart of the mystery is "ramune," which is the name of the first carbonated soft drink marketed in Japan. It's a lemon-ish soda in a distinctive bottle, crimped at the neck creating a bubble that held a glass marble. A strange and playful invention that amuses kids and folks like me. "Ramune" is an antediluvian bastardization of "lemony." Once the floodgates of carbonation opened, Japan embraced various and sundry flavors, including melon. Great in concept, weak in execution, melon sodas can be found in many a soft drink machine during the sweltering summer months.

So, this crazy little frozen confection has a layer of melon soda ice, covering a layer of a lemon ice. But never leaving well enough alone the whole thing is jam-packed with little citrus acidy sweet tart type candies that burst into tart mouth-numbing exclamation points on one's tongue. It may be all in good fun, but it certainly doesn't work as a taste sensation. It's more of an assault.

Of course, it's all tied into a multiple platform promotion that includes the ice cream bar, the soda, and an anime series. Yes!

Dekavita C

2008-07-06T22:31:00.000-07:00

Suntory's Dekavita C is in the realm of a long line of energy drinks marketed to Japanese consumers largely for hangover cures, but also for getting rid of bags under one's eyes, sexual enhancement and stamina, and God knows what else. Like all energy drinks, it's basically carbonated sugar water with a few vague herbs or artificial flavors to give one the sense of maybe a bit of healthiness. Dekavita C boasts a number of B vitamins. Oh, and C. Tastewise, it's kind of the poor man's Red Bull. Like a light cassis, with a bit of a Robitussen edge, the taste follows through with quininic tannins. A not entirely pleasant taste. But remember this is supposed to be good for you. And the massive jolts of sugar eventually cover up any sort of subtlety in the taste.

Like many an energy drink Dekavita C capitalizes on the idea that by connecting with the very drink itself, the consumer connects with "energy." And this energy transforms one into... someone better, more appealing, beyond and outside of one' s self. It's a sacrament of shamanic release that let's one partake of the mysteries. Of transcendence. Traditionally the realm of drugs and alchohol, the energy drink is attempting to usurp these venerable media, these keys to the beyond. But let's face it. It's still sugar water.

Bikkle

2008-06-11T01:27:00.000-07:00

I can't help but think of Travis Bickle in Taxi Driver whenever I pop a bottle of Bikkle, the Calpis-style milky cooler from Suntory. Perhaps Robert De Niro may have never gone off the deep end if he had a regular supply of this somewhat sweet bifudus-laden concoction that's marketed for its wholesomeness and healthiness - chock full of calcium and magnesium. Like all drinks of it's ilk, it's sugar water - though pleasant in that sort of watery cloying keffir sort of way.

It's got a wide-mouth bottle, so it's built for chuggin' and there's a little mascot below the 70s style typeface logo - Bikkle King. He seems to have been a bit of an afterthought, or perhaps there was little thought of him at all. Recently he's been usurped by superstar spokesmodels, PUFFY, a very popular singing duet. The 2 girls that make up PUFFY go by the names of Jane and Sue. They caught the public attention a few years ago with their clear break from the manufactured techno-pop sound that had dominated the Japanese music scene for many years to a manufactured wholesome pop image and sound reminiscent of the Beatles and the Carpenters. If Travis Bickle had met Jane and Sue, rather than Iris, the end of the movie would have been much different. Instead of ending like this -

It might have been something like this -

Vanilla Soda Bar Melon Choco

2008-06-04T04:47:00.001-07:00

I'm not sure what exactly what was on the mind

of the inventor of this one, but I'm thinking he/she/it must be some Fritz Lang-like Mabuse, straightjacketed, in a padded cell, masterminding a very twisted and convoluted plot in dominating the frozen confection market with very strange ice cream bars. Or he/she/it may just be mad.

Dr. Akagi*, as I will call him/her/it is responsible for the Garigari bar (ガリガリ), a strange and popular soda-flavored popsicle. As to what sort of soda it is, is up to question, but a quick suck and the tongue is fooled into experiencing sweet effervescence - actually quite odd and worth the 80 or so yen just to say you've tried it.

