Category Archive

Soy Sauce is ubiquitous in Japan- the Japanese splash it on everything with gay abandon: fried fish, chicken bones, california rolls, potatoes, ice cream, tea. You name it- they condimentize it with soy sauce. Some soy sauce companies- perhaps following their brethren in the candy and snack world- have taken to augmenting their soy with extra awesome flavors; in this case- Nanchatte Orange, by Cheerio. Yum.   Soy Sauce surrounded by little empty plastic fish- which come in bento lunchboxes filled with a single serving of soy sauce.

Pocky have been coming in a wild and weird range of souped-up flavors for decades- I myself have witnessed creme brulee, deep-sea tuna, cauliflower-mango, and flugelberry (oddly enough- a flavor pioneered by the Beatles!). But this new flavor- kiwi, that just takes the cake. Even better- this is tsubu tsubu kiwi- which translates roughly to- kiwi pocky like your mother made it. Wow, those crazy Wonka-ites, what will they think of next? Tugging on our heart strings for that old-style religion, while simultaneously playing our tongue string like a hillbilly banjo. Kiwi Pocky posing on my balcony, despite high wind.

As we all know- sometimes liquid beer just doesn’t cut it. Sometimes you have a thirst so deep and true that only a solid will really cut to the chase, really drop the A-bomb, really nuclearize that aching need inside. Up until now, the best solid beer we had was jelly beer, beer-tots, and beer-steak. Ha. Now- the real thing; pellet-sized beer-crystal rocks of deep beery satisfaction, ready for you whenever you think you’re ready for them.

Yum yum yum, who wouldn’t pay 400 yen for a sexy bottle of water? Wait, I forgot- a sexy/kawaii (cute!) bottle of Hello Kitty water? Boom, you’ve been suckered in, I knew it. All things cute and sexy, this way please: take off your cap, yes, ooh, be gentle, down the hatch, mmm, both sexy and kawaii in my stomach. Hello Kitty, you amaze me. Hello Kitty you amaze me!

Dissidia is the latest mano-a-mano fighting game in the Final Fantasy continuum, to be released by Square Enix on December 18th. It sounds totally cool. There is no chance I will buy it and play it. It features awesome heroes like ‘The Onion Knight’ whose special skill is emanating onion fumes so his enemies weep uncontrollably, ‘Zidane Tribal’ who kicks pig’s bladders at his enemies, and ‘Cecil Harvey’ who gives history lectures so dull they’re like a protective shield of ennui around his body. In cooperation with Suntory, Square Enix unleashed (not for the first time) the full power of …

They love Sarah Jessica Parker in Japan. When Sex and the City came out in Tokyo the city was fire-stormed with an advertising campaign pimping the four women and their lifestyle everywhere you looked, in fashion magazines, food magazines, on buses, on big LCD-and-loudspeaker-packing humvees parading around Shibuya, on TV shows, in books, everywhere. Did you see Sarah Jessica Parker on a Coke can though? The chances are you didn’t, as to my knowledge these cans were never released for commercial sale- only used as giveaways and incentives for raving Sex and the City fans.

For the past week everybody has been blogging about Pepsi White, Pepsi’s new Yoghurt flavored Pepsi drink. It appeared on conveni store shelves on Wednesday, and there were blog responses to it within minutes- but how many of those people actually TESTED the drink? The answer is, none! So here I am, with a light-hearted taste comparison test. Here is my hypothesis:

You’re in space. The trip up took 8 hours- most of which involved you sitting sideways strapped into a second-hand shuttle waiting for air traffic control to give you the all-clear, with no option to get up and go the bathroom (yep, adult diaper). Now you’re on board a creaking old Russian hybrid rust-bucket where everything stinks of Ozone, you’re losing bone mass on a constant and permanent basis, the weather outside sucks, you can’t relax for a second without strapping yourself to a wall because your limbs float off randomly in zero-G, you can’t go to the bathroom without …

Japan-based companies Asahi (the brewer) and Kagome (the fruit and veg juicer) have teamed up to present us with a new and unique product: a range of fruit and vegetable sake cocktails. No longer will you have to choose between getting drunk cheaply or drinking a healthy vegetable juice mix, you can now do both at the same time. It sounds like a strange concept, and it is- the marketing ploy behind it must take its inspiration from the recent upswing in the number and variety of vegetable juice drinks available on convenience store shelves- but I have to wonder, …

Japan loves Kit Kats, and exotic flavored drinks, and happily enough so do you and me, so let’s get down to some serious snack deconstruction: I’ve blogged Kit Kats before, as well as snack/drink combo Pepsi Blue Hawaii + Brazilian Pudding Pocky and others. This time we have a faux Kit Kat (Choco Wafers) and a Boysenberry Sparkling Soda combo: