Nestle are trying to kill me.

Nestle have evidently cottoned onto the fact that there is somebody out there trying to eat and review every kind of Kit-Kat they make and have decided to try and kill me because just recently they have swamped the aisles with a huge variety of different flavours. To that end in today’s post I’m going to attempt to eat and review no less than 9 different Kit-Kats!!

Umeshu Soda



First up is actually a variety I forgot to review during the last Kit-Kat update; umeshu and soda. It has been sitting in my cupboard since late summer and apparently goes off this month so it may not be a fair trial.

Umeshu is a kind of very sweet and sticky liqueur made from Japanese apricots. The apricots themselves are very bitter but when mixed with alcohol and sugar they make a very strong and very sweet drink. When mixed again with soda you get a delightfully refreshing summer cocktail.

The packaging is pretty good. You get a nice and inviting looking umeshu soda glass, some dots which tie in with the floating ume design and suggest fizziness and a colour scheme which both matches the colours of the drink and looks suitably fresh and refreshing.



The packaging on the individual Kat is less impressive but is fine. Again the colours match the desired flavour well and the bubble design suggests fizziness.

However the problems begin when we get to the Kat itself. Bright green chocolate and a smell that is more strongly reminiscent of a McDonald’s milkshake than any other previous Kit-Kat. Both of these factors bode poorly for this Kat’s taste.

Disappointingly the first taste doesn’t. It is completely and totally bland. I may as well be eating thin air. The texture is grim and soapy with none of the fizz promised by the packaging and the first notes that hit aren’t of anything.

The only real presence of flavour is some generic tanginess that hits your mouth after you’ve chewed it for awhile. These aren’t especially reminiscent of ume but they are at least lively and a bit different from Kit-Kat’s standard fair.

The aftertaste though is really soapy. In fact it tastes more like soap than it does anything it is advertised to taste like.

All in all it’s like eating a bar of crunchy, tangy soap. A total failure.

Ginger Ale



Another drink flavoured Kit-Kat marketed with a picture of a fizzy and refreshingly inviting looking drink. The packaging on this one is superb. The colour choice is excellent for a ginger ale and evokes the label of a Canada dry bottle. The dark green looks classy and refined whilst the white looks fresh and inviting. Finally the actual packet has a photo print of ginger ale as the dominant colour. This is a new technique for Kit-Kat but it works very well. It looks much more stylish, classy and sophisticated than their packaging usually does. The only downside is that with the white on top and the photo print ginger ale it does look a little bit like a glass of beer.



The wrapping on the Kat isn’t a let down either. Cream and dark green are nice contrasting colours and again connote class and sophistication. They’re the colours of golf bars, of airport lounges, of cruise decks.

Sadly we’ve got colours chocolate again which always bodes poorly but we’ve also got a massive hit of ginger smell rather than the usual milkshakey odour. There’s also a faint sour or lemony element to the bouquet.

The chocolate is impressively gingery right from the first bite and what’s more has really strong tangy notes to it. I’m not really a fan of ginger ale and can’t comment on how well it emulates it but it does make for a nice biscuit. There are two strongly contrasting flavours happening in your mouth at once. Partly it feels like eating a ginger biscuit and is rich and mellow like a proper ginger nut is, but at the same time there are really strong tangy flavours like sucking a lemon. They contrast well and this is probably one of the more sophisticated and complex tasting Kit-Kat’s I’ve tried. A definite biscuit for grown ups; from the packaging, to the taste, to the smell and on.

The aftertaste is a little too tart but that just means it goes well with a cup of tea which cuts the aftertaste whilst the sweet and mellow Kit-Kat cuts the bitterness of the tea.

A hit from nestle here.

Milk Coffee



Another drink and a flavour that I’ve tried variations of before. This time the milk content is advertised quite prominently so I’m expecting it to be distinctly lactose-y.

Again, and annoyingly, I can’t really fault the packaging. The coffee looks fine (although not that milky) and the choice of colours is sound. Cream and pink contrast well together and are attractive to look at. The field of flowers is a nice touch and adds some interest to the design. The handwritten note giving the flavour is perhaps a touch to twee but it has a purpose which is revealed on the back of the packet.

Yes, this Kit-Kat isn’t intended to be bought and eaten, it is intended to be bought and given as a present. As such nestle have included a little space on the back to write a message.




Why would you give a Kit-Kat as a present? Well it is coming up to exam/graduation season in Japan now and people often give kit-Kats to students that are taking their exams. This is because Kit-Kat sounds like kitto katsu a Japanese expression meaning “you will surely win.”

In fact you can buy a special variety of Kit-Kat at the post office which can be addressed, stamped and mailed directly without an envelope to whomever you wish to give luck to.

The presence of pink and the use of sakura flowers are also symbols of good luck in Japan and the handwritten note is obviously tying in to the handwritten message on the back.



The individual Kat is more of the same but wisely tones down the flower pattern a little.

Sadly we have more coloured chocolate and our old friend the milkshake smell returns the minute you open up the wrapper. Also the chocolate is practically white with only the faintest whiff of brown to it. If someone served you a coffee this colour you would be forgiven for thinking it was simply some old cream in a bad light.

There is something of a smell that could be described, charitably, as coffee but it is more reminiscent of a room in which coffee was once stored many years ago or a chestnut. I’m not sure.

It’s also got really hard and firm chocolate for some reason.

Well in its defence it does taste of coffee right from the off. Coffee made with seven sugars though and a pint of milk. It doesn’t taste soapy and it doesn’t taste of anything but coffee but it is really, horribly, massively sweet. Any bitterness or complexity the coffee may have imparted is totally drowned out by the sweet. In fact it doesn’t taste of sugar at all but artificial sweetener. It leaves the same horrible chemical aftertaste in your mouth and has the same problem of overwhelming every taste bud you own at once.

