Shimi Choco Corn and Anpanman Pero Pero Choco

I'm headed close to the finish line in my race to review all of my ZenPop box treats before I loose my free time to jury duty (which is coming up on May 2nd). I have to say that it's been quite refreshing to get back in the groove of steady reviewing, though I know that I'll run out of things to review pretty soon.

If aliens came to earth and looked at our food, would they be confused by the fact that we shape our food like humans and then eat them? There are chocolate Santas at Christmas in the U.S. Why would we want to cannibalize a jolly guy who wants nothing more than to give us free toys?

These are the thoughts that occur to me when I look at snacks like the Anpanman chocolate lollipop. He looks so happy, and I just snapped his head in half, took my picture, and then took a bite out of him. If it is any consolation, he didn't taste especially good.

Incidentally, "pero pero" means "lick, lick" which I guess refers to the fact that this is on a stick. However, this isn't really designed for licking. It's barely designed for eating at all because the texture is too soft and the chocolate flavor is fairly muted, especially toward the center where there is more pink chocolate. It's balanced in sweetness. It's vaguely milky, but mostly seems to be too adulterated with vegetable oil to have any sort of pure flavor elements. It looks cute, and it doesn't taste terrible, but this is largely for novelty rather than for flavor. I had my husband sample it and he said, "It tastes like inferior chocolate." That about sums it up.

The other item in this double review is best known for it's tasty animal crackers. The "shimi corn" like is made up of various flavors of a cereal like corn base. It sounds very unimpressive, but it actually was very satisfying. The flavor of the chocolate was excellent and the texture of the star-shaped corn tube was perfect. It was neither too dense nor too crispy. If you like eating sugar cereal dry out of the box (and I do), this is going to be the bee's knees. This was unexpectedly tasty and I wish I had a case of them around for future noshing. It just really played into my tastes.

So, the moral of the story? Cannabalism is wrong in every way. Don't go around eating the heads of fictional characters. It will not be nearly as much fun as you anticipate. The other moral? Corn is always king!

Anpanman Pero Pero Choco:

Shim Choco Corn:

Fujiya Country Ma'am Double Chocolate Crispy Cookies

There was often a confusion in Japan about the difference between "ma'am" and "mom". In terms of how they get translated from English to Japanese, the sounds are very likely indistinguishable. That's my way of saying that I don't know if this brand name is meant to bring to mind an old-fashioned mother in an apron making fresh baked cookies for her brood or if it's meant to elicit a gentile woman who lives in the country and serves her guests, for who she is the quintessential hostess, an array of fine sweets at tea time. Of course, it doesn't matter, but part of what I think about is branding and who it is meant to appeal to. The names of successful products are important and savvy companies know it.

The Country Ma'am line has expanded since its early days of being the soft cookie that you put in the microwave for a fresh-baked experience. Part of that expansion is the "crispy" line. Part of it at present is also a summer offering of cookies that are supposed to be put in the freezer. Whatever your temperature wishes, Country Ma'am appears to have you covered - hot, cold, or room temperature. The crispy line is for those who don't want to fuss with major appliances. I tried one in the microwave and it didn't do anything for it and I'm pretty sure that freezing wouldn't do much for it either.

I picked this up for $1.50 at Daiso Japan. Each bag contains 6 cookies at 46 calories per tiny cookie. One of the things that tends to put me off of the Country Ma'am line is that they are so fatty and rich for such a small morsel. In terms of the calories, they are the Oreo of the Japanese cookie world. I tend to prefer to spend my calories on a meringue cookie or a rice cracker (sembei) instead of two small bites of cookie. This consideration may not matter to most people, but it matters to me.

The point of the crispy cookies is rather obviously to offer a cookie which is crunchy. These do deliver on that front. They are tiny little crispy cookies (a little bigger than a quarter or 100-yen coin) with a deeply rich chocolate flavor. In fact, the flavor is reminiscent of a brownie. They are very similar to something that I recently tried here in the U.S. called "brownie brittle." The main difference is that the brittle is super crispy and these are between a regular cookie and that brittle in texture.

The call on this is hard to make. These are good little cookies with a nice texture, but given the small size, I'd rather blow 50 calories on a slab of brownie brittle (which will give me far more time with the texture and flavor for the same calorie footprint). However, not everyone can get brownie brittle and the comparison isn't quite fair. If I was in Japan and I wanted to have a shelf-stable bite with a nice chocolate punch, I'd buy these. Here in the U.S., with other options, I can't see choosing this again. So, I'm rating this as "indifferent", but that's only because I have other choices which are cheaper, more flavorful, and a better calorie to enjoyment ratio. If I were still in Japan, these would probably get a "happy" rating.

