Tofu Ice Cream

Japanese Food Review #107

This is a snack I get every time I visit Ise Shrine. The store also sells tofu doughnuts. Here are some signs outside the store if you ever find yourself there.

Soy milk ice cream is not all that unusual, but I believe actual tofu ice cream is fairly rare. The sign says that 55% of the ice cream is a combination of tofu and soy milk. The tofu taste really comes through, but it is still sweet and it's the fresh, high quality tofu taste you might not be used to in other countries.

This sign says you should hold the cone up straight because the ice cream melts easily. I usually turn my cone upside down and then scream at the staff if any ice cream touches the floor, so I think they may have made this sign especially for me.

Ratings:
Gaybot: 8.5  I don't know if I would want it all the time, but I do enjoy the ritual of getting it when I find myself in Ise.
Girlbot: 10  She notes that people who don't like tofu will hate this ice cream.
Overall: 9.25

This snack is now in first place in the overall snack standings!!!!!!!!

Super Viral Meme #4

Yaki-imo Ice Review

And now for part two of the first annual Autumnal Ice Cream Flavor Challenge.
Japanese Food Review #90

Yaki-imo means baked sweet potato and is a popular treat in the colder seasons in Japan. Oh, and ice means ice cream. You'll often see dudes driving around in little, white farmer trucks selling them and playing a tape of a guy screaming yaki-imo. Here's an example if you care:



The outside of this treat is a type of wafer simulating the skin of the potato. It's basically a stale ice cream cone and is used with a lot of other year round ice cream treats. Then there's a little chocolate and a sweet potato flavored ice cream. The ice cream really did taste quite a bit like a real sweet potato.

Ratings:
Gaybot: 6.5  First off, I'm a pretty big fan of yaki-imos, and I would prefer the real thing. Still, this was tasty and a little fun or something. I wouldn't mind having one like once a year.
Girlbot: 7  She was very impressed with how well they captured the sweet potato flavor.
Overall: 6.75

It looks like the yaki-imo has defeated the chestnut ice cream! Wow! What a year!

Häagen-Dazs Waguri Review

Well, it's fall again. That means it's time for our first annual Autumnal Ice Cream Flavor Challenge. There are two entries this year!
Japanese Food Review #89

Waguri means Japanese chestnut. I guess it's slightly different from other countries' chestnuts. I'm not really sure. I don't eat a lot of plain chestnuts, but they have many good sweets made from them around this time of year in Japan. The ice cream was white with very thin swirls of sweet chestnut flavoring. The swirls were few and far between. It was as if Häagen-Dazs did not truly believe in their own creation, so they tried to cover most of the taste with a sort of generic ice cream. But as any great dancer knows, no one wants to see a dancer shake his (or her) ass half-heartedly.

Ratings:
Gaybot: 5 It was fine, but I expect more than fine from a fake European company.
Girlbot: 5  She said it was basically vanilla ice cream but worse.
Overall: 5

Check back soon for the conclusion of the first annual Autumnal Ice Cream Flavor Challenge.

Haagen-Dazs Carrot Orange Ice Cream Review

Japanese Food Review #84

Haagen-Dazs has two new flavors in a series called SpoonVege. They've invented a way to eat vegetables with a spoon and make the process unhealthy all at the same time. The other flavor is tomato mixed with cherry. The carrot orange one sounded a little less gross, so that's what we're reviewing. The first bite tasted mostly like orange to me. It was pretty creamy (milky) and perhaps not quite as sweet as most ice creams. Later I could taste the carrot juice as well. It wasn't that bad and had a very nice texture, almost like real gelato.

Ratings:
Gaybot: 4.5 Again, it wasn't bad, but I'm pretty sure it would have been better if it were simply orange (and likely equally as healthy).
Girlbot: 5  She doesn't like this kind of taste. It should be noted that she hates carrots, so this is a surprisingly high rating.
Overall: 4.75

Japanese Spaghetti Popsicle Review

Japanese Food Review #80

This popsicle is brought to us by the same people that made a stew popsicle last fall. It's actually called Neapolitan flavor, or more accurately "naporitan." Naporitan is a Japanese version of spaghetti. You can see in the picture that it includes slices of green pepper and bacon, and the sauce usually has at least a little ketchup in it.

This popsicle is of the "gari-gari" variety meaning it has a little ice cream on the outside and the inside is supposed to be like a snow cone. The figure above shows that there's naporitan ice cream, naporitan snow cone ice, and tomato jelly on the inside.

There's the tomato jelly. You can see that we didn't get through much of it before running it under water. It tasted like frozen Campbell's tomato soup with a lot of extra sugar added. Surprisingly, the tomato jelly was probably the least gross part.

Ratings:
Gaybot: 0  It was the worst thing we've tried.
Girlbot: 0  She agrees.
Overall: 0

Haagen-Dazs Rose Review

Japanese Food Review #78

Flower Flavor Ice Cream Week rages on here at The Times.  We all know how the sakura entrant faired. Now let's compare it to a rose ice cream.  The top of the ice cream was again covered in some red sugar sauce, but...

...unlike the sakura ice cream, there are not three layers of the sauce. This is obviously a huge no-no, and large deductions were made accordingly. The ice cream basically tasted like a weak strawberry flavor. There was a little rose smell, and Girlbot felt that it was like eating perfume.