However, the Vanilla Soda Bar Melon Choco, though marketed to the same niche of pimply-faced otaku, seems to be coming from a parallel universe. Tossing aside the simplicity of the Garigari popsicles (they also come in various fruit flavors), this bizarro pop has a cuboid of the aforementioned soda ice laying beside and equal rectangular parallelepiped of a somewhat bland vanilla ice cream, all lathered with a melon fondant. Where the choco comes in in anybody's guess. Nonetheless, the flavor combinations work toward a sort of Rococo frivolity, combining a vague milkiness with bubbles and melon. I'm sure it's the perfect thing to suck on while playing Grand Theft Auto 4. Parallel universes, indeed!

* The name of the comic character on the package is actually Mr. Cookn.

キャベツ太郎

2008-05-14T04:36:00.000-07:00

Here's an odd little snack from the Kado company. Called Kyabetsu Taro, or Taro Cabbage, it has neither taro nor cabbage in its manufacture. These are super-light corn puffs with a thin (and relatively strong) coating of nori and Japanese brown sauce. The sauce is a somewhat chemically tasting variation of the wonderful sweetened saltly soy concoction that enlivens takoyaki or okonomiyaki. That said, these inexpensive little guys are the sorts of things that contemporary restaurant food technologist chefs are trying to manufacture as haute cuisine.

If these showed up on the tables of El Bulli - and with the appropriate descriptors - they might be considered a revolutionary experiment with flavors, textures, and materials. The review might posit the daring mix of asian and western ingredients. A texture of near nothingness with a mighty assault of nori and salt. Taking humble corn meal and elevating it to unrecognizable heights. Ah, yes, even Bustos Domenq might weigh in on this one.

All things considered though, they are a mighty addictive snack. Definitely in the realm of flavored popcorn or cheetos. Just look for the green frog cop mascot. I believe his name is Taro-san.

松竹梅 - いか酒

2008-05-03T21:54:00.000-07:00

Mmmm. Fish flavored liquors! Found this one in a konbini in Kofu and, well... just had to try it. In my first travels to Japan, I bought fugu fin flavored sake. It tasted exactly how one would expect dried fish fins soaked in booze would. And to top it off, it left my mouth raw with whatever that active ingredient is in fugu that Japanese daredevil gourmets love. Being a bit of a slow learner, I could not resist this little one cup of ika sake (いか酒). The beautifully illustrated little squid phallus was calling my name. And of course, it tasted exactly how one would expect - like dried squid soaked in booze.

The Takara sake company, a 150 year old liquor manufacturer dreamed this one up, ostensibly creating a Hokkaido style winter warmer that would surely take Japan by storm. I'd suggest buying a bag of dried squid and having plain old sake on the side. However, I found another product out there - sake bottled in sun-dried squid skin containers. After you drink the sake, you can eat the container. Apparently they tried this at tourist spots in Iwate Prefecture about 40 years ago. It really didn't go over that well. But slow learners all, the Kimura Shoten store has decided to revive the "tradition" and try selling them again. Kimura Shoten is the place that also makes fish-flavored ice creams. Need I say more.

ドクターペッパー

2008-04-08T18:37:00.001-07:00

I try to stay away from products that are not really of Japanese origin, but I was taken by the marketing of Dr. Pepper here in Nihon. It's not your daddy’s Dr. Pepper. Well, it’s got the same taste – that sweet, vaguely prune-juicey carbonated goodness. But Japanese marketers have gone balls out for the otaku market with crazy sexy anime illustrations of techno-babes with things like guns and bottles of Dr. Pepper spilling out of their cleavages. Politically correct it ain't. But in pure high velocity tastelessness, they're wonderful. Lowbrow art mystery man, Rockin’ Jellybean - http://www.rockinjellybean.com/ -is responsible for creating these buxom Dokuta Peppa girls. There are three of them on collectable cans that you can buy at many corner drink machines. But, damn, I always seem to get the one with the surfing lizard! Check out the Japanese Dr. Pepper websire here - http://www.drpp.jp/index.html

Panky

2008-04-01T02:52:00.000-07:00

Chocolate giant Meiji is like the Hershey's of Japan. Though they, like every other mega-food corp in the world, have infiltrated everything else in daily life, their ubiquitous chocolate bars are among the first things seen at the candy counters in konbis and metro snack shacks. Their Black and Meiji Milk bars have bold, somewhat old-fashioned graphics that say "I'm the chocolate that you can rely on." Somewhat like Hershey's. And just like Hershey's they make a familiar, but quite bad, chocolate. Sure, it may be the taste you grew up with (whether in Japan or the USA), but when push comes to shove, measure to measure, the respective chocolates are really lackluster.