Fujiya Milky Mont Blanc Chocolate

I have reached an important conclusion about the Fujiya brand's versions of chocolate. Well, it's not important in a global sense. It certainly isn't going to impact climate change, cure cancer, or end starvation. It's also not important in a local sense. It won't end the California drought or lower the local taxes. No, it's only important in helping my readers relate to the status of this particular brand in Japan relative to the status of a similar brand in the U.S. Saying it like that sort of undermines the sense of my conclusion having any importance at all, even in my estimation. Oh, well.

At any rate, despite the less than earth-shattering nature of my revelation, I will finally offer it. Are you ready? Fujiya is the Hershey's of Japan. By that I mean that they make sub-standard chocolate products which are popular mainly because their taste is familiar, their packaging and logo can be related to, and their mascot a long-standing icon in the culture. Their products aren't great, but people know them so they like them.

This is not exactly a criticism of Fujiya. I like Hershey's kisses despite their chalky texture and sour milk/yogurt-like flavor profile and less than endearing chocolate notes. You can enjoy something and recognize that it's not the greatest quality version of that item on the market. Bad pizza is a case in point. I love bad pizza because it is familiar to me as someone whose mother would purchase an enormous quantity of bread-like squares with some form of ketchup and vegetable-based cheese-like product on it. It was a fast food meal from our freezer that provided a welcome alternative to the disgusting sloppy mess of canned vegetables, stacks of day-old white bread, and meat stuffs cooked into a grey, tough mass that my mother used her very special culinary skills to create. Yes, I like things because they were introduced to me in my childhood when I had a very different frame of reference.

The chocolates look cute with the adorable little embossed faces.

You may guess from that introduction that this box of twelve "Milky" mont blanc (a chestnut-paste-based dessert pictured on the lower right of the product's box) candies let me down. Indeed, it did. There is a particular flavoring in all of the Milky chocolates which I am not a fan of. I don't know what it is, but it is like the sour milk flavor in Hershey's chocolates. You either like it or you don't, and I don't.

The bigger sin than this weird taste is that the chestnut/mont blanc component, which was the part of this candy which compelled me to buy it at Nijiya market for about $2.20 (224 yen), is quite weak. It tastes a little like caramel at first, but it dissipates too quickly to really detect any greater depth of flavor. Mostly, you're just getting the very soft, fatty weird chocolate exterior. I should note that this is not because it is fake chocolate, or at least I think it's not. Fujiya uses cocoa butter and cacao mass. It also uses vegetable oil and "artificial flavor", which may account for the strange taste that I dislike. This is not horrible by any stretch of the imagination, but I'll turn to this when I'm out of other candy or want a tiny portion (each square is 20 calories) and only have big amounts on hand.

I have to try to remember that I don't care much for Fujiya's products. I buy them so infrequently that I forget and make mistakes like buying this. That being said, the chestnut part would probably have sucked me into buying it even if I remembered Fujiya's freaky chocolate recipe. Besides, if I keep eating it, I may get used to it and actually learn to like it. It worked with Hershey's, after all. 

Fujiya Milky Big Ball Corn Potage Candy

Friends, Romans, countrymen, and anyone from any country other than Italy or America who reads my blog, I am here today to talk about corn. Yes, I have spoken many times about how corn is the king of all grains and I will speak of it again as long as you don't start posting comments about how you're sick of me talking about corn and will quit reading if I keep up this nonsense.

One of the many things I learned from life in Japan (and I've learned so much, including the fact that mayonnaise is considered its own food group with a minimum daily allowance in said country) was that we view corn in far too limited a fashion in the U.S. Sure, we have cornmeal, muffins, cakes, etc., but we have no yet released a candy that is corn flavored. The furthest that we are willing to go is to cram cornflakes in our sweets... and, for some reason, the sushi at Safeway supermarket also has cornflakes but that's a life mystery for another time to explore. Today, we're talking about the under-utilization of corn.

When I saw this corn candy at Nijiya market for a mere $2.19 (I'm sure it sells for about half that in Japan, but, imports, go figure), I knew that I would have to buy it because this was the sort of "only in Japan" thing that people need to be aware of. Sure, they think "only in Japan" applies to men cuddling pillows shaped like women's laps and muttering "moe" under their breath in contentment or that people are eating burgers made from the ground flesh of beef that drank nothing but beer and had their torsos massaged daily by cherubic children in school uniforms.

The real "only in Japan" is far more mundane than that, at least in my opinion. It's the funk that isn't funky enough for the blogs to cover, and it includes (but is certainly not limited to) how they more fully embrace corn. Sure, we know they put it on their pizza and sell it with their pizza (so that you can put mayo on it and eat it as your "vegetable" side dish), but they also drink it in soup for breakfast and, they put it in their candy. They put it in 22-calorie morsels of taffy-like candy that are marketed as "big balls".

