Candy Sushi

Here's another Popin' Cookin' fake food set. It's grape flavored sushi. Unlike the curry, the main ingredient is not potato powder but rather sugar. It actually tastes okay, and the ikura (salmon eggs) are pretty cool. The video:

Choco Boru

Just try watching this twenty times in a row and tell me you're not craving... something... ahhh...LSD laced whiskey? To be honest, there are very few things I see that don't make me crave that particular beverage, but this happens to be an ad for Choco Boru (chocolate balls). There is a delightful play on words here. They keep shouting Kue (koo-eh), which means eat and is the sound a bird makes as well! Eat, eat, eat, chocolate balls. That's kind of funny. Not for the reason they wanted it to be funny, but still sort of funny. If you want to learn the dance, check out this video. They're going on tour this summer, and you don't want to be the only idiot freestyle dancing.

Curry Set

In the candy aisle for kids, there are all these sets to make miniature versions of food. Sometimes they have a candy flavor, but this one actually tasted like curry. The main ingredient is potato powder. Here's a video:

Katchin Candy Festival

Today was かっちん玉祭　(Katchin Ball Festival) at Rokusho Shrine in Nagoya. Katchin ball candy is a lucky candy made only for this festival.

It's just hard candy wrapped around a bamboo stick, but it is said to help you have a safe childbirth, to raise children, and, for safe measure, to ward off evil. I think it can also help your kid get diabetes. The small ones are only 200 yen, but if you want to go really crazy, you can spend 1000 yen on the big ones. The candy is said to look like an umbilical cord, so think about that while you're sucking on it.

Japanese Food Review #20: Minced Meat Cutlet Snack

Menchi Katsu comes from the words "mince" and "cutlet" and is basically deep-fried ground meat. It is usually pork and usually delicious. This snack has tried to capture that flavor. The snack is quite small, but is shaped like actual deep-fried ground meat, so it's incredibly cute, or something.

Ratings:
Gaybot: 5.5    I do like these, but kind of in the way I like Cookie Crisp. It's fine and appears to be miniature food, but I can't help wishing that it really was just a small version of the original.
Girlbot: 3.5   She said they were good, but she doesn't like menchi katsu. So, again, some sort of strange penalty is being applied here.
Overall: 4.5

Japanese Food Review #19: Okonomiyaki Curls

Curls boast that they are a "non-fry" snack, so they are likely incredibly healthy. They're like puffy cheese curls in America and come in several flavors. Normally, I would choose curry flavor, but this limited addition flavor is out for the summer. Okonomiyaki basically means "as you like it cooked." That's a horrible translation. It has an egg and flour base, and you can add anything you want (so a little like an omelette). Then it is smothered with okonomiyaki sauce (which tastes like most brown sauces in Japan) and topped with fish flakes (like most things in Japan). These curls taste like the sauce, and because okonomiyaki sauce and takoyaki sauce are nearly identical, these are very similar to the umaibo I like. Really fascinating stuff.

Ratings:
Gaybot: 7  Not as good as the takoyaki umaibo (the flavor is not nearly as strong) but still good.
Girlbot: 7  She said she had to give it a 7 because she couldn't stop eating them. I think she ate only 2 more curls after making that statement.
Overall: 7

Japanese Food Review #17: Spicy Cheese Jagarico

One thing I think we all associate with the summer is spicy cheese. Now we're able to enjoy our spicy cheese in Jagarico form. Jagaricos are shaped like french fries but are are crunchy like chips. They're also overpriced costing the same amount as a bag of chips, but they taste pretty good. Spicy Cheese is not exactly an accurate title for westerners because the Japanese consider black pepper to be spicy. This is actually just black pepper and cheese flavor. It's also labeled as an adult flavor, so I assume it's an aphrodisiac. I don't know, I got pretty turned on while eating them anyway.

Ratings:
Gaybot: 5  I like cheese. I like pepper. I like Jagaricos, but there's nothing special here.
Girlbot: 0  She for some reason had it in her head that this was going to be the most disgusting combination of flavors ever, so she barely tasted them before announcing they were horrible and a 0.
Overall: 2.5

JFR #16: Kaki No Tane (Spicy Korean Ramen Flavor)

Kaki no tane means "seed of persimmon" but there are no parts of a persimmon. It's senbei (rice cracker) shaped like persimmon seeds and peanuts. It's one of the best snacks to eat while drinking in Japan. There's usually original and wasabi flavor available. I prefer wasabi. They also make new limited time flavors all the time. This type of ramen, called shin ramen, is available in many American stores in my experience. Girlbot really likes shin ramen, saying she would give it a 7 or 8.

Ratings:
Gaybot: 3  They weren't really all that horrible, but I don't know why I would ever choose these over wasabi flavor.
Girlbot: 3   She says they were too spicy, but she gave them bonus points for tasting exactly like shin ramen... which she loves... but, umm, 3.
Overall: 3

Japanese Food Review #15: Curry and Cheese Pizza Chips

These are a limited edition version of "Pizza Potato" which all have small amounts of "cheese" on them. Sometimes in Japan they eat curry pizza. They also make pizza on nan, so it kind of makes sense.

