Calbee Potato Farm Jaga Pokkuru

When I first came to Japan, I didn't have a phone or television. Telephones back them required a deposit on the order of $500, and my husband and I already had borrowed about $10,000 from his brother in order to set up shop here. That money, incidentally, was mainly sunk into the cost of our apartment (first and last month's rent, a month for real estate agency fees, and a month as a way of thanking the landlord for accepting about $1200 a month from us in exchange for living in a tiny apartment). We also used some of it as start-up scratch (furniture, food, living expenses until our first paycheck arrived). We wanted to pay that back before we indulged in luxuries like telecommunications or T.V.

When we finally got a T.V., it was a tiny one that only caught signals from local T.V. channels and had very little, if any bilingual programming at a time when we were novices to Japan and the Japanese language. We didn't watch much T.V. back then, but there was a bilingual travel program which talked about all sorts of resort areas in Japan like Hakodate. Since Hakodate is in Hokkaido, they kept playing this song which went something like, "oh, oh, Hokkaido, Hokkaido-oh, oh." I probably heard snippets of that song three or four times during that one viewing of that program and it has burned into my cortex and I cannot get it out. What is worse, now every time I see a product from Hokkaido, that hideous ditty pops back into my head. Needless to say, I've never been to Hokkaido, and probably never will go there for fear of going mad from the endless loop that would surely result.

Jaga Pokkuru cavorting in the blue waters before their lives are horribly ended in some drunk's mouth. 

So, now we come to the actual review portion of our program in which I tell you that this is a souvenir-only item from... oh, oh, Hokkaido. Supposedly, you can only buy them from kiosks or souvenir shops in Hokkaido-oh, oh, but Rakuten sells a box of ten 18-gram packets for 840 yen ($10.48). The box we were given has six 18-gram (.64 oz.) packets. The selling point of these over something like Jagabee (which is a similar product also made by Calbee) is that these are whole fried potatoes that are monitored by a human being rather than processed sticks which are created by a machine.

These look like petrified French fries. They also sort of smell like them. What they taste like, however, is potato chips in somewhat concentrated form. If you could make a chip that was as thick as a fry with all of the flavor and crispy texture of the chip intact, this is what it'd be. These have a nice potato flavor and are lightly salted. They are a fine enough salted snack but the thickness is, at least initially, a bit odd. I'm not used to eating something which looks and crunches like a thin chip but is so dense.

This is excellent to have around for a salty snack craving, especially with the individual packets discouraging you from eating more than108 calories at once. That being said, I would never buy these for myself simply because I can't see them as being superior to Calbee's already delicious line of regular chips. If I have a choice between this and a bag of any of their flavored or plain chips for a much lower price, I'd take the chips. That being said, this was a very welcome gift and a good souvenir. I'd definitely be happy if someone wanted to give me another box.

Just a gentle reminder that there is a contest running for two weeks to win a few snack and snack-related goodies. If you'd like to enter, the details are in this post.

Kadou USA American Fried Potato Snack

That's one happy potato, and it's nice to see that he comes in peace.

There is very little about the name of this product that rings true. First of all, it's not from the U.S.A. and the snack is not an American one. This isn't terribly shocking as the Japanese love to call things "American" which are not from America. That's okay because I'm pretty sure Americans love to call things "Japanese" which are not (not to mention many other nationalities).

The second thing about the name which is odd is that it says "fried" when these really seem to be some sort of baked processed food. They aren't greasy on the outside and don't taste particularly fried. Also, the color is very pale and if they were fried I'd expect uneven browning around the edges rather than uniform color. Finally, there is very little in the way of actual "potato". The first ingredient is flour. You don't run across "potato" until the fourth item on the list.

This is a kid's snack which I probably never would have purchased on my own, though I'd guess it costs as little as 20-40 yen per bag (25-50 cents). This came with my Okashi no Machioka "lucky bag." I just know these sorts of potato things aren't very good based on past experience.Though this is made by a company called Kadou (which has no web presence), it's distributed by kid's snack maker Yaokin. Most of Yaokin's stuff looks like this snack with bright packaging, small portions, and cheaply designed cartoon mascots.

These taste about as you'd expect. They're salty and fairly bland, though there is a little bit of a potato kick to them. In fact, they are very similar to the pebbly vegetable Calbee snack without the little multi-colored vegetable lumps. The portion size is very small at only 10 grams (.35 oz.), and if you were in absolute despair for a salted snack, you might be happy to have these because they're crispy and salty, but they're just isn't much else going on with them.