I opened a wrapper and gave the candy a sniff. It doesn't smell like anything. When you put it in your mouth, it is a little on the hard side and you have to warm it up and chew it to release the flavor. As it softens into a chewing gum-like taffy, it starts to melt in your mouth and release strong sweet-corn flavor which is amplified by the corn syrup (which is the first ingredient). It is also infused with richness and even more sweetness from sweetened condensed milk. In the end, it is potently sweet and has strong corn flavor. This is not necessarily a bad thing, but this is a pretty intense flavor experience both on the sweetness and corn front.

I liked this quite a lot, to be honest. I love corn flavored things and corn potage soup in particular. Lately, I've also taken to making polenta and eating it with pancake syrup and butter (as well as in savory preparations). When I make corn tea, I even sweeten it to bring out an essence which is similar to this (and corn tea is naturally sweet). Corn and sugar are in a good relationship as far as I'm concerned.

That being said, I would not say this is for everyone. For some people, corn is associated with more savory options and they think of it as something slathered with butter and sprinkled with salt - either at a movie theater or a backyard barbecue. Depending on your tastes, this could be manna from heaven or a horrendous blob of sugary awfulness. All I can say is that, this is what "candy corn" should be rather than the horrible stuff we see every Halloween. If candy corn tasted like this corn candy, (at least some) people might actually be happy to eat it.

Fujiya Sweets Torte Nama Dorayaki

"Nama" in Japanese means "raw". I'm guessing that the reference in this case relates to the enormous dollop of whipped cream in the center of the dorayaki in the picture as this certainly does not appear to be uncooked in any sense of the word. Dorayaki, for those who don't remember or haven't seen my reviews of such treats, is two pancake-like slabs that sandwich a sweet jam filling. The filling is usually red beans or a mixture of beans and other things like chestnuts, pumpkin, or sweet potato. I favor the chestnut ones, but the red bean ones are fine as well.

I have never had one that came with a whopping pile of whipped cream, but the idea certainly holds appeal. My husband is a sugar hound and I'm a fat fiend. He'll take the heavily frosted things and I want the stuff that's slathered in whipped cream. In fact, I'm pretty sure that gelatin was invented not as a way of using bones from animals, but rather to offer a preferred conveyance for whipped cream. Gelatin as a dessert is so lame that no one would blame you for adding a little something to make it better. I believe this is also the reason people invented "Jell-O shots". Knowing that you are getting intoxicated makes it feel more worthwhile.

Getting back to this candy, I've reviewed a few of the Sweets Torte line before and am very likely to review more in the future. The concept is to recreate a particular confection and offer up both the flavor and texture elements of the food being imitated. It's done using multiple layers of chocolate, jammy fillings and cookies. The possibility that you're going to get something special is pretty good, but there's no guarantee.

The first bite reveals most of the anko (sweet bean paste) notes that you've going to get before the sweet and rather soft chocolate flavor merges in and dominates. The cookie base is slightly crispy, but not as brittle as other versions of this that I've tried have been. The flavors don't reveal themselves in layers so much as in a melange which is mainly overwhelmed by milky bittersweet chocolate. I don't get any sense of the flavor or texture of a dorayaki-style pancake at all. That is where the biggest disappointment comes from. If that is not present in some fashion, then this is just really a mildly adzuki-tinged chocolate.

It's actually pretty tasty, but only if you're looking at this as a chocolate and not as something which is supposed to be unique. I paid around $2 (200 yen) for this small box with five candies about the size of a very large coat button. In terms of value for the experience, it's a very bad buy. So, while I can say I will be more than happy to eat the rest of these, I would not buy it again as it's just not special enough for the price.

Look Hawaiian Chocolate

When I was a very young child, I had a puzzle which was a map of the United States. Each piece was a state and the point was to teach children the names of the states and their capitals. Since it would be very boring design to just have each state with words on it, they also put a picture or a few pictures of representative images for each place on the puzzle piece.

For some states, this was easy since they had very clear industries or famous places. California had Hollywood. Michigan had cars. Florida had oranges. Idaho had potatoes. My home state, Pennsylvania, had the Liberty Bell and coal. Some of the states were represented by rather silly things and those are the states that nobody remembers the position of on the map. Of course, Hawaii was easy. It had pineapples, coconuts, and hula girls. In fact, it also has a good deal more these days as we can also connect it with coffee, and macadamia nuts. In fact, I think more people know Hawaii as a stereotype than as an actual place to live (except the marvelous Marvo at The Impulsive Buy since he actually does live there).

I imagine that this offering from Fujiya for their Look line is based on favored stereotypical flavors. The box has all of the images that my old puzzle map used to have, including the hula dancer. Maybe one of their designers had that very same toy as a child.

Of course, there must be pineapple and there's also Kona coffee and macadamia, but the final flavor is pure Japan. That flavor is "blue Hawaii". My first experience with the "blue Hawaii" flavor was when considering a kakigori (shaved ice) treat for the first time. The syrup flavors included that non-descript flavor. We though that it might be blueberry at first, but it turned out to be some weird flavor that we could not figure out. Of all of the options in this box of Look chocolates, that one would absolutely be the biggest surprise as I had no idea what it was going to be.

pineapple: This was very subtle at first and I mainly tasted the bittersweet chocolate. The pineapple hit somewhere in the middle as an acidic burst and then faded away. I don't think chocolate and pineapple are a particularly good pairing in general and this did nothing to change my feeling about that.

macadamia: I had some expectations that this might work pretty well because, you know, nuts and chocolate, but it tasted strangely artificial and funky. It was if it had been contaminated by some bizarre artificial flavoring.There was only a modest nutty flavor mixed with the strange chemical taste.

Kona coffee: I figured this might be pretty good, but it also had a little of that odd flavor coupled with coconut. It had a rich, coffee finishing taste and was the best of the bunch. That is not to say it was fantastic, but it was complex and tasted closest to what one might expect.

blue Hawaii: This is where that strange chemical flavor came from. I wonder if the other flavors were "contaminated" in some fashion by the bubble gum-like flavor of this filling as that same essence is what I detected in the macadamia and Kona coffee to some extent. The pineapple is the furthest physically in the box from the blue Hawaii so it may not have been absorbing the scent/flavor as much. As much as I may feel that pineapple and chocolate are not a natural partnering, bubble gum and chocolate are about as mismatched as it gets.

None of these was terrible. I didn't exactly want to spit them back out, but that is more of a testimonial to how weak the fillings were and how serviceable the semi-sweet chocolate was. I can eat these, but I wouldn't say they'd be my first choice or even my second or third. If I was desperate for chocolate and this was all I had, I'd turn to it, but it's really not great. Maybe I got a bad box, or mine was older and sitting on the shelf caused flavors to coalesce into a mutant entity, but I wouldn't buy this again.

Fujiya Sweets Torte Banana Caramel Pancake Chocolates

I've been crazy for pancakes since coming back to the U.S. I did have them occasionally in Japan, but I tended to not eat them too much because the syrup had about, oh, a billion calories in it and a pancake without syrup is simply fluffier bread. One of the reasons I crave pancakes here is that I can buy sugar-free syrup. Besides being carcinogenic, it weighs in at about 30 calories per quarter cup whereas the real stuff is 240 per cup. That makes it a lot easier to eat pancakes without going up a size.

Since I've been on a pancake kick lately, these chocolates caught my eye. I was certain that they'd taste just like a banana pancake because I'm just that stupid. The main problem with anything "pancake" flavored is that it's missing the essential element and that is the texture. More often than not, "pancake" means maple syrup and I was hoping that wasn't what this was going to be.

The "sweets torte" line by Fujiya is an attempt to make a fairly complex and sophisticated chocolate for the consumer market. To that end, they tend to layer a little cookie with a few kinds of chocolate and syrup. This should add in multiple flavors unless they all happen to come together into a melange of horribleness.

Fortunately, I can say that this keeps at least some of it's flavors distinct. The first thing you get is the outer chocolate coating following by something which is reminiscent of an actual pancake's taste. The kicker is a banana flavor. Unfortunately, it's a little too strong and knocks out that hint of actual pancake flavor pretty strongly.

This is not a bad chocolate. It certainly is interesting and has some complexity. However, the banana part is a little too strong for me and these are somewhat expensive candies. I can't remember what I paid for it, but it was between $2.50-3.00 for a tiny box with 5 individually wrapped pieces. As a one-time novelty, I don't necessarily regret trying it, but I wouldn't buy it again.

Fujiya Look Matcha Mousse Chocolates

This box of chocolates came to me courtesy of Skoshbox (gratis).

Fujiya would like to have tea with you. No, really. They're talking about a tea ceremony campaign linked to a pretty swanky-looking tea house in which you can spend 90 minutes experiencing tea culture. If you live in Kyoto, Nagoya, or Tokyo, or are willing to travel to these places, you and your offspring can enjoy yourself some high-falutin' tea, or, you can plant your ass on your sofa, watch some inane T.V., and open up a box of chocolates for a less swanky and elegant, but more comfortable experience. After all, who wants to sit seiza for an hour and a half while people painstakingly prepare tea?

Skoshbox sent me this pretty much on the cusp of the point at which hot weather would have wrecked it. EbiDebby at Snack Love also reviewed it, and her candy fared far worse than mine due to the heat. My box of chocolate suffered more from sitting on my counter during a West coast heat wave than from traveling from Skoshbox's hands to mine.

On the left is green tea and adzuki and on the right is green tea and milk. 

Look has actually been impressing me lately with their candy, and this was no exception. The matcha chocolate has a mild chocolate flavor mixed with a slightly more potent green tea flavor. It's not overbearing in any way and is lightly sweet. Rather than possessing flavor depth, they fuse together to create a single entity which is neither chocolate nor green tea, but a happy combination of both.

The green tea with adzuki is a slightly different experience. The green tea is more prominent. There's something about the adzuki which  makes it emerge. I tried both o these chocolates cold and at room temperature. The cold version of the adzuki was subdued. The room temperature one was much, much stronger and had the strong earthy tones of red bean soup. I, frankly, preferred it cold.

Both of these are nice chocolates. The matcha milk one is more accessible, but both are interesting without being overbearing. I'm not sure if someone who is not a fan of matcha or adzuki would enjoy them, but someone who is should be pleased. I'd certainly have them again.

I don't know if these are still available from Skoshbox as part of their current box because the weather may have become prohibitively hot, but you might be able to get one while they last.

Look Amaou Strawberry Cream Parfait Chocolate

One of the things which has become clear to me since returning to the U.S. is that the market here for snack foods is dramatically different than that in Japan. One of these days, I want to write a comprehensive post about it, but the American market appears to favor enormous slabs of rich cake covered in frosting and the Japanese one prefers delicate little pieces with bits of fruit and whipped cream. A lot of people will attach some sort of character judgement to this tidbit of information, but I know that people like what they are given because they are given it, not because of some inherent personality issue.

What I mean by that is that the Japanese favor their twee little cakes with their light, fatty enhancements and fruit because that's what they've grown up with. I happen to like those, too, but that is because I have a long-standing love affair with whipped cream. Those of you with filthy minds, and I salute you, can use your febrile imaginations to make that fact far more interesting than the actual reality.

At any rate, one thing that informs the types of sweets that are produced in Japan is the backbone of their flavor preferences. This "Look" offering attempts to imitate a strawberry parfait with vanilla whipped cream. To get this effect, they offer a "vanilla whipped cream" base made with "fresh cream" (whipping cream) with strawberry sauce on top and covered in chocolate.

If you pause and pay attention while you eat these types of chocolates, you can discover whether or not they have succeeded in something that consumer level chocolates frequently do poorly and that is, offer flavor depth. When this type of attempt at sophistication succeeds, you'll get hit with a variety of flavors impacting different parts of your taste buds. You'll get the round, woody sense of vanilla, the tartness of the berry, and the slightly bitter chocolate with sugar to balance it all out and fatty richness to add heft to the experience. That's a lot to expect of one tiny little bit of chocolate, and it's not quite up to the task.

That is in no way saying that this is a failure. It actually is a very good chocolate with the chocolate dominating and the strawberry coming up behind it and mixing in a nice tart, berry flavor. The main way in which it doesn't come across is in the vanilla notes. There is a creaminess to the texture, but the amount of vanilla cream is too small to bring in much of a flavor punch. This is probably better than the alternative, and that would be too much fake vanilla flavor.

This is a very good consumer-level chocolate and if you like chocolate with berry, I'd definitely say give this a try. I don't even like strawberry chocolate and I liked this. It's available in the U.S. at Nijiya, as well as other Japanese markets.

Incidentally, the name of this confused me because I had never heard of "amaou" before and my efforts to find a translation online were not very fruitful. I turned to Facebook and asked my Japanese friends. Surprisingly, only one of them knew what it meant and that was because she is a chef and is familiar with this idea when it comes to food. She said that "a" was for "akai" or "red", "ma" was for "marui" or "round", "o" is for "ookii" or "big" and "u" was for "umai" or "tasty" (though in English, "umai" often means "savory", it has a more flexible meaning in Japanese). So, this is supposed to be made with big, round, red, tasty berries. I'm sure it was. ;-)

Look Green Tea Dessert Chocolate

Occasionally, I like to get off my lazy behind and act like I'm a journalist rather than a slacktacular blogger. To that end, I tried to track down why "LOOK" chocolate carries its particular moniker. Sometimes, there really isn't a reason for a product to have an English name. More often than not, I simply can't find it.

I did discover that the box and logo were originally designed by a famous French-born industrial designer named Raymond Loewy. He emphasized simplicity, hence the "look" of "LOOK". I also learned that the first incarnation of LOOK included coffee, strawberry, banana, and caramel flavors. I guess that rules out each letter of the name representing a flavor in the box (or it'd be named CSBC). If any reader knows why these are called LOOK, please clue me in.

I found these near the check-out counter at Nijiya market. I think it cost around $2.00 (156 yen), which is actually a very reasonable price considering these tended to cost 100 yen in Japan ($1.27). You can get them for nearly the same price that I paid via the Asian Food Grocer. Though at the time that I wrote this post, they were out of stock, my guess is that they will get them back in or at least you can inquire about availability.