This is a really sweet biscuit.

In fact too sweet because I couldn’t even finish it. In stead its staring at me, unloved, unwanted and uneaten.

Meanwhile my mouth tastes like I mainlined splenda.

Blegh!

I need a drink.





Sparkling Strawberry



I’ve passed up strawberry Kit-Kat’s on this site before because a) you can get them in the U.K. and b) they aren’t a limited edition flavour here. Briefly they’re like sweeter crappy ordinary Kit-Kat’s.

Sparkling Strawberry though is a limited edition and like the milk coffee ties into the good luck aspect of Kit-Kat. The chocolate is pink, strawberries are pink and associated with this time of year and pink is lucky. So this must be a super lucky Kit-Kat.

The packaging is very obvious but mostly fine. There are strawberries, they sparkle, the packaging is pink and sparkly; everything fits the overall theme and the name. It looks like an eyesore and the strawberries look plastic but they wanted to make a pink Kit-Kat and by god did they succeed. Also the sparkles look fizzy and if this is a fizzy Kit-Kat it might be nice because I really enjoyed the last fizzy Kit-Kat they released.

However the packaging is also being brutally honest with us. It shows us a picture of the Kit-Kat and lets us know up front that we’re dealing with coloured chocolate so it will be soapy, milkshakey and crap. I applaud their honesty but it doesn’t make me want to eat it.



The packaging on the inner Kit-Kat is a big step up. The pink is a much nicer colour, the gold is a striking combo with it and there are no sparkles or plastic strawberries. Instead we get the nice subdued bubble design from the umeshu. This looks grown up and swanky and cool. Much better then the glitter mess on the packet.

Smell wise it is in every way shape and form a strawberry milkshake. Although you can kind of smell the sherbet too which takes the edge off. And again the chocolate is unusually hard.

Surprisingly I liked this. The strawberry flavour is nice and strong. It isn’t soapy and it tastes of strawberries both on the first bite and in the aftertaste. It’s appropriately tangy for a strawberry flavour and whilst it is sweet it isn’t too sweet.

The sherbet is very subdued and not very noticeable, especially compared to the ramune flavour but it is present and is quite nice. It is mostly noticeable in the aftertaste and largely serves to spoil it and make it taste a bit more of chemicals.

So the strawberry side is better than I expected but the sparkling aspect is poorly implemented and a bit disappointing.

Raspberry and Passion Fruit



This is another package with a space on the back for a message. Only this time instead of exams this Kit-Kat is for Valentine’s Day. I’m not sure if most people I know would appreciate a Kit-Kat for Valentine’s Day but it might go over well with me.

Accordingly we get loads of hearts plastered everywhere in addition to the obvious implications of “passion fruit.”

Although the hearts are a bit gaudy I quite like the packaging here. The colour schemes are classy, brown and pink/purple are good contrasting colours and, dare I say it, a little sexy. It’s certainly more sophisticated than the usual colours. The abstract passion fruits are a nice touch too and give it a sort of funky cosmopolitan feel.



The interior packaging is even stronger with predominant brown and a few hearts that make the hearts “pop” much better visually.

And there are even small hearts on the inside of the packet itself.



Hallelujah and praise the god of Kit-Kat’s this one has normal coloured chocolate. In fact it’s much darker than regular Kit-Kat chocolate. The smell is amazing too; although not too strongly reminiscent of either fruit it does smell pleasant, like a high quality chocolate selection.

Again the chocolate seems much harder than usual. I think maybe they changed formulation recently.

Oh, now that is nice.

Well for starters the chocolate is brilliant. A massive step up from Kit-Kat’s usual offering. It has a much more complex taste, is bitterer, chocolatier and just better in every way. It tastes and even feels like a proper chocolate bar. It is just the right amount of sweetness (i.e. slightly bitter) and even has the slight grittiness you get with proper dark chocolate. This is seriously good chocolate.

But the filling just puts it one step above. It doesn’t hit you at first but once you start to chew the raspberry and passion fruit notes are really strong and clear. They’re fruity, sweet, slightly tangy and delicious. They contrast with the bitter chocolate remarkably well. You whole mouth is stimulated. The combo is neither too sweet nor too bitter but just perfect.

And it leaves a wonderfully fruity aftertaste, almost like a liqueur.

Eating this isn’t like eating a Kit-Kat at all. It’s like eating a proper chocolate from a tray or selection of chocolates only with a slight crunchy texture to it too. This is seriously good stuff. In fact it is probably my new favourite Kit-Kat flavour and is easily ranked amongst the best they have ever produced.

Alright I take it back; this would be a good Valentine’s present.

Maple


A tie in to the Vancouver Winter Olympics gives us new maple flavour. I love maple flavoured things and usually the toffee/caramel/sweet potato group of kit-Kat’s are among the better ones so my hopes are high for this one.

The packaging is a bit of a disaster all told. I realise that it is mainly white to create a link to snow and that the medal and coloured edges are also tie-ins to the Olympics but the effect they create is to make it look like a supermarket’s own brand product. White isn’t the colour of maple, oranges, browns and reds are and whilst we get some orange it is drowned in white that just looks cheap. The maple jug is squeezed off to one side too much and looks small and ineffectual. Plus we get some brutal truth that yes; this is a coloured chocolate occasion. I’m not impressed.



The packet on the individual Kat is better but still bad. We’ve toned down the multicoloured edges but it’s still too white, too dull and too cheap looking.

It does smell of maple, and quite nice too, so maybe it’ll be okay.

Once again the chocolate is really hard for some reason.

