Elite Japanese Cuisine

Oh! Did I say 'Elite Japanese Cuisine'? I meant stuff I found in convenience stores and vending machines! I... suppose there is a difference?

This first one isn't all that interesting. I think it's a Family Mart exclusive Sapporo soft drink, but I mostly took a picture because it's melon... cola? That and I never get tired of drinking curiously-hued beverages. In Japan of course, green melon soda is commonplace, but melon cola? To be frank I couldn't really tell the difference. It was good though!

McVitie's Sweet Mint Digestive Biscuits! Aw, now you're talking! These are one of those products that, although it's a Western company, I doubt you'll find these available in the West. That happens a lot (see for example whole blogs dedicated to the baffling array of Kit-Kat flavours they have here) and not just with food, but with clothing brands and other things too. Eastern and Western tastes vary, y'know.

But in this case, my tastes don't vary that much at all. I adore chocolate and mint flavoured stuff, but when I first came to Japan I never saw anything around, and when I told people I liked that taste they looked at me funny. Well, y'know, funnier than usual. But in the few years I've been here chocolate-mint flavoured items have been popping up more and more, and this summer was a veritable choco-minty feast for me, with all sorts of limited edition snacks and ice-creams on offer. I mean, when I saw this latest one I almost thought they'd designed it just for me. Until I turned over the packet...

I mean, she doesn't look like me at all. Oh well. Also, I'm pretty sure that the Japanese companies are treating choc-mint flavour as a summer thing, so now it's cooling down I won't find it anywhere, but it was good while it lasted.

Next up, vending machine awesomeness:

Walking through Sapporo Station I saw a DyDo vending machine selling pancake drink. I mean, pancake-flavoured milk drink, but... I mean that is either going to turn your stomach or turn your head. I think you can guess which it did for me:

Mmmmm, look at that melting butter. And there's definitely a hint of butter in the taste too, but it really wasn't too gross at all. From what's written on the can, it actually looks like this is more of a retro, nostalgia exercise than a bold new experiment in flavour. This pancake milkshake mix used to be available from the chocolate company Morinaga as a Nesquik-style stir-in powder. You'd add it to milk and - voila - drinkable pancakes. Morinaga are collaborating with DyDo on this... perhaps to get it back out there? Anyway it was pretty nice, probably too sweet for most people but I didn't have a problem with it. And yes, it did taste like pancakes. And in the end, isn't that what's important?

Japanese Junk Food Times - Pepsi Dry and Kit-Kat Zunda

Oh! I didn't see you there! Let me just put my gourmet hat on, and then tell you about my journeys in the realm of... flavour.

I don't need to go into how the Japanese snack food market retains its vim and vigour by trying out new flavours of existing products all the time, do I? I've read about a zillion other blog posts explaining the concept recently, so let's just say that I am thoroughly down with the concept. It reminds me of Grant Morrison's Seaguy a little, and also makes me think of white suited cowboys of the lab - pouring bubbling test-tubes into each other in search of the essence of... pistachio nut shells or something.

Above you will see Dry Pepsi. What is Dry Pepsi? It is non-sweet Pepsi. It makes no claims about being especially healthy on the bottle (though you would assume the lack of sugar is a good thing) and instead talks about being light and refreshing or something. I don't like Pepsi really, weirdly it is a little to sweet for me. So I figured that non-sweet Pepsi might be something worth checking out.

It was not.

It is not less sweet, as I was foolishly imagining, it is not sweet at all. In fact, it doesn't taste like Pepsi, it tastes like soda water, and I soon found myself wondering why it existed. If you like the bitter tang of soda, try it, or better yet JUST BUY SODA. After Shiso Pepsi, Azuki Pepsi and Montblanc Pepsi... this was a let down.

Better, but not incredible was, Kit-Kat Zunda - Zunda-Mochi being soy-bean rice cakes from Sendai. A quick google reveals that Pocky Watch - based in Sendai - reviewed this back in 2009. Tohoku was devastated by the tsunami in March of course, and now it looks like they're rolling out this flavour nationwide and giving 10yen from every bar to support the rebuilding effort. Good stuff.

The bar itself was nice, faintly bean-y, faintly rice-cake-y, but nothing to write home about. Wait, what am I doing here? Is this more effort or less than writing home? I'm lost. Anyway it was ok, but as usual they nail the scent a lot more than the actual taste - which comes out a little bit like funny white chocolate.

