Snacks Of Japan

A fan site for the weird and wonderful snack foods

[snacksofjapan]

ORANGE FANTA BLACK THUNDER

It's just a regular Black Thunder with a miniature orange-flavoured fireworks party happening in my mouth (there’s popping candy in there), I don't care if it's a total novelty, I love it.

[snacksofjapan]

ARIAKE HARBOUR

This packaging gives hardly any clues as to what is inside. I have to admit it’s the mystery that draws me in. Also it has an illustration of people holding streamers and waving from a boat. I’ve always wanted to be the one waving from a boat.

Inside is a kind of oily, kind of wrinkly, kiiiiind of (??) boat shaped cake that smells either like an old doughnut or some kind of ancient but familiar treat from my childhood, I can’t pinpoint it.

Anyway it’s somewhere between a manju and a financier and it’s pleasant enough. Great for grandmothers. 

[snacksofjapan]

YOUNG DOUGHNUT

I’m sorry, I really just can’t get past the name here, but I’ll try:

These actually just taste like artificial stale cake doughnuts that you get from the supermarket because that’s what they are but you can’t really blame them for not being that great because they haven’t reached maturity also they were 40 yen in the children’s snack aisle at the supermarket, so.

[snacksofjapan]

BIG KATSU To my disappointment this product does not contain any pork cutlet but I'm pretty good at setting aside my disappointment so never mind. For only thirty yen it's a substitute, if not an acceptable one. Also if you don't care about meat this does smell and taste exactly like tonkatsu sauce and if you ignore the cardboardy texture then... maybe? it works? sort of? (...I don't know what it says about me that I actually enjoyed this product.)

[snacksofjapan]

JAGA CHOCO HONEY BUTTER FLAVOUR It's the year 2016 so we've all seen chocolate covered potato chips by now but what about these, honey butter white chocolate covered chips? The texture is right, I'll give them that. But rather than honey or butter they mostly just taste like someone mixed Elmer's glue with too much sugar and poured the resulting mess over some perfectly good potato chips. They simultaneously make me want to compulsively finish the whole package and vomit all over the table.

[snacksofjapan]

Chips of Japan episode 5: bacon asparagus potato chips

[snacksofjapan]

SALT & WATERMELON CHOCOLATE CHIP COOKIES As if one salt and watermelon flavoured product wasn't enough for the Japanese limited edition summer snack market here we also have them in cookie form. Which is kind of a clever concept, I have to admit, because the chocolate chips are kind of the watermelon seeds, yeah? A lot of times fruit themed things in Japan actually taste like the fruit in question but these have a strong leaning towards artificial watermelon flavour. They taste nothing like the real thing but they do taste like the watermelon themed hard candies of my youth, so, m pretty happy. But then I start to doubt myself. Maybe this is just my brain tricking itself and maybe this is what watermelons actually taste like, I don't have a real watermelon in the house to confirm this and it doesn't stop bothering me. Another thing that bothers me is for a supposedly salt-flavoured treat there's a disappointing lack of salt. I mean what if I was eating these cookies to regain electrolytes after sweating it out in the Tokyo summer heat? (Can anyone confirm whether that's why there are so many limited edition salt snacks out at the moment?) So I make up for it with a sprinkling of my own okinawan sea salt on the fourth and last cookie I consume for the night. Ah, that's better.

[snacksofjapan]

EVERYBURGER (SALTED CARAMEL FLAVOUR)

Well, it’s 11pm and I haven’t eaten dinner yet save for a glass of vegetable juice and my mum is totally going to be mad at me if she reads this. I should actually just go to bed but there’s this box of limited edition salted caramel EveryBurger, and yeah yeah I hear you going “but salted caramel is so 2013 Mika” but also I kind of don’t care. This is Japan. We play by our own rules.

So I tear open the package and my first impression is just pure joy. It’s like, a little nest of tiny baby hamburgers in there. Also there’s an immediate familiar caramel fragrance that hits my nose. It’s the happiest moment of my day so far, at least until my head hits my pillow in a few more minutes.

I’m going to forgive them for their lopsided construction and pallid-coloured filling not quite rich enough to be real caramel or chocolate. What matters here is that they taste bloody great, the buns are made of addictively crunchy biscuit properly dusted with sesame just like a real burger bun and the filling is so sickly sweet it burns my throat going down but I don’t even care. It’s frightening how quickly I finish the box.