This is actually pretty good. The initial taste is mostly sweet and a bit bland but once you start to chew the maple taste comes through very strongly. It is a nice clear maple with all the complex toffee, flower and bitter notes that would suggest but not too sweet. The aftertaste is, if anything, even better than the actual biscuit and is identical to eating any kind of maple cookie.

Unusually for Kit-Kat in Japan I can see this working really well with a cup of tea. Not amazing but a definite hit.

Roasted Soybean Kit Kat Bar



Yes, Kit-Kat chunky does exist in Japan but they call it Kit-Kat Bar. This is the first time I have seen a flavoured version of the Kit-Kat bar so it’s the first time it has shown up on this site.

Setsubun, however, has shown up before on this site. It is a Japanese festival where children throw roasted soybeans at their father, dressed as an Oni (ogre) and chase him out of the house to chase out bad luck. Then, everyone eats 1 roasted soybean per year they’ve been alive plus another for good luck. I’ve done this tradition a few times and can inform you that roasted soybeans are horrible. They are small, flavourless things with a hard horrible texture. Why anyone would willingly eat them escapes me.

So Nestle produced a Kit-Kat with a filling made of them. Hurray!

The packet is naff. It looks like an ordinary bar only with a cheap rubbish white patch and a picture of an Oni. The Oni is fine and I guess they need the white patch to make his face stand out against the background but it is still a boring uninspired design.

The chocolate is the standard Kit-Kat stuff (i.e. crap) but the smell is unique and frankly awful. I know it’s soybeans but there is a second, more horrible note underpinning the beans. Something akin to wet fart. It really is disgusting.

The bar itself tastes disgusting. It’s utterly revolting. The chocolate is innocuous but the bean filling tastes like soggy grass. It’s just horrible. It’s actually probably closest to eating raw dried pasta mixed in with some muesli. I don’t really have the vocabulary to describe it because it doesn’t taste like food so much as it does animal feed.

I’d describe the aftertaste but I had to wash my mouth out immediately in order to focus on writing that paragraph so I have no idea what the aftertaste is. And I refuse to eat any more of it.

Cantaloupe Melon




The last two Kit-Kat’s I’m going to feature are special flavours only available in Hokkaido. Fran and I just came back from a trip there and I’ll be telling you all about it in the next blog post.

Hokkaido is famous for farming and the wide variety of delicious fresh foods available there. In particular because it has a more temperate climate it produces a lot of food not grown elsewhere in Japan.

One of these famous foods is cantaloupe, but when melons aren’t in season Nestle has you covered for souvenirs with melon flavoured Kit-Kat.



The packaging is quite well done with 2 slices of really delicious looking melon and a picture of the fields of Hokkaido. Oh and this is one of those Kit-Kat packages that can be posted. In effect it is a postcard and souvenir in one.



The package on the Kat is completely naff. It’s green, has a picture of a melon and a picture of Hokkaido. There’s nothing explicitly wrong with it but it is dull and uninspired. Could do better.

Hooray, proper chocolate colours and the smell is promising too. It is distinctly identifiable as melon, an even as cantaloupe.

Oh and the chocolate is the usual texture.

This is a great Kit-Kat. The melon flavour is distinct and immediate and complements the chocolate very well. The chocolate is rich and the melon is sweet and a little bit tart. The sweetness is just right. It’s surprisingly fruity and surprisingly accurate for a fruit flavoured Kit-Kat which usually tend to be a bit sweet and soapy. This is probably the freshest tasting Kit-Kat I’ve enjoyed, for want of a better word.

The aftertaste isn’t really. It kind of fades from your taste buds almost immediately which makes it surprisingly moreish.

A well balanced and very good Kit-Kat.

Corn



Yes, corn.

Hokkaido, amongst many foods, is also famous for corn.

So, obviously Nestle decided to make a corn Kit-Kat. I eagerly await the potato, crab, lamb, beer and butter flavoured Kit-Kats.

Actually I would quite like the beer one.

So corn. Well, I guess it is sweet. And I did eat a carrot Kit-Kat once. But carrots are used in cakes and corn, in so far as I know, is not.



The package is in the same format as the cantaloupe, picture of Hokkaido farms, picture of corn and space to post it on the back. However they swapped the delicious looking photo print of a melon for a kind of children’s book illustration style drawing of some ears of corn. I suspect that some real corn would look off putting whereas the picture seems more abstract and possibly sweeter? Frankly it doesn’t really make me want to eat it except out of immense curiosity.

Accursed curiosity, if only I could shake it and my crippling OCD I could stop wasting hours of my life describing Kit-Kat’s.

Oh well, write what you know. And I know all about OCD and incurable curiosity.

The packet of the individual Kat has all the same problems as the cantaloupe, it’s dull and unimaginative. I’ll grant them that it’s a nice colour though.

The colour of the kit-Kat is yellow. Bright, bright yellow. Corn yellow in fact. I haven’t seen a Kit-Kat emulate the colour of its flavour so effectively since, well, chocolate really.

And the smell is strongly, clearly, unmistakeably corn. It is the corniest smelling thing since corn. Cornflakes don’t smell this strongly of corn. Cheap sweet corn doesn’t smell this strongly of corn.

I wasn’t sure before I opened it but after 8 Kit-Kats that corn smell is actually starting to make me feel a bit sick. For the first time doing this I held it up to my mouth and snatched it away. I really don’t want to eat this.

But you bastards want me to don’t you.

Fine.

It’s kind of horrible.

I mean, its sweet and actually not too sweet, I much prefer it to the milk coffee for example. And it has some nice complex caramel notes which are usually really good in a Kit-Kat. Having eaten corn you’d expect both of those things. At least half my mouth was really happy.

