Mister Ito American Soft Uji Matcha Chocolate Chip Cookies (product information)

Image lifted from Candysan's web site. And, no, they did not bribe me to link to them. They just had the biggest picture that I could rip off. 

I couldn't figure out why a brand being named "Mr. Ito" struck me as funny. After all, we have "Mrs. Fields" in the United States, and her cookies were pretty popular until she sold out and they started to be sucky mall fare. Also, just as "Mrs. Fields" and "Mr. Ito" are both real people using their real names, unlike, say "Mrs. Butterworth". So, what's the weirdness? Well, it's the combination of Asian and occidental (Note: I am prohibited from using "oriental" as a pairing with "occidental" because I'm home now and must be politically correct at all times, even if the Japanese use the word "oriental" themselves.) It's not "Ito-san", it's Mr. Ito.

The folks at Mr. Ito are nothing if not international, and that's what compelled me to highlight these cookies as a product. They were released in February 2012, so they're actually a bit long in the tooth. They caught my eye because of the strange irony of a cookie called "American Soft" being sold in a green tea flavor. Further research reveals that the target market for these is 20-50-year-old Japanese ladies. There's very little "American" about them, beyond the half-Westernized name of the company's founder and the chocolate chips.

Morinaga Kinako Mochi Choco Ball

Candy makers speak in a sort of code. As children, we come to understand this code, but, as an adult, I had completely forgotten about the spycraft of sweets marketed toward the short set. For instance, "hot" in candy code often means, "strong cinnamon". It does not mean that chili is infused into the mix. That is only the case for candy designed for adult buyers and candy snobs who think that mixing hot stuff with sweet stuff is the bee's knees.

American candy makers have their code words and Japanese ones do as well. This was a fact I had not considered when I spied this box of "kinako mochi" or "toasted soy bean and pounded rice cake" flavor of Choco Ball. When I think "mochi", I think of chewy, slightly elastic, and soft covering on the outside of a traditional Japanese sweet. In candy code, however, "mochi" is what they call "gummi". That is necessarily a bad thing, but my level of enthusiasm would have been dialed back a bit had I remembered that this contained a core of German ingenuity rather than stretchy Japanese rice.

I found this small box (26 grams, a little under an ounce) of candy at Mitsuwa Japanese market on what I would consider a "very good day" in terms of scoring both interesting and affordable snacks. It was $1.19 (119 yen), which is still more expensive than it is in Japan (85 yen or 85 cents), but is very reasonable for an import.

When I flipped open the "beak" on the top of the box, I felt the very familiar scent of kinako "chocolate"; that is to say, white chocolate infused with toasted soybean. This is a smell that I love and welcome, and I think that kinako makes a very good match for white chocolate because it has no sweetness. I carries more of a nutty flavor from the roasting and only a hint of its soy roots. When I say, "soy", think soy beans, not tofu. There is quite a big flavor difference.

Each tiny little ball is about the size of an M & M, though, obviously, shaped differently. There 19 balls in the box, and the whole thing is 118 calories (about 6 calories per ball). I tried to get a cutaway view, but they're too small and soft for that. Biting into the white chocolate exterior causes the outer portion to crumble off of the gummy inside. Clearly, these are meant to be eaten in one go. Considering the small size, I imagine they're much more likely to be designed to be consumed a few at a time rather than in two bites. 

The outside has a nice sweetness and an earthy, nutty flavor from the kinako. The gummy inside is fresh, soft, and chewy, but it's so small that you have to make a special effort to get much of a "chew" in on it. That's okay. It invites you to be mindful of the experience. My tongue detected no flavor from the gummy inside, but that is no surprise both because of the size and the fact that they probably wouldn't trouble themselves to infuse it with something resembling the mild flavor of rice cake.

I really liked this, but I'm a kinako junkie. I think this is a very approachable option for those who may be a bit reluctant to try Japanese sweets, especially since it tastes a little bit like peanut butter. If you can find a box for a reasonable price, I say, go for it. 

If you're interested in a wallpaper showing Kyro-chan, the illustrated bird mascot on Choco Ball, you can download a few designs here. 

Frutabella Bananada Cremosa

When I hear a word with "cream" or even "creme" as part of the name, I expect, well, rich, fatty, white goodness. What I don't expect is a brown turd-like object which clearly has nothing to do with skimming the fat off of fresh milk. Life is just full of surprises. They're not necessarily happy ones that inspire giddy, girlish glee, but they are technically "surprises" in that they find you totally off-guard.

My husband picked up this object at the Portuguese deli and market at which I found my Brazilian Pez. He saw "banana" and decided this was of interest to him. I saw "cremosa" and thought it might be of interest to me. It ended up that we were both wrong. This food-like item is of no interest to either of us, though we did gamely give it a try despite its resemblance to bodily waste.

It should be noted that I don't speak Portuguese, though I did study a little Spanish and they're like cousins to one another. However, that really didn't help much in this case because "cremosa" means "creamy" and that was simply a big, fat lie. Even if I understood perfectly, I still would have been mislead.

