Morinaga Funwari Chocola

 I found this at my local Lawson 100 shop for 100 yen. The bar caught my attention because of its somewhat low calorie count, only 165 calories for a 72  ml. sandwich, and the fact that it is an ice cream sandwich. 

When I cut open the plastic packaging on this ice milk sandwich, I was greeted with the greatest chocolate smell. I don't think I've ever had that sort of olfactory experience with a cheap frozen confection before. The cookie part is very soft and dusted with a powdered sugar type of substance, but it isn't as sweet. You can taste this sweetness when you bite into the soft, cake-like sandwich. The way in which the texture of the ice milk and cake-like exterior come together reminds me of the classic combination of ice cream and cake (only without the fork).

The flavor of this really blew me away. The chocolate is much deeper in flavor than most ice milk. It carries just the slightest bittersweet notes. It's not enough to put you off if you dislike darker chocolate, but it is enough to enhance the intensity of the chocolate taste. Like much of the ice milk I have had in Japan, this is very creamy and feels quite similar to real ice cream. The ingredients for this include almond oil, "fresh chocolate" (very soft chocolate which is like ganache or a truffle), and hazelnut paste. I believe the "fresh chocolate" (nama chocolate or 生チョコレート in Japanese) is the small drops of darker filling the middle of the bar which you can see in the cutaway picture. These are all expensive and unusual additions to this type of product and I believe they contribute to the overall quality of the flavor in a highly favorable manner. 

For the low price, the good flavor, and the lovely textural combination, I wholeheartedly recommend giving this a try if you can locate it. I had half of the bar at a time to really allow the brilliance of the deep flavor to strike me anew twice. I suggest savoring every bite of this lovely chocolate treat, slowly, and with undivided attention.

Glico 80-Calorie Monaka

I've often thought it would be interesting to create a blog devoted to low calorie, diet and health foods in Japan. Of course, I soon realized that such a blog could only update about once a week, if that, because there aren't many of such products. In America, people can create entire blogs devoted to low calorie, reduced fat, and healthy foods, but I'm hard-pressed to find anything in line with their review fodder except the odd zero calorie soft drink. I realize that eating "fake" foods in order to save calories isn't the best way to approach one's diet. However, I also think there is nothing wrong with the occasional indulgence that doesn't come with a hefty calorie price tag.

All of the ice cream in Japan is very rich and fatty. I rarely find a small cup of ice cream with less than 285 calories, and many are over 300. The only exception is Glico's line of 80-calorie ice milk treats. They sell small cups (110 ml.) of green tea, chocolate with chocolate pieces, rum raisin, and vanilla for 150 yen each ($1.69). These are difficult to find, but I can locate them at Natural Lawson's and one of the Family Mart convenience stores in range of my apartment. I have never seen them at local markets.

I was surprised to find that they also carry a low-calorie monaka ice milk sandwich. It is also about 150 yen, but has only 82 ml. of ice milk. According to their web site, they offer green tea and vanilla versions of these monaka, but I've never seen them. The vanilla version has red beans on it instead of the chocolate coating that this one has. All of these are part of what Glico calls their "calorie control" line.


One thing that one has to keep in mind when eating these types of foods is that the bar has to be lowered relative to other types of ice cream and ice milk. The question isn't how this stacks up to full-fat ice cream, but how good it is as a cold confection for 80 calories. Keep in mind that the first ingredient is polydextrose, a form of soluble fiber used to replace sugar. It also contains artificial sweeteners and tofu. Some of the ingredients aren't listed, however. The chocolate and monaka are simply listed as "chocolate coating" and "monaka".

When you give it a sniff, the first thing you smell is the monaka and that is like a cake cone. The monaka is rather soft and has absorbed a bit of moisture. I don't know if it might have been crisper if it hadn't sat in my freezer for a week, but my guess is that it wouldn't. Monaka aren't exceptionally crisp even when fresh.

The ice milk has a bit of a generic dairy flavor, reminiscent of powdered milk but not in a bad way. The chocolate coating is very sparse, but there is enough of it to add flavor. If you look at the picture above, you can see that the coating is fragmented rather than a solid sheet like I got in the Morinaga Jumbo Monaka bar. Mainly, it tastes cold and sweet with some bittersweet chocolate flavor. The flavors are not strong and I really wish there was a vanilla component to the ice milk.

This was fairly enjoyable. I can say that it was definitely worth 80 calories, but it won't do if you've got a hankering for some real ice cream. It will do if you have a craving for a cold treat. I would buy this again, but I can't say that it really "wowed" me so much as simply pleasantly satisfied me.

Morinaga Jumbo Monaka

When I was a child, my mother used to buy big boxes of what were called "cake cones". Among ice cream cones, the "cake cone" was the trailer trash of the lot. Sugar cones and waffle cones were flavor and textural delights to go along with your ice cream. They enhanced the experience. The cake cone was like edible foam packing. It was mainly there to hold your ice cream while you licked it, not to make the experience greatly tastier.