But then, the rest of it just tastes really strongly of corn. And even butter a little bit. It’s not bad at all but it seems to clash horribly with every other flavour going on. A disconnect happens in your brain between the parts that taste nice and the parts that really, really don’t.

And it gets worse the more you eat of it. At first it’s sweet and delicious but as you chew it gets cornier and cornier and cornier. And the aftertaste is disgusting, like soap and chemicals and corn.

I mean, I like corn just fine but for some reason I really can’t get into this. It’s foul!

No, nice try nestle and I like your vision but corn and chocolate are two things that should never go together.

Now get to work on that Sapporo beer flavour.

Sod Japan, Talk About Sweets Some More

Everyone that has commented on this site, sent me e-mail or spoken to me about in person likes one feature of Mummy boon above all the others.

Well never let it be said that I am above a little bit of pandering to my audience so here is more of what you people apparently like.

Kit-Kat Reviews



First up is a selection of mini Kit-Kats comprised of ordinary ones (and yes, I have forgotten what they taste like) and some rose flavoured entries. Just in time for, oh wait, Mother’s Day was a while ago wasn’t it?

Oh well I guess June is the time roses bloom in Japan so that must be the connection. Unless I’m making the mistake of trying to understand Japan again.

The packaging on the bag itself is brilliantly, wonderfully girly. Not only are there 3 pink roses and a pink rose petal motif there is also swirly writing and a faux decorative label trying to make it look like a hand made present.

It also features a really baffling note proclaiming it to be a “Kit Kat Limited Edition.”
I have been doing this for a while now and I can reliably inform you that all the Kit-Kats I review on this site are limited editions. And usually they are not only released for a limited time but they are only released in limited areas/stores to boot. So what on earth is so special about these rose ones? The mind boggles at what incredible treasure Kit-Kat must have produced here to warrant such a label.

The packaging on the individual Kat (I have decided from now on this is how we’re going to refer to the singular, okay!) doesn’t disappoint either. It is bright pink and has a rose motif. Frankly if it had been anything else I would have felt betrayed.

Sadly the chocolate itself is a normal colour and not pink in the slightest. Still that tends to bode well as far as the flavour is concerned; all of the better flavours have been in the standard colours.

So how does the flavour stack up?

Well, whilst it definitely tastes differently to a normal Kit-Kat sadly I can’t really detect flavour other than chocolate. The rose element is so slight that all it really serves to do is put a slightly different edge on the chocolate. Less blandly sweet and just a bit more complicated. It works and it does taste nice but the majority of the roses in the product seem to have wound up on the packaging rather than in the biscuit.



Next up we have some Lemon Vinegar.

Hold up, vinegar?

On a biscuit!
……for the first time ever I am having second thoughts about actually eating one of these. Chocolate and vinegar is not an obvious match and surely the lemon is only going to make it even more sour and confused.

Ah I get it. Apparently lemon vinegar is some kind of delicious refreshing soft drink, at least that’s what the packaging seems to suggest. Hold on let me Google that for a moment.

Most of the results appear to be home making websites advocating how you can use lemon vinegar as a substitute cleaning substance.

Well that is very reassuring. New Kit-Kat substitute bleach flavour! Yum, it’s poison-licious.

The packet doesn’t help either. It is white and yellow. Those are the colours of bottles of bleach!

Oh thank god it is a normal chocolate colour.

And it tastes really very lemony. In fact as chocolate goes this is easily the lemoniest I have ever had. And it isn’t an after taste or a suggestion it is a big lemon hit. In fact it may be a little bit too lemony actually. The taste does tend to linger somewhat. In fact quite a lot. Wow, maybe a bit less lemony next time Nestle.

I am very glad to report that it also tastes not in the slightest bit like vinegar. Or bleach.

Usually I question what the purpose of these really strongly flavoured Kit-Kats is but this time nestle has seen fit to give me some idea. See that little chef’s hat in the top right corner. That is promising that these Kit-Kats are perfect for use in cooking, specifically for spicing up a kind of yoghurty/pudding thing. There is more info at http://cookpad.com/kitkat for anyone who is interested.



Since the lemon vinegar ones were not so bad I was a bit more comfortable trying out some of the apple vinegar ones. Particularly when after a Google search I discovered that apple vinegar is really a kind of traditional cider. I like cider and more Kit-Kats flavoured after booze would suit me down to a tee.

The packet was nice and friendly too, particularly the individual wrapper which is in pleasingly retro colours that are also the colour of apples. Offset with lovely retro typography it was all very welcoming and wholesome. I was, dare I say it, excited to try my new Kit-Kat.

Oh hell the chocolate is cream coloured. That is never a good sign.

Before I even bit into it I was overpowered by apples. This thing smells really, really strongly of apples. In fact the scent is the strongest fruit scent of any Kit-Kat since the watermelon ones. I don’t have any watermelon Kit-Kats to hand right now but I suspect the apple vinegar Kit-Kats smell more strongly of apples than the watermelon Kit-Kats smell of watermelons.

….

Do you ever write something that causes you to consider what exactly it is that you’re doing with your life?

Anyway, how do they taste?
Bloody marvellous!

There is very little recognisably Kit-Kat here. It is less sweet than Nestlé’s usual offerings and the chocolate seems creamier and not quite as cheap. IT is also really, really powerfully appley. The lemon vinegar Kit-Kats have nothing on the apple vinegar for fruity taste. These things are kings of fruity tastes. The high lords of apple flavour.

Nestle have produced a few apple Kit-Kats before now but this one wins hand down. They simply haven’t made anything that tastes this much like an apple before. And the whole line should switch to this kind of chocolate. I have no idea what they changed but it just seems slightly creamier and has a much better mouth feel.

Absolutely delicious.

There is a recipe included with these too, for a kind of apple cinnamon topping for ice-cream. I may jut have to try that and let you know how it fares.