Be honest. Your first thought was, "who forgot to flush!"

What this is is a wad of sugary fruit puree that has enough cohesion to not smoosh into a smattering of paste, but is still very pliable. It's more grainy than "creamy", though I have to say that it probably is about as "creamy" as pureed banana mixed with sugar and potassium sorbate is going to get. The flavor is strange in that brown sugar dominates. The "banana" aspect mainly comes through as a sour, nearly rotten banana taste at the end of each bite. On the bright side, and in what I see as the only sunny side of this, the dusting crunchy sugary coating on the outside adds an interesting textural element to the banana goo. If nothing else, this product reinforces my already strong sense that Japan isn't the only place where they sell weird food.

This is a profoundly weird thing, which I'm sure is supposed to be health because it's fruit and only 92 calories for a blob about the length of my thumb. The web site for this product talks about how bananas have great nutritional benefits as does potassium. I agree with their logic, but not with the monstrosity they've created from a perfectly good banana. I say, stick to a real banana and give this mass of fruit paste a miss.

KitKat Salty Caramel Big Little Bites (product information)

Image from Nestle Japan

Somewhere in the scattered contents of my memory, which as of late is being filled up with information about psychotropic drugs, how to diagnose mental health disorders, and grammar and punctuation points, I recall some sort of salted caramel KitKat offering from Nestle Japan. A search on Google yielded confirmation of this fact, from this very blog. You know you've posted too much when you don't even remember your own content.

So, Nestle Japan has decided to offer the equivalent of their former big bar release chopped up in tinier bits and enrobed in a little more chocolate. The original was good, and I'm sure these are, too, but we see a lack of imagination in play again from Nestle Japan. Still, better the mundane devil that sells than the creative angel that doesn't.

Random Picture #166

The display above is from a sembei shop in Sugamo, aka, the old ladies Harajuku. That means that the former was the shopping mecca for the retired set just as the latter was that for the pink-mohawk and kilt-wearing crowd that was under 21. These rice crackers feature the likenesses of common cartoon characters in Japan. Two are easily recognizable, even by those who are not animation dorks (the pair in the middle, Hello Kitty and Pikachu). Flanking them are the lesser-known characters (in the West) of Anpanman and Doraemon.

It is my feeling that everything is what it is for a reason and that, if you take a moment and think, that you can learn something about people and culture. When I went to an exhibit of Incan art in Tokyo, I noticed the motifs on the artifacts and what they said about the ancient culture. The same can be seen in modern culture, but you have to stop and ponder. This is from Sugamo, and it tells you more than sembei makers with too much time on their hands indulge in copyright infringement. This is the place for grandmas to buy their red underpants, but they're selling rice crackers with designs for children on them at the premium price of 400 yen (about $4.00) a cracker. That means that they are marketing to grandmas so that they'll buy expensive stuff for the grandchildren as much as offering to gird her loins in scarlet for the right price.

Calpis and Misdo Collaboration Donuts and Drinks (product announcement)

Some matches are made in heaven. Some are made in hell. This one feels like it was made in Albuquerque. This is the marriage no one was waiting for, and it'll finally be here on July 7, 2013. For reasons I'm sure are well understood in Japan, Mister Donut has decided to release Calpis donuts and drinks. In brackets, the Japanese on each of the products above says "Calpis" and anything that is blue also says "soda" (which is to say, ramune, which likely will just taste like bubble gum). Anything that is red is strawberry and the drink with the orange goop at the bottom is mango.

If you decide that you simply aren't getting enough Calpis by mixing it in with your donuts and drinks, you can buy a combination that allows you get a glass and stirrer as part of a set. The one that is 580 yen ($5.80) is a "drink set" which is one donut, one drink and a glass and the one that is 700 yen ($7.00) is a "donut set" which includes 5 donuts and a glass. If you don't think that these glasses are worth the extra scratch, there's a little surprise that may change your mind.

The bottom of each glass has a Mister Donut design on the bottom. The blue one has "pon de lion" and the pink one a french cruller design which features a lamb. This added cuteness surely will enhance the value of the glasses such that you will now longer be embarrassed to drink from a glass which has a word on it which sounds like "bovine urine" when you say it allowed. 

Yuki & Love Japanese Style Peanut Mochi

Have you ever wondered which part of an Oreo cookie makes the cookie better? Is it the slightly bitter, not terribly sweet and crispy outer cookie or the creamy, sweet death-mush in the center. If eating habits are any indication, that is, our tendency to mush together two cookies divorced of one half of their outer cookie sandwich, then the filling is the star of the show. That being said, in Japan, they used to sell only the outer cookie sans the sugary goo. Tastes are relative, after all.

When thinking about mochi treats, one can ask the same question, though I'm figuring those that are not aficionados of Japanese traditional sweets would say, "neither". Those who are connoisseurs would likely say, "both." As someone who just buys snacks for a living, I'm definitely saying the proof is in the rice cake (mochi) and that a substandard mochi experience will make or break the experience. 

