Japanese Confections, Snacks and othersuch gastronomic oddiites.

I prefer Collon over Pocky...it's the tiny egg rolls with strawberry filling etc
Super yum!

 

Most Japanese chocolate is boring, waxy, lifeless cocoa butter.

The candy is a bit better. The mainstream stuff is okay (Hi-Chew has boring flavours nowadays) but between the artificial-tasting oversweet stuff for infants and the boring mainstream candy, there's a small delicate middle ground of delicious candy in Japan. (Like Hi-Chew mini in 100-yen shops.)

a couple examples:


Recently, I found a chewy sour candy called "Cola no Tane" (cola seeds) which were really strong-tasting sour chews. They were the size of a large marble (so only a few to a package) and tasted great, but like any new product in Japan, they only last 2 weeks in stores before the makers prematurely give up on them.

 

Pocky wasn't available in the Midwest (back then) so just made my own. They tasted about right, plus you have the advantage of covering the little cracker sticks with any number of bizarre things.

 

*tries to read the names of the products*
Man, fuck your fonts, Japan! Use something that's readable!

 

Japanese confectionery is so nice. I like quite a lot of them, would like to try others though. I've mainly had various pockys.

 

What is the general consensus on nori shio crisps/chips? Yay or nay?

 

Are those those roasted nori sheets? Those are tasty.

 

Salted seaweed flavoured crisps, gradually becoming a fan (its taken 12 years).

 

I can tolerate nori-shio, but it's still too fishy & briny for my tastes. Gimme SuppaMucho! salt & vinegar flavour anyday.

 

Is there any good japanese packaged puddings anyone can recommend?

 

Definitely yay to Norio Shio!

 

I've lived in Japan and only tried their pastries/confections/candies mainly on dares.. I'm sorry but never been a huge fan of processed artificial sweetened sludge. What really annoyed me is most places have terrible ice cream which is one of the few sweets I really enjoy. I'm just talking about standard flavors not the more over the top cow tongue or eel brain varieties.

 

I tried the pocky and the hello panda long ago, I get a pocky last week and when I taste it it wasn't the same it has like a lost of quality the flavor was cheap. In other case the hello panda was the same.

 

There's different pockys. They are not all the same, there's the cheaper versions and the actual Japanese versions.

 

I love the wasabi flavored dried nori. I also like natto. It's not something I'd eat every day, but I get the urge every once in a while. It tastes way better than it smells, which can't be said for durian...

I'm lucky enough to live near a Mitsuwa... They have all kinds of good stuff there, like fresh taiyaki (right off the iron!), other kinds of wagashi, green tea flavored kit kats, Suntory black boss iced coffee, 2 liter bottles of unsweetened iced green tea... An Omusubi Gonbei just opened up there too. They have amazing rice balls... They were going to have a giant tuna cutting ceremony there, but Hurricane Sandy put a stop to that

I also live near NYC & a particular neighborhood there has a handful of good (and cheap!) yakitori places. I'll eat almost anything, but one place in particular has some of the best hamachi kama (yellowtail neck) and okonomiyaki (pancake loaded with octopus, pork, scallion, etc) I've ever had.

I wish more "Japanese" restaurants would offer more than just sushi and the occasional chicken teriyaki... Even in some major cities in the US, all the Japanese restaurants are just sushi restaurants. Japanese food is good, and if people are OK with eating raw fish, the rest is even more accessible.

The oddest thing I ate when I was in Japan was crab brain sushi. Someone dared me/offered to pay for it (they thought a white person would be grossed out by it, I guess). It was OK. The flavor was good, but it was just too salty, like an extra salty anchovy.

The next Japanese food I want to track down is a Hato Sabure. I'm sure it just taste like any other sugar cookie, but anyone who watches Salty Bet regularly will know why...

 

Not uncommon.

"SONY" can't be written properly either. (In fact usually it's on purpose to make a company seem American)

 

クエ クエ クエ チョコボール！

 

I found Megmilk (Snow Brand / Yukijirushi)'s "Bitter Caramel Pudding" to be quite tasty and more similar to the puddings I grew up with in Canada. Other Japanese puddings tend to be flavourless egg yolk and gelatine suspensions.

Make sure you read the labels carefully... most of what sells in convenience stores (and cheap restaurants) is "Lact Ice", ie: ice milk. Lowfat, not technically cream at all. Lact ice bars/cups are guaranteed to be bricks of bland ice crystals when what you really want is at least something written "Ice Cream" on the package.

 

So, I finally got around to trying takoyaki (seeing as my posts got eaten in the topic after the forum fiasco). I think the place I bought it from didn't cook the batter long enough as the batter was kinda soggy and made the octopus even more chewy.

Probably a mixture of that, the flake stuff on top which I can't remember what it's called or the sauce or all three of the things that made me only able to eat one and a half. But I still ate one and a half, so for me that's quite a victory given I'm not so great with seafood! >_<;

Hopefully I can try a nicer bit of takoyaki sometime as it was only a chunk of octopus, nothing diced or shredded so combined with the soggy batter it was kinda hard to eat.