I can now also report that the after taste is very similar to a milkshake. Not a real milkshake but a McDonalds or Burger King milkshake. Since I swore off fast food these are the things I crave most in the entire world that I cannot have. I may be trying to manufacture my apple vinegar Kit-Kats into some kind of apple vinegar Kit-Kat milkshake.

And then I can die happy.



Moving on, we have cherry “through the break”. First a note about the packaging; which is bloody horrible.

Look at the individual Kat’s wrapper! That is boring as hell, a pink wrapper with some men and “through the break” written on it.

The main wrapper doesn’t fare much better. It is overly crowded with tiny text in a horrible font and far too busy. That tiny space has to cram in the Kit-Kat logo, some headphones, the “through the break” logo, a picture of some guys, a visualisation of the Kit-Kat inside and a picture of a cherry in addition to tons of text. It is all horribly composed and far too busy. Epic fail Kit-Kat.

All the text is because it is some kind of tie-in/competition running in conjunction with a DJ and a record label. There is a code inside that one can enter to possibly win…something. Sadly my Japanese skills don’t stretch to finding out if I have won anything.

And the chocolate is pink, not a good sign.

Ahhh this is more like it Kit-Kat. The first taste is waxy and bland. There is only a very slight cherry flavour detectable. The mouth feel is horrible due to sub-par chocolate. That is the Kit-Kat we have all come to know and love here.

So we’re on firmer ground but overall this isn’t actually that bad. If you roll the Kit-Kat around your mouth then cherry notes come through really strongly at the back of the mouth. Nice sour cherry notes too. Overall though it is much more like cherry yoghurt, in that it is kind of bland and creamy with subtle cherry notes, than it is like a proper cherry. Still, I imagine that will pair quite nicely with a cup of tea. Overall then a not bad but dragged down by some simply horrible design.

Finally I have saved the best for last.

Feast your eyes on…



Ramune Kit-Kats!

I have talked briefly about ramune before on this site. For those not in the know, briefly, it is a kind of Japanese lemonade that tastes a lot like sprite. However it comes in a special bottle with a marble in the top. In Japan it has strong associations with summers, festivals, childhood and also the post-war period when it was invented.

The important thing to take away from all that is that basically Nestle have made sprite flavoured Kit-Kats!

I invited you to feast your eyes and feast is the right word because just look at that packaging. That is lovely. The lovely retro colours, the retro dot-matrix printing style and even a retro font just all scream post-war at me. The dots also serve to evoke bubbles and fizziness as much as they do a retro aesthetic. It is really eye-catching, really novel and really, well retro. I know I am abusing the word but I really do like this bag. How can one company produce something so spot on for a product and also something as fantastically ugly as the cherry wrapper.

The Kat’s individual wrapper is a nice touch too with little fizzy bubbles.

Hold on, you don’t think they actually are fizzy do you?

I mean it is ramune flavour, all bets are off here. Fruit yes, cakes or sweets yes, even soy sauce but a fizzy drink? This is new territory for Kit-Kat and I am both a little bit excited and a lot scared.

Oh god! The chocolate is blue. Not a good sign.

I don’t believe it.

I really don’t believe it.

They actually are fizzy!

And it works!

The first thing that hits you is the smell. The smell, sadly, is not of ramune at all but of “bubblegum.” By which I mean bubblegum the flavour, the mysterious flavour drinks were sometimes given when you were a kid which always prompted the existential debate of how something could be bubblegum flavoured when bubblegum has many flavours. Well it smells like that.

But it tastes exactly like ramune. Exactly, to a scary degree. I just tested it with some ramune and there is no difference in flavour.

And they’re fizzy! I suspect this is due to the presence of sherbet in the chocolate. They’re only mildly fizzy but all the same they are fizzy Kit-Kats.

This is going to be my baby cousins’ Christmas present this year. No kid can possibly resist fizzy Kit-Kats.

I can’t really objectively rate these because the novelty is so great that it becomes impossible to get past it. Everyone needs to try these because they are that damn strange.

They are also surprisingly more-ish. And that is coming from a man who just ate 5 Kit-Kats.

We have the technology, we can rebuild it, odder and endier than before.

Hooray! Two posts in one week, I’m finally getting this baby back on track. In fact I’ve got a massive stack of stuff to write about now and plenty of free time at work to knock out some posts so we should finally be ahead of the game again.

Woo hoo!

Anyway today I just want to go over a few miscellaneous odds and ends that have been gathering up and need to be addressed.


New School



No photos as, well, it isn’t very interesting looking, but I have recently moved to a new school, Higashiochiai.

In contrast to my last placing out in the middle of nowhere Higashiochiai is smack dab in the centre of the kobe metropolis. Well, not quite, but it is decidedly urban. And whereas Iwaoka was an hour’s journey everyday Higashiochiai is less than half the time away. This is a massive boon to my free time and has granted me an extra half an hour in bed in the morning. Bliss! And no snakes either.

However I’m now in a decidedly weird situation. I will probably be moved from this school at the end of March and it is already nearly the end of January. I have barely 2 months left at Higashiochiai before I will be shipped out yet again to meet new teachers, get to know students and generally adjust. This means I’m kind of in limbo. Sure I work here but I feel like all of my efforts here are pointless. I don’t really have enough time to properly get to know anyone, students or teachers and I certainly don’t have enough time to train students up to my expectations of them in lessons.

Still everyone seems nice enough so far so I guess I’ll just enjoy it while I’m here and worry about the future later.



Sweet Potato Kit-Kats




I have been as lax with my kit-kat reviewing as I have with the blog in general but I intend to let this error persist no further. Already I have skipped over informing you people of the important evolutions of strawberry cheesecake and blueberry cheesecake kit-kats, cookie kit-kats and anko kit-kats. Maybe one day they shall return to stores and I can educate you as to their deliciousness or lack of delciousness. Alas, that is a dream for the future.