Ratings:
Gaybot: 3.5  It wasn't actually that bad, but strawberry ice cream is much better, and I'm not even a huge fan of that.
Girlbot: 2  She particularly hated the red sauce (which I think was actually quite close to the sakura one that she liked).
Overall: 2.75

Conclusion: Sakura wins in a landslide!!!!

Haagen-Dazs Sakura Review

Japanese Food Review #77

Well, it is once again Flower Flavor Ice Cream Week here at The Times. This year there are only two entrants... and they are both from Haagen-Dazs! First up is their sakura, or cherry blossom, flavor. Japan has a lot of sakura flavored food this time of year, like Starbuck's sakura frappuccino. Mr. Dazs had a little trick up his or her sleeve for this one.

What?! Three layers of sakura! The ice cream was perhaps plain flavor. The sakura parts weren't ice cream. They were kind of syrupy. The combination actually sort of tasted like sakura mochi, but it wasn't salty at all.

Ratings:
Gaybot: 4.5  It was cool that it didn't just taste like fake sakura flavor, but it was just okay.
Girlbot: 7   She says she would never purchase it again, but if there were another in the freezer, she would eat it.
Overall: 5.75

Will Haagen-Dazs be able to beat these strong marks? Check back later this week.

Ice Cream

Will: I was just thinking about how cool that is that the "messenger of happiness" is also the symbol of ice cream.
Bill: Wait, I thought it was the angel.
Will: Um, same difference noodle brain. (audible chuckle) What is your brain made of noodles or something?
Bill: Come on, you know it's not!
Will: Hmm, I'm kind of hungry for spaghetti... Oh hey! Maybe I should cut open your head and eat your brains cause it's probably spaghetti or something!
Bill: I will murder you with a wrench!

End Scene

Caramel Pudding Yukimi Daifuku

Japanese Food Review #73

Yukimi Daifuku is a brand of ice cream mochi. One of their special flavors is custard ice cream with a caramel center (that's what the standard pudding is in Japan). Another fun fact: The Japanese word for pudding is purin. There's you Japanese lesson for the day. It's no secret that I'm a big fan of Yukimi Daifuku and find eating it to be a nearly erotic experience (at least part of that wasn't a secret). This flavor was good, but I still prefer the standard vanilla and last year's cheesecake flavor to this.

Ratings:
Gaybot: 6.5 It was kind of fun, but I don't need to eat it again.
Girlbot: 10 First off, Girlbot is super into this type of pudding. Secondly, this was better than she was expecting because the caramel was quite bitter and not really sweet. If it had been sweet, it would have ruined the mochi. Just to point out, she gave the cheesecake flavor a 10 as well.
Overall: 8.25

Pumpkin Haagen-Dazs Review

Japanese Food Review #71

 The "Pumpkin Flavored Treat Spooky Fun Challenge" rages on. Today, Haagen-Dazs is presenting a pumpkin (actually squash) flavor ice cream. There were actually little chunks of squash in it, and it did taste like sweet, milky squash.

Ratings:
Gaybot: 5  I like squash, but I'm pretty sure I'd rather have normal squash with vanilla ice cream (though I've never tried that)
Girlbot: 8 She said it wasn't as good as their purple potato ice cream. Still, she wanted to give this a 9 (same score as the potato one), but I convinced her she should probably lower the score.
Overall: 6.5

Not the strongest Haagen-Dazs, but it was still victorious.

Haagen-Dazs Murasaki Imo Review

Japanese Food Review #68

There's been a lot of buzz about how it's "Potato Dessert Challenge Week." I regret to inform you that there were only two entries this year, but I assure you that they are both strong competitors. First up is this murasaki imo ice cream. Murasaki means purple. Imo means potato. It's just a type of purple sweet potato. The ice cream really did taste like murasaki imo. Of course it was sweeter and creamier than the real potato. It was quite good, and I've always said we don't put enough purple things inside our body.

Ratings:
Gaybot: 8 I wouldn't give it such a high rating if it were around all the time, but it was a unique treat that you should try if you have the chance.
Girlbot: 9 She punished it for being too expensive (more than twice as expensive as normal ice cream), but on taste alone, she would have given it a 10.
Overall: 8.5

 This is going to be tough to beat. What will happen next!

Dandy

Japanese Food Review #61

 Every time I eat one of these (once), I find myself pondering what Dandy Chesterton would think of this ice cream snack. If you don't already, you should check out his review. It's full of helpful information like how many people find his sight by searching for help with their incurable herpes infection and stuff. Anyway, a Dandy has three levels of chocolate. In the center we have bitter chocolate ice cream packed full of air. On the outside we have the chocolate crust (it's very mushy and didn't have much flavor). Between those two ingredients we find a crispy black cookie. Dandy has recently introduce 20% more black cookie into the mix. I would say even a 4.5% increase would have warranted police tape, but this is just seriously insane.

Ratings:
Gaybot: 4.5  I feel like I might be harsher on ice creams. This is pretty good, but there are so many other cold treats I would choose before this. It's only 88 yen. A pretty good deal.
Girlbot: 7 She says it was good.
Overall: 5.75