Would You Eat That? A Little Bit of Good and a Little Bit of Bad

I have collected quite a stockpile of weird Japanese snacks and foods! Over the past few months I've been receiving boxes of snacks faster than I wanted to eat the contents. And I didn't want to eat everything in one sitting because I didn't want to forget what something tasted like when I finally got around to reviewing it. Instead, I saved the majority of the food and am only just now getting around to eating it. As I've begun to tunnel my way through the boxes of food sitting next to my desk, I've rediscovered a few foods that I was very eager to try. These items had been all but forgotten, shoved to the back of the pile of food, but, once I found them again, I tried them right away. The results were varied.

On the left we have what the box called a Roll Candy. I didn't really know what to expect from a treat with such an simple title, but once I actually opened it, I discovered that the Roll Candy was very similar to an American Fruit Rollup - literally, a long piece of semi-chewy gummy candy on a thin sheet of wax paper. If the Roll Candy were compared side by side with its American counterpart, almost no one would be able to tell the difference. It was a very enjoyable treat. Once I peeled the treat off the wax paper and unstuck it from itself, it was a very fun snack. Strawberry flavored and very chewy, to the point where it was hard to chew it at all, this Roll Candy is a Japanese candy that I would eat again. 

I have been puzzled lately by Japan's tendency to put cute cartoon characters on almost every product that it produces; whether it is a toy marketed for children or an item of food, cute cartoon characters are everywhere in Japan. I still do not quite know the reason for this craze but, at least in the case of the package on the right, I think I discovered why a character was necessary - to distract buyers from the horrible food under the package's lid! I don't know who decided that Flan Pudding in a Cup was a good item to sell as an off-the-shelf treat, but they made a huge mistake. I have never had freshly made flan, but I hope that it doesn't taste anything like what was in this cup. It was slimy, had no smell, and, when I bit into it, it felt like I was swallowing my own tongue (my apologies if anyone is reading this while eating). It didn't even taste like food and, even though I tried, I couldn't finish the entire cup. I would advise people not to eat this weird Japanese snack if they value the lunch they just ate and don't want to see it for a second time.

Japanese snacks and treats are in a category all by themselves. They are that weird and unique. Hopefully, next time I review a couple of them for you, they will both be good. 

Photo Credit: Rachel Hollenbeck