For now let’s talk about sweet potatoes.

Sweet potatoes are very popular in Japan. In fact potatoes of all kinds are fairly popular but particularly potatoes that are traditionally grown in Japanese soil, of which swete potato is one. In fact there are a wide variety of sweet potatoes native to Japan ranging from the purple skinned but orange centred imo to the wholly purple beni imo.

Sweet potatoes can be used a both a savoury option, in nabe (a kind of stew), roasted, boild or baked on its own or pressed into rice and as a sweet option, made into a dessert called daigaku-imo, sliced, fried and sugared or used as a starch in wagashi (tea ceremony sweets). There are even varieties of shochu made of it. And now there is a kit-kat version.

And it is delicious! Incredibly delicious. In fact it may be my favourite variety of kit-kat. The taste is incredibly nuanced and complicated for kit-kat. It's mostly a kind of caramel flavour but a very rich caramel with nutty, earthy notes coming through too.

And it tastes, not even slightly, like a sweet potato.

Delicious though.


Umeshu

You may re-call from this post all those many months ago that I was making some umeshu.

Well here it is.



As you can see it has gone down in height by quite a significant amount. This is because I have been drinking it, not because of the ume absoribing the water or anything like that. The colour has obviously changed to a more recognizable ume tone and the ume have shrunk.



My how they’ve shrunk, and now they look like little brains. Tiny brains in a jar. I’ve always wanted to own some brains in a jar, now I can fantasise that I do.

The taste is, actually a little bit disappointing. It’s definitely umeshu but it isn’t as sharp as I usually like my umeshu and furthermore it is very, very sweet. To the point of almost being sticky. I aim to try again next year with much less sugar in the mixture.

I also aim to brew it for a whole year. We cracked open the jar around about Christmastime after a period of more than 6 months but I am now informed that a ful years wait is needed to make a fully mature umeshu.

I should point out that my girlfriend was very happy with it though, even if it is a little bit sweet for me.

Mushrooms

Until the next spring my attempt at making umeshu has drawn to a close but now I have a new project to divert me.



Growing shiitake mushrooms.

My wonderful girlfriend got me a grow your own mushroom kit for Christmas. After dithering with the Japanese instructions for a while I eventually figured out what to do and have been cultivating a patch of mushrooms in the same cupboard the umeshu used to live in.

My first mushroom was constrained by the shape of the bag and had begun growing before I had even opened up the kit. It went a bit strange shortly after I set up the kit properly and turned all watery and…odd. So I ripped it off.

Presently I am growing 1 single solitary but unbelievably massive mushroom. The biggest shiitake I have ever seen. I am going to eat it for my tea tonight in fact in the hopes that if I cut it off it will stimulate all the other spores to start growing.

I will keep you updated on further mushroom news.

Finally I like to end any odds and ends post with a video showcasing the madness that is my adopted land.



This is a trailer for the upcoming live action version of the yatterman anime. Yatterman is about a pair of super hero mechanics riding a giant robot dog who fight a trio of super villains who also have various robots, and a 3 person tandem (tridem?) The show is mostly about the villains and the comic relief they offer. In tone it feels like hannah-barbera filtered through Japan. And now they are making a live action movie. I have high hopes for this.

Bizarre Biscuits (that would be cookies for our American readers)

A quick follow up to Tuesday’s Ninja post today I am going to discuss.




NINJA BISCUITS!!!!

Oh yes!

There were a huge variety of different brands of ninja biscuit available in Iga, all basically the same thing. An incredibly, astoundingly hard biscuit covered in either ginger or seaweed (Japan has different ideas about what constitutes savoury).

How hard are they I hear you cry. So hard my friends that they come packaged with a tiny hammer.



A tiny hammer which incidentally is bloody useless for breaking the damn things.

Ostensibly these biscuits are really hard to prevent them from going stale and so a ninja can keep a stash of them to feed himself on dangerous missions.

Considering neither museum once mentioned these biscuits I’m going to treat this claim as, um, shall we say dubious. Nonetheless stick the word ninja in front of something and it automatically makes it 1000 times better in my world. I was powerless to resist the allure of ninja biscuits.

That said, they’re not very nice. Oh sure they taste nice, even with the inclusion of sweet seaweed, but it’s difficult to get too excited about eating something that could make passable tank armour. Honestly you have never eaten anything this hard. You may be thinking “oh ho Adam, I’ve eaten some pretty tough toffees in my time,” well not as hard as these biscuits you haven’t. I’m sure if pushed to it I could kill a man with one of these. Actually come to think of it maybe that’s why the ninja carried it around. Food and weaponry in one handy package; it’s dwarf bread from the Discworld books. Available for consumption in Japan, the land of no food taboos whatsoever.



In the world of more palatable confectionary we have two new offerings from Kit-Kat this week. Well newish.

The first is a Muscat of Alexandria Kit-Kat from the premier line. The premier line consists of incredibly pretentious packaging, within which are 2, single finger kit-kats which are slightly larger than the standard size and have very unusual flavours.

The Muscat of Alexandria is a white grape flavour rendered in slightly pale green chocolate. It smells, very, very strongly of grapes but also faintly of milkshakes. I’m not sure why it smells of milkshakes, possibly a shared gelatinous component but I do know that such an odour provides a torment for me. I gave up eating at fast food places about 5 years ago and milkshakes are the thing I miss more than anything.