Nonetheless, Meiji makes 6 of the top 10 best selling chocolates in Japan. And that's nothing to sneeze about.

In the tireless pursuit of keeping consumers interested, they trot out different packages and ideas - which is where Panky fits in. Panky are little dried bread hillocks slathered in chocolate. The Japanese (and French) word for bread is "pan", thus the name of the product. And though I'm a fan of bread and chocolate, dried shokupan covered in cocoa deprived sickly sweet fondant does not make an even acceptable treat. Ah well, they've got most of the top tier covered with their other products, so little sleep is lost worrying about the health of the company.

Meiji, who has used David Beckham to hawk their products, have brought out teen star (now 20 years old!), Inoue Mao as the Panky spokesmodel. She's a favorite cutie of teenagers throughout Japan and she plus a grinning, cymbal-crashing monkey seem to have caught fire with the kids. They even made a "Making of the commercial" video. Brilliant!

白桃＆さくらんぼ

2008-03-30T15:34:00.000-07:00

The old tradition of not wasting anything is still being kept alive by corporate giants. On one level, this is a good thing. The rapaciousness of living rich in the first world has created an epidemic of wastefulness. Though perhaps more concerned with the bottom line than virtue, milk, soy beverage, and juice giant, Meito, has created a whey-based line of refreshments with their Milfull Mix series.

And just in time for hanami (cherry blossom viewing) season, they've come out with a seasonal mix for your rehydrating pleasure after a long weekend binge under the cherry trees on your blue tarp. Milfull Mix 白桃＆さくらんぼ (white peach and cherry flavor) is a perfectly innocuous mix, in a lovely pink carton, that may be perfect for a quick chug before having that next One Cup. Beyond that, there's not much to recommend it. It has a very mild peachy flavor, a hint of cherry (or was that my imagination?) and a very slight milky-ness. Reach for a Calpis instead. Or better yet - how about that last spider at the bottom of the sake bottle? Remember - don't be wasteful!

つなあられ

2008-03-24T15:11:00.000-07:00

Generically, this snack falls under the larger kingdom of yukashi (油菓子), or "oil candy." It's a particularly oily variation on senbei. The cracker in question is the tsuna arare (つなあられ - rope rice biscuit) in the Great Value package. One can also find these wonderful little fries marketed under the name of hineri age (ひねり揚げ - twist fry). Whatever one calls them, they are a brilliant piece of work. Not too salty, with an amazing crunchiness and an incredibly rich oily mouthfeel, they are a perfect accompaniment to anything with alcohol in it. The astringent tastes of sake, shochu, and beer are tamed and soothed by the unctuousness of these bite-sized twists. The hard serrations of these clever extrusions make for maximum crunch (more surface area deep fried = more crispiness). A perfect mix of tradition and technology. And they're cheap, too!

ポテトチップス　ハム＆チーズ味

2008-03-24T05:19:00.000-07:00

In the world of Japanese chips, there are three big rulers of the kingdom, Calbee, Koikeya, and Yamayoshi. Yamanoshi dances on the nuttier edge of chip tastes and flavor technology with such things as hamburger, buta karabi, Chinese stir fry, and yakitori flavored chips, so we reached for a bag of their "ham and cheese taste" (ハム＆チーズ味) chips and decided to have a go of it. And by gum, if they didn't taste like ham and cheese and potato chips all rolled into one! Hold the sandwich, I'll just have chips with my beer.

CRATZ チェダーチーズ

2008-03-08T18:08:00.000-08:00

CRATZ is a line of beer snacks - you can tell by the picture of the beer on the package - that are a mix of almonds and little crunchy pretzel-like sections that come in three different flavors, Cheddar Cheese, Pepper Bacon, and Krazy Salt & Chicken. A surprisingly infectious snack, they've got a hard crunch, overwrought flavors, tons of salt, and the mediating factor of natural almonds. Sampling the Cheddar Cheese (チェダーチーズ), the palate and the nose are immediately assaulted by an ur-cheese flavor and smell. After a couple of chews, though, sensory fatigue sets in. The flavor of cheese powder, salt, and flavor enhancers lend to overload that can only be balanced with drinking a lot of beer. Insidiously brilliant!