Ratings: 
Gaybot: 5     Not bad. I like curry flavored snacks, but the normal pizza chips are better.
Girlbot: 1.5   She said they were horrible and then ate the rest of the bag.
Overall: 3.25

Japanese Food Review 10: Bibimbap Chips

The Japanese folks at Frito Lay have come out with a new line of chips called This Part is Delicious with a hand pointing to slightly burnt food. This is the 石焼ビビンバ　(bibimbap cooked in a stone bowl) edition. You dudes know that bibimbap is a Korean dish where rice is mixed with a bunch other Korean food, right? It's normally just mixed in a normal bowl, but it can be served in a hot stone bowl. I believe this style is much more popular in Japan that Korea. I can't stress this enough, these chips ARE NOT NORMAL BIBIMBAP FLAVOR!!! They are HOT STONE BOWL BIBIMBAP FLAVOR!!! Please don't confuse the two.

These are corn chips. The texture is thicker than Doritos. A pretty high quality chip, I must say. It also did taste quite a bit like bibimbap. They were tasty.

Ratings:
Gaybot: 6
Girlbot: 2   She liked them, but they were worse than she was expecting, so the two is some sort of punishment.
Overall: 4

Japanese Food Review 9: Takoyaki Rings

Let me explain what these are in case you don't know. They're just like takoyaki umaibos, but they're cut up in ring form. I think we're all on the same page here now. Oh, and takoyaki is a bready ball with octopus in the middle with sauce and fish flakes on top. Umaibo is a snack that means delicious stick. You can buy all sort of flavors for just 10 yen a stick at most convenience stores. This snack doesn't really taste much like takoyaki. The texture  would best be described as funyun-esque. Before you try these, I think its a good idea to prepare your mouth for the explosion of deliciousness which is about to take place.

Ratings:

Gaybot: 8

Girlbot: 2  She prefers real takoyaki and doesn't really enjoy umaibo.

Overall: 5

Meat Flavored Chip Week: 4

Wow, this has been such a great week. I haven't checked the nutritional facts, but I'm pretty sure all this protein is doing me a world of good. And the final installment....

Japanese Food Review 7: Wasabi and Beef Chips

 This bag has it all. There's the great slogan, "We always produce WASABEEF for all customer's smiles." It teaches me a new term "wasabeef" which is going to save me a ton of time. I used to waste my time saying "wasabi and beef" several times a day. Also, the three stars. I like this, very realistic. Had there been four stars, I might have been skeptical, but it seems like they're honestly judging themselves, and three star chips are still worth checking out.

They tasted more like wasabi than beef, but the beef flavor was definitely there. I like wasabi, so...

Ratings:
Gaybot: 6.5
Girlbot: 5   She doesn't like wasabi, and they were better than she was expecting.
Overall: 5.75

Meat Flavored Chip Week Final Standings
 1) Hot Meat: 7.5
 2) Wasabi and Beef: 5.75
 3) Don Tacos Hot Meat Sauce: 4.75
 4) Beef and Bacon: 1.75

I want to apologize to everyone. I know they're are loads of other meat flavored chips I didn't get to.

Meat Flavored Chip Week: Part 2

If you missed part 1, trust me, you're going to be completely lost here. Do yourself a favor and scroll down a bit.

Japanese Food Review 5: Beef and Bacon Chips

 

Here's another entry from the Calbee corporation. These are called "double rich grill" because of the two meat flavors. I like how there's a picture of bacon being grilled. If you're thinking that these are surefire great tasting chips, then you're an idiot. They're awful. I couldn't even really distinguish a beef or bacon flavor. I guess if you mixed beef and bacon in a blender it might not taste so good. I don't know, let me know if you've ever tried that.

Ratings

gaybot: 2

girlbot: 1.5

overall: 1.75

Hot meat flavored chips are dominating meat flavored chip week thus far.

Japanese Food Review 3: Luxurious Vanilla Potato Chips

The top of the package reads, "Potato Chips Zeitaku Vanilla," and zeitaku means luxury or extravagance. The company Calbee makes, in my humble opinion, the best potato chips in Japan. Again, they experiment with new flavors all of the time. These chips are designed for the summer. Calbee suggests that you cool them in the refrigerator before eating (which I did). This flavor combination seemed like a horrible idea to me. Pouring vanilla ice cream over potato chips doesn't sound all that extravagant. It's more the type of thing I would expect a child with a learning disability to do, but I trust the fine workers at the Calbee plant.

My first thought upon biting into a chip was that they are surprisingly edible. They did a fairly good job matching the sweet and salty flavors. I think I was expecting more vanilla. Cooling the chips actually seemed to help. Girlbot only got through half a chip. The ratings...

gaybot-4
girlbot-0
overall-2

I would say that if you like sweet and salty treats, you should try these out. Otherwise you can skip this one.

Japanese Food Review 1: Teriyaki Mayonnaise Doritos

I was a little surprised to see these labeled as gourmet. Does that mean normal Cool Ranch Doritos aren't gourmet? Are they simply classy? I also normally wouldn't consider mayonnaise and teriyaki sauce to be particularly gourmet flavors. Teriyaki and Cool Whip, maybe. I think the only thing that makes them "gourmet" is the fact that they've been coated with flavors twice.

The most surprising thing about these chips...

They're shiny. That's also pretty fancy, I suppose. The taste? I went through three distinct stages of flavor enjoyment.
1) This is horrible
2) Is this a little sweet? What's going on?
3) I guess I can eat this.

I asked girlbot, a Japanese lady, what she thought of them. "It's good!" she said enthusiastically. Then she gave it a 3 out of 10. The Japanese must use a different rating system.

Final ratings:
girlbot: 3
gaybot: 4
overall: 3.5
conclusion: I will never purchase this again.