The first taste of the Muscat kit-kat is surprisingly bland. It doesn’t really taste of anything other than vaguely waxy. After a few chews though the grape flavour is really, really strong. Much stronger than I’ve come to expect from these kit-kats. Obviously it lacks the sourness of a proper grape and I think without that it’s way too sickly sweet. It probably needs some salt (like the watermelon) to just cut the sugar down a bit and make it a nicer overall experience.



Next up we have…. Untranslateable flavour. I’m pretty sure the hiragana says kooji (pronounced ko-O-jee) but I can’t even hazard a guess at the kanji. The picture on the packet seems to indicate English (or if you prefer Black) tea but the Japanese for that is koocha.

A quick taste check confirms that this is indeed English tea. This is not a new flavour for kit-kat. I had an English tea kit-kat last year as part of the premier line (which was very strong and unmistakeably a cuppa). These are part of the kit-kat mini line, apparently meant to be eaten alongside a cup of Japanese tea. Japanese tea is notoriously bitter and it customary to eat really very sweet cakes and biscuits with it to counteract some of the bitterness. Consequently the tea flavour is a bit weaker but the product is much sweeter. It isn’t nearly as sweet as the Muscat though. In fact I really quite like these. They taste like what a kit-kat tastes like after it’s been dipped in tea (but with a still crisp texture). However, for the life of me I cannot figure out what the market for these is? Surely they can’t complement a cup of green tea, because, well, they taste like black tea. And eating them with black tea would just be redundant. They’re too small to be eaten on their own so I ask you Nestle Japan, what are they for?

Oh and before you ask, yes, Japan does produce matcha and green tea flavoured kit-kats too. In fact I’ve eaten them and I do intend to get around to reviewing them on this site eventually.

Well that’s all for now. Next week I’ll probably get some of my Tokyo trip photos posted (finally) and we’re all going to learn about Japanese politics. Don’t miss out.

I'm Not Here and Yet I'm Still Posting

Look gang, some posts together in a reasonably timely manner, however did this happen.

Well I’ll let you in on a little secret. Blogger now has a feature that lets you date stamp a post so it won’t appear until the relevant desired date, this, combined with my complete lack of anything to do at work recently, means I’ve been able to build up a kind of buffer of posts. Sorry for the gap in posting but heading into August and September we should be back on track again.

In fact due to the magic of technology this post is going up as I am actually in Tokyo! Control yourselves people, I know you’re excited but you can’t possibly be more excited than I. After all, I’m the one off there.

I intend to travel in style, yes that’s right, not the proletarian delights of the shinkansen for me, oh no, I shall be traveling by the night bus; a 7 hour overnight journey in cramped environs. Fortunately I have with me all the entertainment I could possibly need in the form of “Final Fantasy Tactics Advance 2”. A computer game that is in part responsible for the lack of posting last month. Damn catchy games.

In Tokyo I’ll be hitting up such sights as the Tokyo Tower, Asakusa Shrine, The National Museum, Tsukiji Fish Market and Hea-jinja and exploring such diverse districts as Shibuya, Akihabara, Ginza, Odaiba and even a jaunt to Yokohama.

So expect many, many photos and stuff from Tokyo in the coming weeks.

Until then here is some random filler.



This is an enormous whale hanging inside a building in Umeda. Underneath it is a baby whale. Its true purpose is mysterious and possibly sinister.



I could really go for some pudding right now.

And following up from last week’s Tenjin no Matsuri we have more pictures of fireworks.



These were let off in Kobe for, really no apparent reason, other than it being summer and really do you need any more excuse than that to light up the sky.

I have seen more spectacular fireworks in Osaka (not at the Tenjin matsuri but rather at a dedicated fireworks event) but these come a very close second. I watched them with friends from Port Island, an artificial island in Kobe Harbour which overlooks Harborland. The combination of the bright lights of Kobe, the spectacularly lit up Port Tower and Ferris wheel in Harborland and the fireworks was especially lovely.

Finally here is some weird stuff I found in my local combini.

Japan loves seasonal food and no food better embodies this than the kit-kat. Summer is upon us and so the summer kit-kat flavour has arrived and this year it is.



Watermelon and Salt.

As weird as Watermelon chocolate sounds in the first place (not weird in a bad way just a hard to imagine way) it is the addition of salt that really pushes this into the truly bizarre.

As for the taste test? Well it’s nice actually; in fact it’s one of my favourite Japanese specialty flavours. The salt is actually quite a nice touch cutting the sweetness of the rest of it which is much, much sweeter than a regular kit-kat for some reason. The watermelon flavour is subtle but nice. I don’t really associate chocolate with summer so I doubt I shall be stocking up on this but this is a really, really nice kit-kat.



At the same combini I also spotted this, the coffee history of Kobe. This is another thing you find a lot of in Japan. Non-local products marketed as if they are local. There is no coffee grown in Kobe and as far as I know no real link to coffee in the city’s history. Although it was one of the first ports that was allowed to train with the outside world so I’m sure most coffee in Japan did pass through Kobe at some point. This product joins Kobe wine, Kobe cheesecake and Kobe pudding as an odd kind of but not quite foreign product that people who visit Kobe can give to relatives.

It is not bad coffee.

Yet more sweeties.

Bleh, sorry for the no-post on Tuesday. Blame the combination of Fran and the national holiday. We went to Osaka Castle for the day (and it was lovely, thanks for asking) and got home pretty late so I wasn't in any position to blog. I meant to have this updated yesterday but work put the kibosh on that.



This weekend starting from early on Sunday I will be headed to Hiroshima with a backpack and a guidebook and the hope that I will be okay. Tuesday or late Monday I get back and there might be some site-fiddling accomplished then.



Until then please enjoy some more poctures of the confectionary conference.



So when last we spoke I had gone into the tent to look at the aesthetically magnificent world of Japan's sweets.