These little buggers are brought to you by Glico, the Osaka-based food giant that staked its claim on the industrial food landscape of Japan in 1919 when founder Riichi Ezaki discovered he could extract glycogen from oysters for use in confectionery production. Hmm. The name Glico is a glycogen shortened. They hit the market with their trademark caramels, but are perhaps most famous to westerners from Pocky, the fun candy sticks, originally made in chocolate, but now in myriad flavors.

Glico hit the news big in the mid 80s with an unsolved mystery involving the kidnapping of then-president, Katsuhisa Ezaki, by a man who described himself as the Monster with 21 Faces (かい人21面相). Ezaki escaped, threats of poisoning the candy supply, various other news-catching criminal exploits, and the self-immolation of the Shiga Prefecture police superintendent at his failure to capture the Monster (who was now being described as the Fox-Eyed Man - キツネ目の男) followed.

After the death of the police superintendent, the Monster sent his last missive stating:

"Yamamoto of Shiga Prefecture Police died. How stupid of him! We've got no friends or secret hiding place in Shiga. It's Yoshino or Shikata who should have died. What have they been doing for as long as one year and five months? Don't let bad guys like us get away with it. There are many more fools who want to copy us. No-career Yamamoto died like a man. So we decided to give our condolence. We decided to forget about torturing food-making companies. If anyone blackmails any of the food-making companies, it's not us but someone copying us. We are bad guys. That means we've got more to do other than bullying companies. It's fun to lead a bad man's life. Monster with 21 Faces"

With that, he ended his moment of terror and disappeared.

It is interesting though, that a recent ad for CRATZ shows an ostensibly humorous situation, wherein the consumption of these crunchy bits creates a shape-shifting in the visages of the happy snackers - perhaps a clue to one of the 21 faces.

ポテトチップス　こがしバター

2008-02-20T20:49:00.000-08:00

Calbee's Kogashi Butter (こがしバター) Potato Chip is an OK variation on umami in snack food. There is a propensity in Japan for variations on snack foods lathered in butter (or butter analogs). At their worst, opening a vacu-sealed package an catching the exploding aroma of rancid chemical butter is enough to make one retch. These chips, though relatively boring, don't drive one reeling toward the toilet in anguish. These at least are made with real butter powder. Whatever that is. And the chip itself has a nice thickness and crunch.

Again, the big marketing thing here is Hokkaido, the genuine center of quite good potatoes and butter in Japan. And the Hokkaido connection is made with the marketing of these chips. Hiroshima-based Calbee (on the opposite end of Japan from Hokkaido), one of the many postwar giants in the snack food industry is responsible for the manufacture of this treat. They started off in the shrimp chip biz, which they handily command, and have become one of the biggest in the potato chip industry.

グルメセレクトクリームグラタンカマンベール仕立て

2008-01-15T01:42:00.000-08:00

So here's what it looks like. Frente is vertically, horizontally, weblike, and at least in 4 dimensions integrated into useless consumable items. They have their fingers in Koikeya, who is the second largest snack food biz in Japan. Koikeya has a line of potato chips, Oh! Chips. Though better than Lays or any number of US mass market chips, Oh Chips are pretty much a second thought to most idle shoppers in the konbinis. Most budget brands are better than Oh! Chips. And somewhere at the bottom of this food chain, the lonely food technologists take the orders and come up with the Gourmet Selection Cream Gratin Camembert "Tailored" Chip. This mouthful of words is certainly more flavorful than the final product itself - a sad concoction of potato flakes, various artificial flavors, and God-knows-what-else. But along traditional corporate lines, I'm sure no one will take responsibility for this travesty. But if you click on this link - http://frente.co.jp/ir/img/photo_presi.jpg - here's his picture. His name is Takashi Koike and he must bear the ultimate responsibility.