[snacksofjapan]

Chips of Japan Episode 4: Shiokara potato chips (yes that’s fermented squid guts) (no I didn’t finish the bag)

[snacksofjapan]

PURÉ (sour) WATERMELON AND SALT GUMMY The salt and the sour coating all kind of blend together and just when you think your tastebuds have shrivelled up and fallen off there's the sweet relief of the watermelon gummy underneath, the first one made me puzzled and angry but by the time I finish the bag I'm sold.

[snacksofjapan]

Chips of Japan episode 3: Koikeya's apple flavoured potato chips

[snacksofjapan]

CUP NOODLE CURRY

After too many late nights at the office even cardboard posing as rehydrated meat and soft slimy noodles can taste like a lifesaver, especially when there's a generous hit of curry in the broth 👌🏽

[snacksofjapan]

JERSEY MILK MONAKA It may be shaped like something that should be used in a hospital but inside the wafer shell is not only the creamiest jersey milk ice cream but also a rich lode of sweetened condensed milk. It's something to live for.

[snacksofjapan]

YOMOGI ANPAN

It's your classic red bean bun except the green colour and herbaceousness comes from the mugwort in the bread dough, and I can get behind anything that sounds like it came out of a Harry Potter book.

[snacksofjapan]

LIMITED EDITION HAAGEN DASZ FLAVOURS

Haagen Dasz isn’t strictly a snack of Japan but can we just take this moment to acknowledge the sheer multitude of limited edition Haagen Dasz flavours that are on offer at any given time in Japan?

1. ALPHONSO MANGO AND CREAM: I don’t even know what an Alphonso mango is, but damn. True to form, the first two ingredients in this ice cream are: Alphonso mango purée, and cream.

2. LAVENDER AND BLUEBERRY: This with the flourishy font that looks straight out of an early 90s Anne of green gables cover, this my friends is lavender and blueberry. It tastes mostly of blueberry, not the fake shit you get but, like, someone boiled down some blueberries with some sugar which come to think of it is probably what’s in that swirl.

3. STRAWBERRY BANANA:

I don't know what it is, but as a child of the 90s strawberry banana flavour is hugely nostalgic, of like shopping mall food court juice bars and swimming pool concession stands back before people started putting things like kale and chia seeds and cacao nib and almond milk in their smoothies (don't get me wrong, I like all of these things!), and smoothies were just pure unadulterated sugar slush. Actually I don't think I have tasted something so authentically reminiscent of the strawberry banana era since, well, that era. Needless to say, this one was good.

4. CARAMEL TRUFFE:

it's your run of the mill caramel chocolate ice cream that is REALLY FUCKING TASTY

5. SALTY VANILLA AND CARAMEL:

i know that the salted caramel thing s (a) old hat and (b) it’s salted caramel not salty vanilla

but (a) japan’s attention to food trends of the western world seems less predicated on global appetites and more on the season and (b) it’s the start of summer which means all the salt-themed snacks are out, you know, to replenish all the sodium you’re sweating out, even though it’s barely hot yet, and (c) this is "salty vanilla" not "salted caramel", an important point of difference maybe?

anyway it’s the best of the lot, it tastes like caramel ice cream in a vanilla waffle cone, I would eat one of these every day to re-electrolyte myself after a long sweaty day. If only it worked like that.

[snacksofjapan]

PUTCHO FULLY RIPE MELON FLAVOUR I mean you have to give them points for accuracy, they do taste exactly like melon, right down to that cloying aftertaste you get after eating melon that's just on the wrong side of being too ripe. Personally I probably should've just stuck with regular melon fruit chews, but I guess that's the seductive power of dramatic black on gold packaging?

[snacksofjapan]

BLACK THUNDER 

Let’s talk about BLACK THUNDER.

Firstly it is thirty-odd yen a bar (that’s like, a US quarter) which probably more than partially accounts for its popularity among students and also myself. 

Secondly it is called BLACK THUNDER (in a no-nonsense all caps italic serif font) and I don't even know what that means but really who can argue with that. 

Finally it’s actually very good. The first time I had one I was like meh it’s just a less exciting twix without the caramel. But they grew on me. You know how sometimes twix can be overwhelmingly sweet? These are just straightforward chocolate covered crunchy biscuit and they’re good. 

Is it the representative chocolate bar of Japan? I don’t know. But I do know I’ll never stop eating them in times of need.