Anyway, that's my traditional Japanese food post. You're welcome.

Product Review: Reece's World's Largest Peanut Butter Cups

Obtained from New York by Chris Baker, at no little personal risk one would imagine, what the packaging claims are the "World's Largest" peanut butter cups. I had met my match. The very thought of sinking my teeth into that massive crust of chocolate was so thrilling / terrifying that I couldn't face it alone, so I shared the responsibility with about a dozen assistants.


To be honest the packaging does hint that you should probably eat them in "servings" rather than as some giant, painfully heavy tablet of peanut-chocolate insanity, and thank God for that. A little, I regret not just devouring a whole one in one sitting, but realistically... it might have killed me.

They were, of course, amazing.

Englanding #9 : Disquieting

So yes, busy, busy, busy. This Tuesday is from the following Tuesday, I'm sure you understand.

Japan has a zillion crazy ads. Of course it does, ads with people doing crazy things and ads with shouting. Lots of those. But still, I can't remember an advert that has disturbed me as much as the new Cadbury's bunny that I saw almost as soon as I got back.


The Caramel Bunny has been around for a long time (I think possibly they retired her for a while?) and, yes, possibly could be blamed for the rise of furries in the United Kingdom. I'd like a Freakonomics style breakdown of that actually - how many people who grew up with the Cadbury's bunny on their screens as a teen eventually fell into that little fetish? Wait, that's probably in the new Freakonomics book already isn't it. And it probably still tells us nothing interesting about the world.

So but anyway my problem with this new Cadbury's bunny is the way she seems to be a photoshop morph, halfway between a rabbit and a person. The figure, and those lips are especially chilling. It's like perhaps Cadbury's retired her while their black ops genetics lab went to work actually creating a real life Cabury's bunny girl, and now they're just doing photo shoots.

Creepy.

Japanese TV Commercial Break

So, those fiendishly addictive chocolate/salt snack that I mentioned (and of which I polished off another box yesterday and today) have a fiendishly addictive TV commercial to boot:

It actually says something along the lines of "salty and chocolatey" and "once you've eaten them you'll be addicted". Damn you Chip Chop... damn you to hell.

Junk Food Times: Chip! Chop

I tried these on a whim last week:


And they're like goddamn crack. I bought three boxes in a week and I'm already trying to ascertain with convenience store chains carry them so that I can patronize those enlightened few. They're some sort of chocoloate flavoured corn-crisp snack, but with the added punch of a subtle touch of salt. That salt/caramel; chocolate/pretzel; potato chip/chocolate symbiosis is not to everyone's taste - and to those who don't dig it, I would have to say... hurry up and evolve already! In the future, as everyone knows, food with be in pill form with all the flavours mixed in such a way that every meal will leave you incapacitated with pleasure, your eyes rolled back in your head, pawing yourself like a monkey. Better to get on that train now, before you're forced to ride box-cars all the way from here to the future.

Also, when you eat a handful of these and then take a sip of milk it's really fucking delicious.

Product Review: Kit Kat Sports Drink

Oh man. I know I keep bleating on about this subject, but this one's a peach. Check it out:


Kit Kat "Sports Drink Flavour"

I mean seriously, they've gotta have three guys hot-boxed in a little glass bubble, ripped to the gills sending little vacuum sealed notes down in pneumatic tubes to the Flavour Lab where the boys in white coats do their very best.

Sesame, Sweet Potato and Honey

Sports Drink

Anchovy Stuffed Olives

Lemur Fur

The other option is that it's the other way round. The boys in white coats just keep dropping chemicals into a petri dish in different combinations, apply the results to a stick of kit kat and send it up to the lads in the bubble. If it doesn't kill the poor sods they hold a debriefing:

Scientist: What about sample eff-four-eight-slash-two-five?

Taste Tester 1: Was that the pink one?

Scientist: That's right.

Taste Tester 2: It tasted like... friendship.

Taste Tester 1: Like... if your friends made you some really good cookies...

Taste Tester 2: Yeah, like pecan...

Taste Tester 1: ... like pecan and maple cookies.

Scientist: It tastes like pecan and maple cookies?

Taste Tester 3: It tastes like shame.