雪印練乳ミルクバー

2007-12-25T01:50:00.001-08:00

The Lotte Snow brand Condensed Milk Milk Bar (strawberry flavor) is another one of those stratified dairy treats that put the Japanese at the forefront of quiescently frozen confections. Actually, this milk bar is a mix of quiescence and agitation caught in a moment of icy stasis. The outside is a classic sweetened ice milk - extrusive in quality, the ice forming crystalline columns of melty goodness. Immediately beneath that crust lies the delicately flavored strawberry ice cream, comparatively fluffy in its texture. And then there's more! At the heart is a liquid core of evaporated milk thick and oozing. The Japanese, once again at the cutting edge of ice cream bar design! Ah, but what would this sweetness be without the edge of bitterness that comes with eating corporate food? Snow Brand, founded in 1925 is yet another one of Japan’s mega-milk corporations. It's been questioned and called to task for production of its infant formulas, recommending them over breast feeding and for swarmy advertising campaigns around its flagship infant formula brand, Smart Baby. Plus in the summer 2000 it was at the center of Japan’s biggest food poisoning outbreak in which about 14,500 people fell sick and had to recall its Snow Brand milk products. Mmm, good.

大福

2007-12-19T00:45:00.000-08:00

OK, the big soft pillows by every konbini counter are calling your name. They're cheap and quite wonderful. And they are a fine introduction to the world of daifuku - filled mochi treats. Daifuku (大福), or daifuku mochi (大福餅) are glutinous rice balls filled (in convenience store cases) with anko, a sweet red bean paste - the favorite filling of many a stuffed sweet, whether made with rice, bread, or whatever. Daifuku can be filled with many other fillings. A notable and delicious variation are the ones filled with ichigo (fresh strawberries) surrounded by either cake, whipped cream, or custard - or all three. Daifuku means great luck. The word fuku means both belly (腹) and luck (福). It appears that the original meaning of big belly, referring to the filled belly-like nature of the confection (not the fact that eating too much will give you one) has morphed over the years into a bringer of good fortune. Not too sweet, they have the pleasant chewiness of the mochi itself, a glutinous rice that can be a choking hazard for the elderly and the very young and the ubiquitous sweet red mung bean paste, which is quite delicious. You've got basically three choices, maybe a few extra seasonal daifuku at the konbini. The plain ones, the mame or shio-mame daifuku, and the yomogi daifuku. The mame daifuku (豆大福) are the ones that have little salted bean islands attempting to pop out of the surface. Giving the daifuku the appearance of a little Dalmatian lump, they add a light saltiness and toothiness to the whole thing, bringing out and contrasting with the light sugary taste. The yomogi daifuku (蓬大福) are the green ones. In this one the mochi is colored and flavored with mugwort, a slightly bitter herb - a close relative to wormwood, the active ingredient in absinthe and vermouth.

馬車道アイスクリン

2007-07-10T22:11:00.000-07:00

Ice cream first went on sale in Japan in 1869 on Bashamichi Street (Bashamichi Dori) in Yokohama, just south of Tokyo. Yokohama was the entry point for a lot of "Western" things, and ice cream took off like wildfire when it came across the seas. The Bashamichi Aisu Bar (馬車道アイスクリン) harks back to the origins of ice cream in Japan. It's a wonderful, lightly flavored vanilla ice cream, almost fluffy in its texture, surrounded by a crystalline skin of ice milk. Pictured on the package is Yokohama's famous landmark, the Red Brick Warehouse, now housing tourist shit shops and restaurants. However the image of the the old mercantile Yokohama in a thoroughly modern Japan carries a marketing cache, and the quality of the ice cream bar belies the artificial nostalgia that all this signifies. It's that good! It gets extra points for the English writing on the the label that describes it as "Basyamichi Icecrin."

フランスパン工房

2007-06-25T02:05:00.000-07:00

The French Bread Atelier chip is an odd little snack from Oyatsu, maker of many an interesting snack food. A very thin baked crouton - or is it? It seems more of a slurry poured into toast-round shapes, cleverly dyed around the edges to produce the illusion of crust, baked crisp. Nonetheless, it has the feel and taste of, for lack of a better descriptor, a French bread chip. There are two versions - one buttered, the other with butter and sugar. The butter/sugar chip (in the yellow plaid package) has a slight rancid butter overtone that finishes with a soupçon of sweetness. A bit like French toast in a chip. For their marketing they have transvestite torch singer (and ex-lover of Yukio Mishima), Akahiro Miwa as the spokesmodel, phoning it in in a series of commercials. Muro-san, as Miwa is also known, cashed in early on transgressiveness and has had a long career being the Milton Berle, or perhaps Flip Wilson, of Japan. Muro-san's chip commercials can be seen at this link - http://www.082.oyatsu.co.jp/product/french/tvcm.html