Ototo Yakiniku Sauce Crackers

Yakiniku is small grilled bits of meat, usually beef. At most yakiniku restaurants, patrons are given raw, bite-sized bits of meat and vegetables and cook it themselves on a frill in the center of the table. They then dip the cooked bits in sauce. Personally, I'm no fan of beef and if I want to cook my own food, I'll stay at home and do it where it is cheaper.


These crackers, brought to us by the fine folks at Morinaga, were on sale at one of my local markets for about 100 yen (about a dollar). There are two 26-gram (about 1 oz.) foil packets in the box full of processed potato snacks with 115 calories in each packet. There are two varieties at present, a plain salted version and these ones which are flavored with yakiniku sauce.

Since I've never had yakiniku, I've never had the sauce. I did some research and the sauce is typically flavored with soy sauce, garlic, apples, and sesame. The ingredients list bears out some of this (apple powder, garlic powder, soy sauce), but some of the flavoring is buried under the catch-all ingredient of "seasoning powder". These crackers smell very strange to me. I can't begin to distinguish the flavors by scent nor can I describe it in a way that others can relate to if they haven't had the sauce (which I'm guessing smells like these crackers). I can only say that it doesn't smell appetizing to me.


The crackers themselves are in sea animal shapes (shark, squid, shrimp, etc.) and are reminscent of oyster crackers in that they are small and hollow. The difference is that these are paper thin and made of potato. They are extremely fragile and brittle. This makes them super crunchy. The easily fall apart into little shards in your mouth. There's something about how brittle they are and how they break apart which is singularly unsatisfying. This may be because of their size or because they are so thin, but I didn't care much for the texture.

The taste is odd as well. I think that there is the taste of overheated potato in there with some sort of weird aftertaste which I assume is the sauce. I get no sense at all of spiciness and very little salt, just this strange flavoring. I keep thinking that the potato processing has added something nasty to these, but it could simply be that the sauce flavoring is very much not to my liking.

Given the cutesy design of the crackers and the box, I am guessing that these are designed for children rather than adults. Maybe that is why the spice is relatively bland and the crackers so small. I should also note that eating a reasonable portion of these gave me a stomachache. At this point in the review, I'm guessing that I don't need to say that I was not a fan of these and that I won't be buying them again.

Nabisco Spicy Barbeque "Potato Crisps"

The Onion has an AV Club feature called "Taste Test". For the most part, they tend to cover things which they expect to be pretty bad. I've found that doing a food review blog sort of encourages this sort of perverse seeking out of the sort of food stuffs that most sensible people would avoid. Though one might assume that those who have a chance to taste a lot of different things may seek out more exotic experiences, I don't think this has anything to do with boredom. I believe it has everything to do with the fact that you get a lot more mileage out of bad food than good food when you're writing.

In the spirit of buying something which I expected to be bad, I picked up the bag of "potato crisps" pictured above for 99 yen ($1.00). Two points about it drew my attention. First of all, it is made by Nabisco and I rarely see or buy their products in Japan. Though they are well known in the United States, they don't have nearly such an expansive product line-up here. I believe their best known item is the Picola cookie which is a thin rolled up sugar cookie filled with various types of "cream".

The second point that caught my attention was the name of the product. Since the Japanese use "potato chips" in Japanese, there is no reason to name these "crisps" unless one is British or these aren't real chips. If they're not real chips, then whatever processed concoction they turn out to be may be more interesting (though probably less tasty) than an actual chip.

When I opened the bag, I was greeted by carefully processed "crisps". They are different shapes and sizes and they're ridged just like a normal ridge cut potato chip might be. However, they are bumpy all over in a way you don't see from frying, but rather from uniform baking and rising. Sure enough, these are Pringles-style processed chips without the orderliness or the can.

The smell when you open the bag is intensely spicy. There's a melange of flavors so it's hard to identify any one scent. There is a hint of tomato in the smell, but not in the ingredients list. The primary ingredient is "potato flakes" and the flavorings include pork extract powder, soy sauce, and "sauce" powders. My guess is that the vague "sauce" is where the tomato comes from and it's meant to be generic barbeque sauce flavoring.

The first bite is spicy and salty and a bit overwhelming. As you eat a few more, you get a strong sense of a meaty flavor and with a ketchup chaser. The chips are very crispy and light, though they are still very fattening. One bag is 65 grams (2.2 oz.) and 348 calories. There's a slight artificial aftertaste, but it's not nearly as strong as you get from Pringles processed chips.

I liked these just fine. If my options were limited and I wanted a salted snack, this would certainly come out ahead of a lot of other contenders. If I wanted a spicy chip, I'd take this over a better plain potato chip and I'd certainly put it near the top of the processed chips I've tried, but I'd still opt for Lay's or another big brand barbeque over these.