Well I still have some more pics of sweets to show you, lucky you!







These are what the Japanese people call "wagashi". Sweets to be eaten with tea as part of a tea ceremony. I particularly like the multi-coloured one in the middle.



More wagashi.



You have to love the chicken wagashi here don't you.



Later on there were some amazing cakes.





These I included because I really love the artwork on Japanese sweets.



Ge-ge-ge no Kitaro.



Ge-ge-ge no Kitaro dori-yaki.



Hyoku-manju. Awww aren’t they cute!?


We finished up but were unfortunately too late to get into the other major display in the convention. This was a shame as someone had told me about a chocolate replica of Himeji castle and I had not seen it. Disappointed I decided to fortify myself with another ice-cream, sort of.

What I actually had was dondurma, or Turkish ice-cream. This is like ice-cream in many respects but is enormously stretchy and almost had a rubbery quality to it. It’s quite nice and makes a better ice cream cornet since it doesn’t melt. The guy who served it to us was a real comedian too. We asked for two and he handed Fran one then used his ladle to quickly snatch the cone out of Fran’s hands, revealing a second, empty cone in her hand and with the dondurma and cone sticking to his ladle. He gave me the finished cone and then proceeded to arse about showing off to Fran with the dondurma demonstrating how sticky and stretchy it was. He got seriously on my nerves but Fran seemed pretty pleased with it all.

So overall not the best day out I’ve ever had in Japan but not horrible. I bought some unusual sweets and got a load of freebies and I met the Mayor of Osaka. I’ve had worse weekends.

Candyland

I have recovered sufficiently to do a proper post again. So let’s get to it.

The 25th Annual National Confectionary Convention was held in Himeji in the grounds of the castle this year. It promised sweets to eat, beautiful sweets to look at, rare sweets to buy and generally an extravaganza of sweets. Fran being Fran this appealed to her greatly and off we set to candy land.

What it actually delivered was sweets to eat, beautiful sweets to look at, rare sweets to buy, and insanely hot day and enormous crowds. So it wasn’t quite the brilliant day I had envisaged.



It all started when we got to the castle and negotiated the signage to get into the convention grounds. Neither of us can really read Japanese and the English signage was infrequent so we could only hazard a guess at what each tent contained. We opted to try our hand at something we think was called “Glico land.” Glico is the company that makes pocky and any regular readers will know that I am a big big fan of the pocky. Anticipating free pocky I eagerly got in line.



The better part of an hour later I got into the tent and was sorely disappointed. The thing was absolutely crawling with kids and had exhibits up for all the major confectionary brands in Japan, Meiji, Glico, Calbee, Fujiya and a few others. The problem was whilst there was a lot to do in there; there was nothing for adults to do. We got some free poifull (a kind of jellybean) and a free donut and had exhausted the possibilities of the tent for adults. Having queued for the better part of an hour I was really quite annoyed.



Still I endeavoured to cheer myself by buying an ice cream. It being exceedingly hot this had the added bonus of cooling me down too. My ice cream was excitingly bright blue but it had a flavour that was quite vanilla like but yet a little bit off. Fran claimed to recognise it but neither of us could identify it. Nice though.

Finding an English sign we set off for the main exhibit in the convention, the collection of sweets from all over Japan. This was a tent divided into sections for the different prefectures of Japan and inside each section were traditional sweets unique to the region. Japan is very keen on its regional distinctions and regional varieties abound in everything from sake and sweets to rice crackers, snacks, savoury food and even just rice. Other than the rice (although Japanese people will strongly disagree with me) you really can tell the difference a lot of the time. This is not a homogenised country like Britain where food is much the same from one end to the other. For example the Takoyaki (octopus dumplings) in Osaka, a city significantly closer to Kobe than Leeds is to Manchester say, are phenomenally different (and much better). In fact in Kobe’s neighbouring city Akashi they serve Akashi-yaki which is octopus dumplings floating in a soup.

However I am no expert of the regional foods in Japan and English signs were non-existent so I contented myself with staring open mouthed at some of the phenomenal creations that the chefs had made for this exhibition.

Before I did that though, I had to get into the tent. The queue for this was much shorter (it was a bigger tent) but just as we got to the front we were suddenly stopped by some commotion. A load of photographers and television cameras started to gather in front of me; obviously some VIP was going to emerge shortly to have their photo taken. Eventually a kindly silver haired man and assorted hangers on started to arrive from inside the tent and set up a table in front of the entry. Japanese people started cheering and some people took photos of him. I asked someone in the queue who he was and in broken English he told me that he was the “Osaka number one boss. President.” I take this to mean that I met the Mayor of Osaka. Better than that though, shortly after he arrived they started the queue again and the mayor started handing out free sweets to people going into the tent. Not only did I meet the mayor of Osaka but he gave me some doriyaki too!



It was good doriyaki as well.

Anyway we eventually got into the tent and started gazing at the fabulous creations.

Creations such as:



This married couple that I think was some kind of cake.



“bye bye Miss American pie”










This temple constructed of sheets of mochi (rice cakes).

The blackest most evil looking Youkan I have ever seen.

Taiyaki!!!



This unbelievably nice looking mochi.







More fish.



Little sakura flowers.



Purple crisps.









This baked castle.



These amazing sea anemone style things made from sugar I assume.



And bunnies! For some reason Fran attracts rabbits wherever she goes.

We also saw:

This recreation of a famous Japanese artwork in mochi.













Another Japanese painting re-created. I particularly liked the jelly river with the koi carp swimming in it.









This quite disturbing boar’s head cake.





This AMAZING sakura tree.







These are a traditional sweet that is usually eaten in summer festivals.

And now I am going to sign off because blogger is playing up and being annoying. More pictures soon along with a site re-design hopefully.