You may guess that the brown one on the right is the red bean version.

The matcha parfait smells only of chocolate, but when you slip it into your mouth and allow the softish chocolate to melt, it reveals both creamy notes and a nicely sweetened green tea flavor. I've said before that I'm relatively ambivalent about green tea. I've craved it more since leaving Japan, but it's not something I'm over the moon about. I believe that this is definitely an accessible green tea chocolate for those in my position and I really enjoyed the subtle but present matcha notes coupled with a rich, creamy sense.

The matcha adzuki is even more impressive in regards to the depth of flavor. It hits chocolate, red bean, and green tea notes with the tea coming in "last" in the flavor profile and the others holding their own on equal footing. It manages to insert an anko (red bean pastes) flavor without seeming a bit too earthy or gamey (as is sometimes the case with such sweets, like some of the red bean KitKats).

I liked both of these flavors a lot and was really happy to have bought this. LOOK is a chocolate I tended to, well, overlook (no pun intended, but it is duly noted) when I was in Japan. It wasn't as glamorous and often I just felt that the flavor combinations held too many options that didn't seem varied enough or had varieties that I did not like. If you're looking for something approachable to introduce people to green tea sweets, this might work. If you already like them, this might not be bitter enough for you. If you're like me, then you're going to enjoy this.

Look Peach Nectar Chocolate

Donkey's years ago... actually, I don't know what a donkey's year is, but it was actually three years ago, I reviewed Fujiya's Peach Nectar beverage. It was delicious and I deemed it worthy of being called "nectar". Because the drink was so tasty, I was delighted to discover that there is a current "explosion"... okay, more of a tiny blast... of treats fusing the drink's sensibilities with their own. One of them is Country Ma'am cookies and another is this Look chocolate. I've not had the greatest experiences with that line of cookies so I'll either skip them or leave them for later review, but I was very keen on this chocolate... okay, not actually "very keen." The truth is that I have some reservations about fruit and chocolate mixes. It's not that they can't be good, but more the case that they can easily go wrong. 

One of the things about Look is that it seems to either go very well or to be completely unimpressive. The verdict on this is that things "went pretty well". The filling is soft and has an excellent texture and has some pretty intense peach notes. It's more like a puree than a peach-flavored cream, though it is delightfully creamy and light in texture. There's a bit of a citric acid bite to it, but not so much as to spoil the sweetness or chocolate flavor. It's a much nicer consumer level release than I would have expected, though I think it helps that it is extremely fresh. I think the texture may suffer as the candy ages.

All of that being said, I can imagine this may not be to everyone's tastes despite the high quality feel of the flavors. Peach and chocolate aren't as natural a pairing as orange, lemon or banana. If you are a fan of the Nectar drink or the idea of peaches with chocolate doesn't strike you as odd, I'd definitely say give this a try. Keep in mind that the fruit flavor is not muted so you'll have to deal with stronger flavors. Currently, these are on offer everywhere I go from supermarkets to discount shops to convenience stores. I paid only 79 yen ($1.00) for mine at Okashi no Marche snack shop, but a more usual price is 100 yen ($1.27). Chances are they won't be around for more than 4 months or so and probably will not make a return to the market in the near future (if ever). 

Personally, I liked this quite a bit, but it's definitely something I'd only consume occasionally. Given the choice, I'd always choose a real peach and after that, the Fujiya Peach Nectar drink. This is more of a palate challenger and I'd tend for pure chocolate over something like this, but it was certainly enjoyable and I in no way regret buying a box.

Fujiya Big Milky Balls (QR)

My New Year's fukubukuro continues to be a snack review albatross around my neck. Yes, it's past the middle of the year and I'm still working my way through those surprise bags of processed food. As time goes by, the less thrilling stuff gets just that much older, and though the name "big balls" sounds impressive, these are really just large gumball-size wads of white taffy candy. The big selling point for them is that they are 1.7 times their previous size. Woohoo?

These are standard taffy balls in many ways. When warm, they are soft and easy to chew. When cold, they are hard a chore for the jaw. I first sampled these in February and remember having them stick to my teeth and tax my muscles quite a bit more. In July, they're not nearly such a hassle. The main difference is in the flavor which is rather buttery and fatty compared to similar things I've sampled back home. There isn't a strong flavor, which probably isn't a bad thing since "milk" flavor in Japan often means actual "milk" and not "vanilla". That often means "powdered milk" taste, not good farm fresh delight.

These aren't bad at all, but any sort of taffy candy is essentially grandma's territory and hard to get too excited about At only 23 calories per ball, it's not a bad way to get something sweet in your mouth for awhile, but eating just one makes my teeth ache and this isn't my sort of candy. I figure that it'll probably take me the rest of the year to get around to finishing the remainder of this small bag.