ランチパック - ツナマヨネーズ

2007-06-24T18:01:00.000-07:00

If it looks like a pillow, is it comfort food? These Lunchpack* sandwiches are a ubiquitous konbini treat. Found in the section with other bread products, these strange little pillows are usually two to a pack. Crustless** shokupan (Japanese white bread) with fillings savory or sweet is crimped on all sides. They remind me of the old carny treat, the spaceburger – a sloppy Joe mixture, dumped onto a hamburger bun and then smashed into a device that cooked, crimped, and compressed the whole mess into a flying saucer shape***. Imagine a spongy ravioli filled with such fillings as strawberry jam and cream, macha paste, chicken salad, katsu, or in the case of the item sampled, ツナマヨネーズ (tuna mayonnaise) – and you’ve got the Lunchpack sandwich. The tuna salad in question was totally serviceable, with mild pickle and onion overtones in a very mayonnaise-y tuna schmear. Definitely in the kids’ food genre - hand-holdable, undemanding on the tastebuds, gooey on the inside yet soft and dry on the outside. Daily Yamazaki boasts having introduced (at last count) 266 flavors of these little sandwiches. Wow!

* Lunchpack is the brand name for the ones produced by Daily Yamazaki.
** The sealed crustless sandwich was at the center of a specious patent infringement suit brought on by Smuckers Corporation in regard to their "Uncrustable "sandwich.
* **There’s still a spaceburger restaurant/stand in Pocatello, ID.

十勝のむヨーグルトメロン

2007-06-23T17:17:00.000-07:00

Tokachi-Nomu-Yogurt is a mildly melony slightly yogurty cooler that hit the Family Mart stores in late June. A seasonal refresher found in the cartoned juice and milk section, it has a nice milky mouthfeel and a generally pleasant and undemanding taste. All in all, the thing that the doctor sometimes orders. It comes from the York food division of Nissin Corporation, a mega-investment industry that spends much of its time and money on branding. The package itself has a strong word-graphic that simply says "melon." A farmer's hat, a melon, and the Sapporo Clock Tower complete the image of simple old-fashioned tastes and values (even though yogurt drinks are a quite modern addition to the Japanese food landscape and the clock tower was designed by Americans in 1878). The bold and straightforward package stands out amongst the rest of the noise on the shelf. Tokachi is a region of Hokkaido that is particularly famous for its melons, the Yuubari melon (夕張メロン), being a treasured treat from the area*. Whether the melons used in this drink come from there is unimportant. By making the relation in the consumer's mind, you've got them at least thinking that they are partaking in a gourmet experience.

NV

*In summer, at Tokyo department stores, a single melon can sometimes cost up to 20,000JPY.

練乳抹茶金時かき氷

2007-06-21T04:03:00.000-07:00

This frozen confection from Sentan is a variation on on the shiratamai miruki uji kintoki (白玉ミルク宇治金時), a Kyoto specialty. In the original cafe version, shaved ice, served over a bed of sweetened azuki beans is doused with Uji tea and sweetened condensed milk. A couple of mochi balls are thrown in for fun. In this version, a mochi ice cream layer covers a macha ice. Azuki beans are liberally suspended in the crunchy ice. At the center is melty condensed milk. It all works together quite brilliantly. The creamy outer layer surrounds a beautifully textured and flavored tea ice - and then - surprise! Sweet milk oozing from the center. Yum! Uji is a famous tea area near Kyoto, perhaps now more famous for marketing tea, rather than producing it. Yet it is still considered the tea capital of Japan, hosting an annual tea festival on the first Sunday in October and boasting the oldest tea shop in Japan, perhaps the world - the Tsuen Tea Shop, founded in 1160.

プリンシェイク

2007-06-19T04:02:00.001-07:00

Flan in a can! This amazing product from Pokka is not really available at the konbinis, but at Pokka vending machines. Vending machines lurk on nearly every corner in Tokyo - self-contained sites on the landscape of consumption proffering coffee, juices, soups, sodas, alcohol and more. The Pokka company revolutionized the vending machine paradigm in 1973 by offering the first hot coffee in a can via machine. The Japanese food industry has never looked back. But the プリンシェイク (Pudding Shake) may be the ultimate in fun and quite delicious street corner delicacies. Give the container 5 hard shakes (following the instructions printed on the can) and the canned flan goes all thixotropic, turning into a liquid caramel milk with small chunks of custard suspended therein. The ultimate treat for a hot afternoon at the laundromat.

