Spam From Japan

When you’re blogging about Japan, some days you have to wonder if it’s really worth it. You’d dreamed of festivals and amazing sushi on a conveyor belt, but in the end it turns out you’re just some guy who keeps buying weird Japanese Kit-Kats.

Bring on the newest one! Kinako Ohagi Kit-Kat!

Personally, I love kinako. It goes perfectly with kuromitsu (black honey) and icecream. My enthusiasm was only slightly dampened to hear that kinako is translated as ’soybean flour’. Seriously? That’s all it is? There must be something more to it, because there’s magic in that powder. Ohagi are rice balls that are similar to mochi, but less chewy. Oh, and the ‘filling’ is on the outside.

A helpful diagram on the Kit-Kat packet reveals that there are mochi rice puffs and kinako in the chocolate, with azuki powder and kinako cream between the wafers. Unsurprisingly, I consider this the best of the novelty Kit-Kats.

Royal Milk Tea is what Japanese people assure me I drank in England. It’s a distinctive flavour of tea that is probably made by boiling the milk and water together and adding lots of sugar, although no one seems really sure.

In any case, that’s why the packaging has a border featuring The Queen’s Guard, also known as the soldiers who guard Buckingham Palace, plus Scottish Tartan. Inside, the fingers are wrapped in royal blue packaging, which was unexpected.

This Kit-Kat is made up of white chocolate that tastes of sugary milk with the aftertaste of black tea. So it does indeed taste like Royal Milk Tea. Why I keep buying Kit-Kats based on flavours I don’t like is beyond me.

I love dumb novelty snacks, so I bought the new Pepsi Azuki on the day it was released. It’s yet another flavour found only in Japan that has been hyped up on otaku blogs for quite some time. It sat for weeks in my fridge when I remembered that I hate soda and I’m not too fond of azuki either.

Eventually, something had to give. Got the lid off, sniffed the mixture like a wine connoisseur. It smelled like a mixture of medicine, candy and almost completely unlike beans. The taste itself was almost imperceptibly different from regular Pepsi, although you shouldn’t take my word for that since I seldom drink it unless it’s laced with vodka. I’m guessing here.

Next up was the new Ginger Ale Kit-Kat. The wafers are covered in ginger ale-flavoured white chocolate, with a bit of a fizz to it. Shockingly, it tastes exactly how I imagined it should taste like (unlike the recent Vegetable Kit-Kat). And you can’t really say much fairer than that.

I was sorting through photos of my Mount Fuji climb. One billion photographs (actual number) and my task was to decide which one most effectively depicted the morning sunlight over the torii arch. Then I thought, screw it, why not just blog the latest Japanese Kit-Kat?

The newest flavour is Juujitsu Yasai, which means ‘full of vegetables’ and are made in collaboration with Ito En vegetable juice drinks. The coating is apple and carrot chocolate, while the wafers inside are layered between juujitsu yasai cream.

I was a bit disappointed with it myself, since I was expecting something unspeakably vile to blog about. It tastes mostly of apples, with a softer undertone that may or may not be carrots. Not bad, all things considered.