Look Chocolat 18

As someone who reviews food in an ersatz "professional" way, I've found out a thing or two about tasting food. One thing is that you never want to eat all of your supply at once. In fact, if you can string out the tasting through two or three different experiences, it's all the better. This is because your ability to perceive flavors is not always the same, and something which is pretty so-so in the morning might be very tasty at tea time.

In addition to when you sample, it's also important to consider what you ate before hand. The cleanliness of your palate has a profound effect on how you perceive the taste of something. This is particularly true if you have consumed a Lawson VL pizza with yuzu koshoo sauce just before eating chocolate. It's bound to leave a less than favorable impression. So, remember kids, a clean palate is an accurate palate!

So, since first sampling of these chocolates was tainted by my occasional penchant for bad pizza, I decided that I needed to give them a second chance. Fortunately, with 18 very tiny chocolates in this 47 gram (1.6 oz.) box, I had plenty of opportunities. When I snapped this up at Okashi no Marche discount snacks, I didn't really pay attention to anything other than the "Look" brand and the reduced price of 79 yen (98 cents). Usually, these come in boxes of 12 for 100 yen ($1.24). I've had good experiences with the Look chocolates that have various flavors in their soft fillings and I figured that these had a chance of being rather tasty.

There are 6 each of three flavors, ganache cream, truffle cream, and chocolate mousse. This is a nice way of saying, "chocolate, chocolate, and chocolate" of varying intensities and bitterness. That's not a bad thing in theory though. Who doesn't love chocolate except for sugar-eschewing freaks and mutant monkey men? In practice, however, I was a little disappointed. The "ganache" flavor is a bittersweet chocolate while "truffle cream" is a milky one with the telltale Fujiya aftertaste. I've mentioned this in previous reviews, but there's a distinctive flavor that comes along with all Fujiya chocolates of all brand types that isn't necessarily bad, but it really doesn't belong there. The final flavor, "chocolate mousse", is halfway between the somewhat intense bittersweet of the other two.

I don't think these are bad chocolates, but I also don't think they are great ones. Keep in mind that all of my opinions about food in Japan are relative to other food in Japan, not in comparison to foreign candy. I think these are actually better than a lot of consumer-level chocolates in the U.S. They certainly aren't as good as the more flavorful and varied Look varieties I've sampled before and if I could buy a box of Dars (which are similar consumer-level chocolates with soft cream fillings) for 100 yen or these for 79 yen, I'd go for the Dars every time. On their own, these are fine, though I really can do without that Fujiya aftertaste, and the serving size at only 14 calories per bite is pretty appealing for portion control. However, compared to other options that are easily available, I'd go for something else.

Fujiya Look Crispy Chocolate Snack Assort

When I was a child, I used to anthropomorphize everything. To those who didn't study General Psychology, or washed it all out of their brain with beer after taking the final exam, that means I used to assign human feelings and attributes to inanimate objects. To that end, I'd feel sad for things which were not popular or unwanted. I'd feel guilty when a toy didn't get played with, and this was before "Toy Story" put the notion into people's heads that toys lead animated and interesting lives when their owner isn't around.

Walking around the closest convenience store and its quake-induced-panic-buying decimated shelves, I looked at the sad sacks of unpurchased snacks and felt a little of that old sense of anthropomorphism. I felt bad for the Hello Kitty chocolate-covered puffs that resembled Styrofoam in the cutaway image, and for these bags of Look chocolates. What did they do to be left out of the disaster-induced-hoarding love? Meiji chocolate bars are definitely the teacher's pet of earthquake shoppers. Perhaps Fujiya doesn't inspire notions of soundness and shelf stability. I blame the Fujiya Girl with her lolling tongue and somewhat goggly eyes. Nobody wants to see that in a crisis.

Honestly, I don't know why these were left behind as I'd actually bought a package of the chocolate wafers that make up half of the bag before and liked them. For 100 yen ($1.24), this was a nice portion (18 pieces about the size of an American dime or one-yen coin) of candy for the price and, hey, chocolate! Each is individually wrapped and about a bite unless you're me and then it's two bites because you need a picture of the inside of the candy for your blog.

The main selling point for these is that they've got crispy innards under their layers of milk chocolate, and they do live up to that. The flavor of Fujiya chocolates is rather unique compared to other Japanese chocolates and one that I've come to recognize after sampling other offerings. It's hard to explain what that flavor is, but it's just a hint of a floral chemical taste. It's not offensive, but it is distinctive.

Yes, I had to bite them in half for a cutaway. The chocolate is too thick to cut through them with a knife. It makes for bad pictures, but tasty chocolates!