The peanut filling of this is lightly sweet, dense, and pretty fatty. The texture is rich, but it's a little kludgy, like "natural" peanut butter before it has been stirred (though not quite that bad). The mochi is where things fall apart. It's actually nicely balanced in terms of taste and lends a sweetness from the rice cake having been infused with a bit of sugar and a nuttiness due to the powder on the exterior. The place where it all goes wrong is the mochi's texture.

The first time I tried a "Yuki & Love" Japanese style mochi, I loved it. It was soft and tasty with a delicate taro (like a potato, only, not) filling. I was so excited that I was dying to try another flavor and scooped up boxes of other varieties when I found them on sale. The second time was a more so-so experience, but that was largely due to the weirdness of the brown sugar flavor in that one. This time, the mochi was just crummy. It was too thick and rubbery, like chewy on the eraser on the end of a number 2 pencil. I don't know if this was old or if they just did a bad job on this particular one, but it really ruined the experience. Despite being quite good with the flavor (and being an enormous fan of all things peanut butter), I didn't finish the box. I kept going back and trying them, even microwaving them to soften the thick exterior, but it didn't help. I ended up throwing out half of the box because they just weren't worth the 130 calories per rubbery lump.

I hope this was a "bad batch", but I'm unlikely to try this variety again. I'm not giving up on the brand and will try another, but if it doesn't get better after the next sampling, I'll be saying goodbye to "Yuki & Love", or at least their Japanese style mochi offerings.

Garoto Orange and Guarana Candy

I grew up in a what would have once been called a "two-horse town". That is, a place so small that it only had two horses. That's a bit of an exaggeration though. I think my town was small enough to get by with one horse, provided that it was a little less broken down and ancient than the people it was expected to convey.

The thing about living in such a small place is that you have very limited options. There were two stores, literally. There as a "general store" which had a gas station in front (2 pumps, no waiting) and a garage to the right as well as a "supermarket" which had more food at more reasonable prices. People only went to the general store for food when the other store was closed or they were too lazy to go to a "real" store. Other than these places, there was a bank, a post office, and a couple of broken down private businesses including a funeral home. There was not much to explore and you knew every single available option.

Now that I live in the suburbs and have access to bigger shopping spaces, I'm finding that my options are very wide as long as I'm willing to get in a car and take a few minutes to do some research on the internet to find what is out there in that big, bad, wide world. My husband's family had been going to San Jose for decades to buy Spanish sausages at a Portuguese market and I'd poked around it a few times when they went for chorizo. The selection of cured meat is vast, but grocery options are tiny. However, I discovered that there is a second Portuguese market not too far from there which carries more groceries and a far broader array of imported snacks.

Despite the vast selection, I was pretty timid with my first choice. In fact, after picking up a $7 loaf of cinnamon sweet bread (which was fantastic), I grabbed today's review fodder at the register for a quarter as we were on our way out. It was an afterthought and the price, a quarter (25 yen), reflected that. I didn't really even pay attention to what I was buying except I knew that "naranja" means orange and I'll take anything orange.

It turned out that this is essentially Portuguese Pez. They are slightly bigger, but they have the same combination of shiny exterior and chalky exterior. I don't know if they have dispensers in Brazil, which is the location of the company that makes this, Garoto. The company seems to make chocolate for the most part and I could not find any reference to this candy on their web site. Actually, I couldn't find much of anything to do with their products on the site. It's mostly dedicated to various types of PR related to world cup soccer. The truth was that I learned more about the company via Wikipedia than from their own site. For instance, Nestle bought them in 2012, but they operate independently.

The truth is that, aside from the addition of guarana, this is very standard kid's candy. It's sweet, has a nice crumbly, crunchy texture and a strong orange component which comes on a bit overbearing at first then mellows out. The guarana comes across as an almost minty and rather strange aftertaste. It's supposed to taste like apples or berries, but it just seemed odd in this.

I can't complain about a tiny package of candy bought for a quarter on the spur of the moment. I can say that I was uninspired and won't buy it again. That said, their chocolates look interesting and, one day, when I make it back to that shop, I'll try something a little more adventurous by Garoto.

KitKat Cookies & Cream Big Bar (Product Announcement)

Image from Nestle Japan.

I love the KitKat big bars, but I hate white chocolate and have never been a big fan of cookies & cream as a candy flavor. In fact, I feel that the whole point of the cookies and cream concept is to add textural variation and flavor to ice cream. As a candy bar with cookies that add texture and its own flavor already, it seems silly to add cookies and cream to cookies and white chocolate. OK, perhaps it's not so  much "silly" as quite unimaginative. These big bars are coming to a convenience store in Japan soon and if I was still there, I would not bother to buy one. If you're more open to conventional flavors than me, let me know if you've tried this. I'm guessing that it'll have 5 layers of satisfying crunch surrounded by somewhat too sweet and perhaps even slightly chalky white chocolate infused with just a hint of bitter chocolate cookie and some creamy richness, though not enough of the good stuff to justify the calorie load.