白くまバー

2007-06-19T03:13:00.000-07:00

Bits of pineapple, white peach and azuki beans suspended in a creamy ice milk bar are the essence of this delightful frozen confection from Marunaga, Tokyo's main milk giant. The Shirokuma (polar bear) Bar is a sticked version of a traditional Kagoshima shaved ice, served with condensed milk, azuki beans and fruit. The origin of the traditional dessert is up to some question. One suggestion is that it was a pre-WWII treat that developed in Kagoshima, named Shirokuma after the polar bear that was on the label of the condensed milk used. Another version puts its invention after WWII, with a certain coffeehouse inventing the snack, shaping the ice into the shape of a polar bear. Whatever its provenance, it is a great combination of flavors and textures, built for taste, and most likely from necessity - yet another wonderful use of condensed milk, Gail Borden's 19th century invention that helped usher in the age of industrial food production.

オー・ザック＜ピリ辛餃子

2007-06-18T02:33:00.000-07:00

The O'Zack Gyoza Chip is a somewhat mannerist potato chip that plays with a very basic paradigm of the chip. The pleasure of the snack chip is reductivism in taste sensation. Let's take the potato chip. A good (and popular) one works with the well-rounded blandness of the potato, deep fried to a satisfying, but undemanding crunch. You don't have to masticate too hard to get it down your throat (say, unlike a knäckebrot). Salt, vinegar, nacho cheese, and barbeque flavor are among the classic tastes. And the bigger and more one dimensional the taste is, the more it hits that fast food nerve of satisfaction. The Japanese have added a particular twist to chips with the addition of umami - the taste of savoriness. As the Japanese are not big cheese eaters, the Japanese food technologist looks toward meat and seafoods to create new flavors for chips. There are chips that taste like scallops, beef stew, and more. And that's where the gyoza chip fits in. The O'Zack Gyoza Chip is your pretty standard thin potato crisp. Nothing too special in itself. Ah, but with a bit of sesame oil, a touch of vinegar, and whatever gyoza-analog chemicals you have on hand - and presto - you've added new life to a tired chip. They are a completely addictive chip, in an insidious modern scientific way. A few years ago, Housefoods, who make the chip, were the first Japanese company to get caught importing GM potato flakes from the US. The cutting edge of food technology may be a devil's road lined with gyoza chips. Beware!

とんがりコーン

2007-06-17T03:02:00.000-07:00

Tongari Corn chips is Bugles! These crunchy little suckers are the pretty much as uninspired and insipid as the marketing idea (I hate to call it food) that hit the USA in late 60s. In fact, they may not be as tasty as the original turd-like cornucopia known as the Bugle. Light and crisp they are - but that's about all. What Tongari Corn chips have, though, is marketing. They have integrated themselves into the market with commercials featuring J-pop stars du jour and relatively uninspired creative production. But the commercials hit a bullseye on big cultural signifiers. A recent set features J-pop star Tsubasa Imai in situations built around American suburbs, beaches and farmlands. Tsubasa is very recognizable by Tongari's target market. The commercials are set in America - ostensibly because corn is an American grain. The imprimeur of American-ness, though, is cool (even though in this case, it's pretty corny) and there is a national myth of Japan as lagging behind in the world, especially against American success - and that's why the Japanese must work so hard! Healing the wounds of losing WWII by sharing Tongari Corn with down-home American farmers and suburban mall rats, enjoying these simple pleasures in a places of pure leisure - all backgrounded with snippets of hit songs - are what have made these snack popular. It certainly is not the taste. A perfect post-modern tidbit - insubstantiality seasoned with easily digestible lies. They still leave a bit of bad taste in one's mouth.

超暴君ハバネロ

2007-06-15T22:51:00.001-07:00

The Bōkun Habanero (Tyrant Habanero) snack from Tohato offers a fine bit of heat on crunchy corrugated potato rings. Good tooth, a building fire the more one consumes, but not exactly the sweet hot bite of habanero that one would expect - more of a one-dimensional arbol or Thai pepper blast. All in all it's an acceptable snack that would go quite well with cold beer. Tohato has posted an amusing webpage of their habanero snacks, including a lo-fi video of the making of Bōkun Habanero. The mascot, Bōkun Habanero, with its distinctive Jack-o-lantern face has sparked a series of popular spinoff characters - Habanero-tan being the most famous - by fan artist Shigatake. So, every time you munch a Bōkun Habanero chip, you're taking a big bite into contemporary Japanese pop culture. Enjoy!