The candies themselves are pretty run of the mill decent quality consumer level chocolate covered wafer offerings in two varieties: "crepe" (22 calories) and "wafer" (24 calories). In terms of taste, the wafers, which have a tiny sugar wafer inside, have a little more sweetness because of the cream filling. The wafers themselves have a somewhat wheaty and earthy flavor which adds some distinction between the two candies. The "crepe" version has a mild waffle cone flavor going on. Both are mainly about the milk chocolate though.

I am not doing handsprings over these, but I liked them because I adore chocolate-covered crispy things and wafers in particular. I also love milk chocolate. This is not a unique offering or something for connoisseurs who want something that challenges or enlivens the palate. They are a decent pedestrian candy though, and I'd buy them again even if the shelves weren't picked over by quake panic shoppers.

Fujiya Heart Peanuts

Back when I was working in an office, my boss used to buy packets of 100 yen ($1.20) "peanuts choco". For foreign folks who want to indulge in something which is "safe", chocolate-covered nuts of any sort are the bee's knees. In fact, there are some incredibly good chocolate covered almonds that I was addicted to when I was working. Unsurprisingly, I was fatter when I worked in an office.

I haven't reviewed any chocolate covered nuts because they're hard to mess up. This bag of heart-shaped peanut chocolates from Fujiya is being reviewed because it came with one of my three fukubukuro. I'm betting my readers are getting tired of hearing that. Yeah, well get used to it. I'm not even halfway done with what I got.

There are 15 little medallions in the bag, each individually wrapped and with the words "have a heart" imprinted on them and providing you with 45 calories. Though these look like they're a Valentine's release, they're always available.  For reasons I'm not sure of, Fujiya felt it was important to say that these were manufactured at their Hiratsuka plant. That means nothing to my readers who don't live in Japan, and problem means little to those who do. I only know it as this place which is really far from my apartment that my husband and I once ventured to to look at a second-hand record shop. We were looking for rare records. I don't remember smelling peanuts or chocolate when I was there, but maybe they hermetically sealed the emissions in efficient Japanese fashion.

There really isn't much to say a about these. They smell like peanuts and chocolate. The nuts are very lightly roasted and plentiful, and the milk chocolate is fairly smooth and lacks the bad aftertaste that some Japanese chocolate has. They're good, but they're pricier (more or less 200 yen/$2.40 per bag) than the bags of peanuts choco my boss used to buy. The main difference is that the chocolate on these is smoother and has a finer texture and have bigger peanuts. Also, the packages of peanuts choco are not wrapped individually, but just tossed into a plastic tray so they buffet one another and lack the pristine appearance and gloss of this Fujiya offering. The Fujiya ones also are fortified with Vitamin E so that you can feel good about eating them. At least that's the only reason I can think of to include it.

These are good, but they're not outstanding compared to other similar offerings. If I were in the mood for chocolate-covered peanuts, I'd buy the cheaper hundred-yen shop versions of "peanuts choco". They have less packaging, are cheaper and taste pretty much the same. I'm giving them a happy rating because they taste good, but I wouldn't buy them again for the aforementioned reasons.

Fujiya Peko Wafers

There's a new blog which I started following a few months ago called "Food in Real Life". It takes pictures of the box illustration of a dish and the way the food actually looks and then rates both how closely the real food resembles the illustration and how it tastes. I must say that Japanese processed food as it appears on the package generally resembles the food as presented inside.



That being said, these Peko wafers as pictured don't look anything like the way they are portrayed on the bag. In fact, they look further from the illustration than most things I've reviewed. They look thick, airy, and have a clearly defined filling on the bag and are rather compressed and dense in real life. The looks don't really matter though. It's going to be the taste and texture.


There are 16 individually wrapped bars in the bag. I picked these up at a local supermarket for 198 yen ($2.22). Each is about 7 cm (2.7 in) long and slightly wider than a KitKat finger and is 42 calories. So, the bottom line is going to be whether or not I enjoy these enough to pay 12 yen (13 cents) apiece and view the calories ingested as worthwhile.

Both types of bars are light and crispy. The wafers are what I'd call "softly crispy" like sugar wafers rather than crispy in a brittle way. They yield more easily when you bite them. This isn't a bad thing, just different. The vanilla bar smells very much like nougat to me. It also has some caramel notes. It mainly tastes like nougat with very, very weak chocolate flavor. It's more of a sense of a chocolate "wash" than serious chocolate flavor. The chocolate bar smells weakly of chocolate and has a mild chocolate flavor, but is quite pleasant. Neither is overly sweet.

These are actually quite pleasant for someone who likes wafers, but doesn't want something as sugary or as heavy as a KitKat or Sequoia bar. These are lighter and I liked them a lot, but I adore wafers without too much smothering sugary coating. I'd definitely consider buying them again since I like lighter treats and things that are not so sweet. I prefer the chocolate ones over the vanilla though. The caramel/nougat notes don't do as much for me. I think someone with similar tastes would really enjoy these, but they may not be bold enough for some people.