mary eats

Right now, over on eGullet, there is a fun thread concerning members favoirte Japanese snacks.

eGullites are posting pictures of food-stuff from the simple to the bizarre. Some of them I am familiar with. As a kid I had a few Japanese friends who would share their pocky with me at lunch. When I got a little older, I would spend all my extra cash on treats from Uwajimaya, THE Japanese grocery store in Bellevue. My absolute favorites included milk pocky, milk candy, and Super Lemons. Remember those? In defense of the milk, it was far closer to yogurt flavor than milk. How gross would that be? A candy that tastes like non-fat milk? Ew.

In June a layover in Tokyo’s Narita allowed me to pick a couple of intriguing treats.

The Tokyo banana, a twinkie like cake filled with banana puree. Not sickly sweet, surprisingly.

The super sour umeboshi plum candies were seriously sour, but gave way to a sweet umeboshi jelly.

Sadly, Korean treats are nowhere near the caliber that Japanese treats are. We do share some similarities, the yummy Hi Chew, there is a new pomegranate flavor, the chocolate covered almonds produced by both Lotte and Meiji, Peppero/Pocky, a taste for digestive biscuits, but Japan’s are waaaaaaaaaay cooler. They visibly stimulate while pleasing the palate. Pineapple Pocky, Green Tea Kit-Kats, hello kitty butter biscuits, digestive biscuit sandwiches with lemon filling!!!!

Cruising the isles of drugstores and supermarkets is my favorite traveling activity. Every country has indiginous candies/snacks, or plays on American favorites, worth trying and make great souvenirs. Out of all the places I’ve been Japan takes the cake. As far as north Asia is concerned, Korea ranks number two. China’s snacks blow. But that could easily be because they beat the pants off both Japan and Korea with it comes to street snacks. I’d take a bowl of crawdads over pocky any day.

Come on Korea. Get your snack on!