Calpis Baked Goods (product announcement)

Image courtesy of Family Mart.

I remain a Calpis virgin, despite my many years in Japan. However, I would have surrendered this status if these things had been available during my time there. I probably would have gone for the Calpis tart (top left) for certain and the cream bread (bottom left). However, I probably wouldn't go for the sponge cake (top right) and definitely wouldn't have touched the "cup jelly" (gelatin).

The tart and sponge cake cost 110 yen ($1.10). The jelly is, for reasons I can't imagine, 158 yen ($1.58) and the cream bread is 137 yen ($1.37). If you can get past the name which sounds like bovine urine, you can enjoy them from Family Mart convenience stores. (All jokes aside, Calpis is supposed to taste like yogurt and I'm sure is pretty tasty.)

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. 

Calpis Soda Refresh Zero

I sought out this drink after one of my readers recommended it to me. You wouldn't think I'd need to have people telling me to try things, but the truth is that far more things are released than a single reviewer could ever manage on her own. If I had a stable of writers willing to try all of the things I don't want to try, then there's a slim chance most of the bases might be covered.

Of course, they'd have to be a stable of writing slaves since there's no money in blogging, but it would nonetheless be the only way to cover more food and drink. I can only eat and drink so much junk before the risk that my office chair will collapse becomes very real. There's a reason I mention calories in every post, and that's that I'm all too aware of what I'm eating and how much I can tolerate on a regular basis.

At any rate, I found this Calpis "Refresh Zero" soda at Seiyu supermarket for 98 yen ($1.12), but it is currently available in a wide variety of places including most (but not all) convenience stores. Seiyu was simplest the cheapest place to get it. This is a 500 ml. bottle with no sugar, though it says it has 1% real lemon juice. The first ingredient is lemon, followed by Erythritol. It includes powdered milk and lactobacillus cultures.

The combination is an uncommon one. It's the sort of thing you could never really have in real life because lemon and milk are not flavors that usually mix because lemon curdles milk. If you don't believe me, make yourself a cup of lemon tea and add milk. Watch the little curds float around.

At first, I thought this was just weird. Mainly, it seemed like lightly-sweetened, lemon mixed with club soda with a hint of milk. About halfway through the bottle, I started to actually like it and the mix of sour lemon and milk took on a yogurt-like feel which I found pleasant. I think this is one of those things that can be perceived as so new as to be hard to figure out how you feel about it at first, but then you either grow to like it, or decide it's really not your thing. It's an acquired taste, and, fortunately, I acquired it. That being said, it may not be everyone's cup of tea, or Calpis, as the case may be.

Calpis KitKat Mini

This is a party which I am arriving very late at for various reasons. The primary one is that this particular mini, which is a collaboration between drink maker Calpis and Nestlé Japan, was available in limited stores (Family Mart was the only place I saw it on offer), it was only available as part of a 13-unit bag, and it was too expensive. Usually, I can get bags of mini bars for 199-250 yen ($2.27-$2.85) and I only saw this for 278 yen ($3.17). And I try to avoid buying a lot of something which is an unknown and of dubious taste value. Let's face it. This is the sort of thing which one could easily find oneself disliking.

Essentially, I was waiting for just the right opportunity to buy this, and one did not come along for quite some time. I don't know if this was one of the very few "under-produced" KitKat flavors or if it just sold so incredibly well that no leftovers made their way to the bargain shops, but I didn't find a discounted one for a few months. Most Japanese KitKat specialty flavors hit the bargain bins in a month or so and seem to sit there for quite awhile.

A new discount snack shop opened on the other side of my neighborhood, and one hot evening I chanced upon it. Bags of these bars were sitting nonchalantly in a cardboard box outside the shop for 199 yen ($2.27) each. The shop owner was very keen to be of service and as I wandered around his empty shop, he tried to foist samples of very familiar bubbly sembei on me. I declined, twice. Though I do like that sembei, I wasn't hungry. The shop also had free cold green tea on offer. I'll have to revisit them soon and see if their solicitous behavior is ongoing or just an opening gesture from a new shop.