My guess is that my mother bought those cones because, as kids, we really weren't discriminating about what we ate. After all, we thought Kraft macaroni and cheese was the bee's knees of dinner cuisine. If there was ice cream, that was good enough for us. The cake cones were a way of being able to make sure not one drop was lost. I'm guessing she also liked the fact that they didn't tend to drip out the bottom like ice cream in a sugar cone. Cake cones probably saved her from having to fight shirt stains, at least on occasion.


The Japanese have taken the notion of a cake cone and turned it into a sort of ice cream sandwich. Instead of flanking the ice cream with a cookie or slab of waffle, they've imprisoned it in a thin layer of cake cone material. Ice cream sandwiches made in this manner are called "monaka". Since I was never a great fan of the cake cone to begin with, and this is adding more cone to the equation, I haven't really sampled many monaka since coming to Japan.

Incidentally, monaka originally and are still made as sweetened beans or other fillings sandwiched between two "wafers". The fillings are made of varied substances as are the shells. My guess is that the quality of traditional monaka shells is quite a bit higher than the modified cake cone substance used for ice cream sandwiches.


I saw this Morinaga Jumbo Monaka in a 99 yen shop. I found it the best of a poor lot of ice cream on offer and I was in the mood for something different. I keep saying "ice cream", but this is actually ice milk. Many ice cream monaka just have plain vanilla ice cream in them, but this one has a chocolate inner coating and a plain of crispy chocolate running through the center.

This bar was introduced by Morinaga in 1972, but they added the chocolate (as a sauce) to the middle in 1980 and named it a "Deluxe" bar. It didn't grow up to be a "Jumbo" until 1996 when they made the center chocolate a thin, crispy wafer-thin piece of candy. The entire bar is 315 calories, and though you could easily eat it at once, it's pretty big and I ate only one-third of it in one sitting.

I allowed this bar to sit out for about 5 minutes before eating it because I think ice cream isn't as good when it's really hard. You can't really sense the creaminess of it unless it's softened up a bit. For ice milk, this was quite nice. It felt rich and fatty and had good flavor and sweetness balance. The first bites off the ends aren't as good as interior bites because there's too much of the monaka wafer and very little chocolate flavor. Once you get past the edges, it's better as the center chocolate sheet has a deeper, slightly bitter sweet chocolate taste and you get more ice cream and less cake cone.

I liked this quite a lot, though I'm still not going to be filling the freezer with monaka bars any time soon. I'd definitely get this again if I were in the right mood. The ice milk and chocolate can't be beat, and the monaka wafer adds some softly crunchy textural elements. It's also a lot easier to eat it in stages because of the way in which the little squares allow you to visually divide the bar into portions.

Morinaga Soft Biscuit Vanilla Ice Cream Sandwich

There has been a dairy shortage in Japan for quite some time now. This mainly manifests itself in a butter shortage. You can't buy butter just any time but rather must wait for those special days with blocks of sweet fatty yellow pleasure happen to show up on the shelf.

Another way in which the dairy shortage has been showing an effect is in the ice cream case. You see a lot more ice milk (アイスミルク), which is often called "rakuto aisu" (ラクトアイス) in Japanese and scant quantities of the real deal with all of its full, creamy badness. The majority of dairy products have increased in price across the board, so finding anything which is both real ice cream and cheap is a rare find.

The Morinaga vanilla ice cream sandwich is one such rare delicacy. It is a full-size ice cream bar (119 ml./4 fluid ounces) filled with real ice cream that is peppered with actual vanilla beans. The wrapper says that the ice cream contains 20% more vanilla bean flavoring than the previous incarnation and 10% full fat milk products and 10% low fat milk products. This bar cost about 100 yen (95 cents USD) before the dairy shortage and continues to be sold at the same price.


When you open the package, you smell the biscuit. It smells pretty much like a cookie with no particular flavoring. The generous portion of ice cream is flecked with tiny black vanilla beans and the first bite reveals strong, natural vanilla flavor. The ice cream is creamy and sweet. This is what good vanilla ice cream should be and the type of thing that would win over a chocolate lover who thinks vanilla is just too boring. It's that good.

The biscuit portion doesn't have much flavor, but that's okay as it is merely a convenient holder for the yummy ice cream The cookie is soft, but not fragile. It has a very good texture for eating a slightly melted bar. It's easy to bite into, but doesn't crumble or fall apart. However, I have purchased these bars on occasion and found they have a crisper cookie. I believe that they are likely designed to soften with a little time as they absorb moisture and fresher bars have firmer biscuits.

The entire bar is 235 calories and contains no exotic ingredients. It's hardly healthy, but it's a very nice treat once in awhile. If you run across one of these amongst a variety of cheap bars at a convenience store, this is the one to choose. You're unlikely to get better quality at a such a low price.