スイカバー

2007-06-14T21:21:00.000-07:00

The big Suika Bar is a prettty damn good frozen confection from Lotte. Lotte started off in the chewing gum market after WWII and expanded horizontally into all things sweet. They are the folks responsible for such things as the Crunky Bar and Koala's March (コアラのマーチ Koara no māchi) - those wonderful little chocolate filled cookies shaped like koala bears. The Suika Bar is a watermelon popsicle, brilliant in its simplicity and ingenuity. Shaped like a watermelon wedge, one can see the pink flesh, the pale green rind and little "seeds" - just like the real thing. The main part of the bar is a fruit ice (only 10% juice) that tastes very watermelon-y, though quite sweet. Little "seeds" are scattered throughout the ice. Don't spit them out. They're individual puffed rice grains covered in chocolate. The have the slight pop and give of real watermelon seed, but taste much better. The rind itself has a slightly different flavor than the rest of the pop - relatively insipid, with a slight citrus edge. Again, just like the real thing. Not quite as fruity and refreshing as a Mexican paleta, but certainly a huge leap from any frozen fruit confections that one would find in the USA.

夏ポテト紀州の南高梅

2007-06-14T02:53:00.000-07:00

From Calbee, the granddaddy of Japanese potato chip makers (in fact, they claim to have introduced potato chips to Japan in 1975) comes this seasonal treat. These are a ruffle-style potato chip spotted with little bits of ume (梅 - Japanese plum*). The ume are from the Wakayama prefecture in the Kansai region - of course, famous for their ume. Bursts of moderately intense sweet/sour plum aglomerate are followed by the nice round potato flavor of the crisp chip. A good balance of novelty within a classic chip.

NV

*OK, they're actually in the apricot family, but everyone calls them plums.

Daily Yamazaki

Crunky Ball Nude

三角蒸しぱん

復刻堂 森永ホットケーキ ミルクセーキ

ブラックメロンパン

北海道チーズ蒸しケーキ

Green Cola

Green Cola

ビーノ・うま塩味

ホームランバー

ポテトチップス和風ステーキ味醤油＆おろし仕立て

ポテトチップス 明太 マヨネーズ味

KitKat ジンジャーエール味

大樹の小枝

Cratz メキシカンサルサ＆チキン

ドリトス ウィンターチーズ味

島豚ジャーキー

Cola Shock

エアイン チョコバー バナナ

Pepsi Shiso - ペプシ じそ

ベビースタードデカイ焼そば夏しお

MR．BRAIN 脳トレパン

エルビー ナタデココホワイト

カフェインスナック キャラメルマキアート味

LacLac

BLACK - ブラックブラックチョコレートアイス

あさりバター ポテトチップス

ふわ丸

きなこもち

フレンチ セーキ

カラフルラムネバメロソーダ

Dekavita C

Bikkle

Vanilla Soda Bar Melon Choco

キャベツ太郎

松竹梅 - いか酒

ドクターペッパー

Panky

白桃＆さくらんぼ

つなあられ

ポテトチップス ハム＆チーズ味

CRATZ チェダーチーズ

ポテトチップス こがしバター

グルメセレクト クリームグラタン カマンベール仕立て

雪印 練乳ミルクバー

大福

馬車道アイスクリン

フランスパン工房

ランチパック - ツナマヨネーズ

十勝のむヨーグルトメロン

練乳抹茶金時かき氷

プリンシェイク

白くまバー

オー・ザック＜ピリ辛餃子

とんがりコーン

超暴君ハバネロ

スイカバー

夏ポテト紀州の南高梅

復刻堂森永ホットケーキミルクセーキ

ポテトチップス明太マヨネーズ味

ドリトス　ウィンターチーズ味

エアイン　チョコバー　バナナ

Pepsi Shiso - ペプシ　じそ

MR．BRAIN　脳トレパン

エルビーナタデココホワイト

カフェインスナック　キャラメルマキアート味

あさりバターポテトチップス

フレンチ　セーキ

ポテトチップス　ハム＆チーズ味

ポテトチップス　こがしバター

グルメセレクトクリームグラタンカマンベール仕立て

雪印練乳ミルクバー