Getting back to these KitKats, which are actually less interesting than the service I got at the shop, I didn't quite know what to expect from them considering that I've only had Calpis in its non-original state a few times. Frankly, I was hoping it'd have more of a yogurt flavor than it did. There is definitely a bit of a "soda" flavor going on. I think the powder between the wafers must be made with ramune (Japanese lemon-lime soda) flavor. The filling reminded me of blue "soda" flavored fizzy candies I used to have as a child. I wondered if Nestlé Japan recycled part of the ingredients or formula for the ramune bar it released last summer.

The outside coating had a little bit of a yogurt flavor, but was so much sweeter than it was sour that it just seemed like a relatively generic white chocolate with the vaguest hint of something else. Frankly, the chocolate was quite similar to the Calpis I sampled awhile back; it was like greatly watered down yogurt mixed with slightly tart lemon-lime.

This is a decent candy bar, but nothing to write home about. I'll either slowly eat the rest of the bag when my sweet tooth beckons me or slowly give away the rest of it. I can't say "don't buy this", but I also wouldn't say "go out of your way to buy this." It's interesting, but ultimately not all that incredible. This was clearly a corporate match that was done for the marketing value rather than the potential for a winning combination of flavors.

Amino Calpis Zero

I knew that I would one day buy Calpis in its "straight" flavor format (as opposed to the grape which I previously reviewed) because there is no way I'm going to get out of Japan without sampling this classic beverage. Well, this isn't the "classic" form since it has been stripped of its sugary nature, but it should be a less tooth-decay-promoting equivalent.

I found this for 100 yen ($1.07) in my local green grocer, Yutakaraya, and figured it was time to take the plunge. The ingredients list is an impressive array of chemicals. The first (besides water) is Erythritol, but there's also Aspartame, Sucralose and Acesulfame K. It looks like no sweetener has been left out of the mix. It's like a party full of women who are beautiful which have all had surgical enhancements. None of it is real, but it has all appearance of being so.

The page for this product promotes it by saying that the amino acids in it will promote your basal metabolism. Amino acids are related to metabolism, and are "building blocks of protein" according to Wikipedia. So, I'm guessing that there is some benefit to this besides increasing the chances that you'll suffer some disease related to artificial sweetener consumption.

When I gave this a sniff, it reminded me of Alka Seltzer for some reason. The second sniff brought to mind a very weak version of Yakult's probiotic drink. The second impression was the one that rang true. This tastes like a partially watered down bottle of Yakult. It has the same sour notes, but they're greatly muted. The sweetness level is not muted or watered down though.

At first, I thought this was too sweet but as my taste buds got saturated and the sweetness grew muted, the yogurt-like tones shone through more prominently. I didn't think I was going to like this much and was ready to give it an indifferent rating, but I liked it more and more as I got closer to the halfway point. If I were in the mood for a yogurt drink and wanted to avoid the calories, I'd definitely go for this again. Note that I think that those sensitive to artificial sweeteners may want to avoid this assiduously.

Calpis Soda Grape Zero

Let's get the big laugh out of the way first. When you say "Calpis", it sounds like "cow piss". The makers of Calpis either didn't know or didn't care about that when they made the name. The "cal" is for Calcium and the (rather unfortunate) "pis" is from Sanskrit and supposedly means "supreme taste" and is used because it is part of Buddist culture (and Japanese culture has elements of Buddism). Note that in English-speaking countries, this is called "Calpico".


Despite having been here for 20 years, I've never been tempted to buy Calpis. I chuckled about it a few times when I first got here, and promptly lost interest. The drink is supposed to be yogurt-like and feature milky flavors. It's called a "lactic acid" beverage. The color of this beverage certainly would bear that out as it is very cloudy and appears to be mixed with something milky.

This attracted me to it because it is zero calorie, though the first ingredient is, oddly "grape sugar". I'm guessing that it is not absolutely zero, but one of those deals where it is essentially zero per 100 ml. The other ingredients include the usual cocktail of artificial sweeteners.

This smells like grape soda, and on first sip, tastes like it. It has two strange aftertastes. The first is likely the lactic acid/milk element and the second is the artificial sweetener. I don't know what it is about Japanese low calorie sodas, but with the exception of Diet Coke, they all seem to have a heavy chemical flavor. This one is better than some on that front, but the weird bitterness and somewhat metallic taste that chases every sip spoils what might have been a promising beverage. So, while I drank the rest of the bottle, I wouldn't buy it again.