My actual review of Sports Drink Flavour Kit Kat? More like chemical tang kit kat. It's pretty nice, these things always are, and when I ripped it open it did smell like Aquarius or Pocari Sweat or one of those other Japanese sports drinks. But once it's in your mouth? Kinda citrusy and tangy, I reckon you'd have to be told that it's meant to taste like sports drink to arrive at that conclusion.

Bunny sent me some animal shaped frozen lollipop makers, which I put to good use:


It's a chocolate and mint flavoured bear! No, he's not dead, he's just lying down. In his weird, plastic sarcophagus.

Dietary Sustenance

Cleared out my cupboards after my birthday. Utter farce. Not as bad as the Christmas before last, but still:


Inventory includes:

Special Okinawa Haichuu Sweets
Large Gourmet Boiled Lollipops (x3: chocolate covered banana, buttered popcorn and peanut butter)
Reese's Pieces
Reece's Peanut Butter Cups
Trident Sweet Kicks Chocolate Mint Flavour Gum
Dairy Milk 8 Chunk Bar
Grapefruit Sour Candy Shot
Apple Sour Candy Shot
Toxic Waste Hazardously Sour Candy
Atomic SourBall Sour Hard Candy Sweets
Some sort of Sour Japanese Candy with a one in five chance of getting a sour covered curry sweet.
Chocolate Panda Biscuits
Wasabinori Snack
Chocolate Covered Coffee Beans
Rowntree's Randoms
Mikan Sweets
Soft Ice Cream Chocolates (three flavours)

What must people think of me?

Make with the words, Wordsworth

So that's it, Christmas wrapped up for another year. Back in the Old Country though it'll keep going until... what? The Epiphany? Is that right? There's a bunch more holiday anyway, but here in Japan Christmas is just this kinda silly fun thing where you can buy presents for people or eat fried chicken and cake and stuff. They do it with style, but their heart's not in it and of course the Christmas decorations are already being taken down on Christmas Day.

New Years is where it's at, next year's the year of the cow in case you're interested.

Last night's snowstorm was a real humdinger. We got about six inches and the sky was flickering with sheet lightning - in a snowstorm you know that means "business time". The temperature dropped savagely, and today it was a fierce day to be outside. We had howling winds and snow all day, it was positively arctic and someone mentioned something about highs of minus three.

Some choice presents from Santa this year included a seriously classy scarf, a boxing panda pen where the panda's eyes light up red when he punches (bad-ass), a map, a tourist guide from 1965 and chocolate.

Cadbury's chocolate that is, sourced in England, which reminded me that Cadbury's chocolate really is something to be proud of. You can pick it up here in Japan but it's all imported from Australia... and sorry but it's kinda lacking. I always heard that Cadbury's Australia have to add extra preservatives to keep the chocolate more stable in the heat, but that might be bull. I'm sure it ain't as good as the British stuff though.

Also Wovenhand - which put my mind at rest that David Eugene Edwards is still out there, using the bad side of the bible to warn us all. Also his new album sounds pretty much exactly like his old band 16 Horsepower, who were astonishingly good at their peak. He's got his badass French bassist back, which I think is probably a big part of it.

Items

Among today's finds:


I've seen the Big Issue Japan a couple of times but never in Sapporo. Japan has a big homeless problem in general, but not so much in Hokkaido - it's just too cold to survive the winter living outdoors up here. Down where Andy lives in hot, hot Fukuoka though, I've seen so many people sleeping rough along the river; and a while back I read this article about those living hand to mouth in Osaka. I can't read it at all, but it's interesting to flick through.


Colo Galita are my favourite chocolate snack things in Japan. Let my take your tongue on a journey... with my words. They're little biscuit cups filled with chocolate and ensconced in the middle of the chocolate is a nugget of caramel. They're crunchy and chocolatey and sweet all at once and thus I love them. And now double chocolate Colo Galita? I say thee yay.

The Existential Terror of the SMAP Meiji Chocolate Ads

SMAP, Japan-straddling, J-pop colossusses. Meiji Chocolate, one of the biggest brands in Japan. Together they bring you... SPINE CHILLING TERROR.

Seriously, I know they're going for wacky, Willy Wonka-esque japes here, but Shingo comes off a lot more Child-catcher from Chitty Chitty Bang Bang for me:

And as for this one... that ain't an advert for chocolate pal.

That's an advert for something a lot stronger than chocolate.

Though Goro has never looked better than as a giant, demonic, drummer boy.