Cool Japanese Snacks

Japan produces some of the best snacks and candy.  Here are some of the ones I've tried over the years.  Their snacks and candy are so popular they are found all over Asia and can even be found in various oriental supermarkets in Canada and the US.

Nissin Cup Noodles.  Nissin invented the instant noodle in the form of Nissin Chicken Ramen in the 1950s and then they developed the cup noodle in the 1970s.  There are many flavours of cup noodles in Japan and in Asia, and they are much better than what you find in typical North American supermarket shelves.

Canned bread.  This stuff comes in many flavours and is often branded with an anime series.  They aren't bad at all considering it is canned bread and they remind me of those Italian holiday cakes you can buy in a box at Christmas.

Japanese Kit Kats.  These come in an awesome number of flavours.  Some are really good, some are kind of so so, but their Kit Kats rock overall.  The Green Tea Kit Kats are very common and very tasty.  There are regional specialty Kit Kats with exotic flavours like ponzu, red bean, Japanese strawberry, pear, soybean, etc.

Pocky.  These are biscuit sticks covered with chocolate for the basic variety and they have many many varieties like the Kit Kat.  There are special dessert Pocki and stubby thick Midi Pocky too.

Coconut Pocky and tropical Pocky shown below.  Like many types of snacks in Japan, there are many limited edition and seasonal Pocky that are available for limited amounts of time.

Karipori Candy Sticks.  There is cola and ramune flavours on the left, and grape and melon on the right with Pikachu.

Pretz.  These are savoury biscuit sticks.  The ones below are shoyu flavour, as in soy sauce.

Jagabee Potato Sticks.  Many different flavours and eating these reminds me of eating really crispy french fries.

Look Chocolate and a couple of other ramune flavoured candies and gum.

Puccho chewy candies and whistle candy.  Everyone likes the chewy candies with the little gummy bits embedded within.  The whistle candies are fun as you can really blow through the little hole in the middle for a loud shriek and they come with a little toy.

Various kinds of rice crackers. Very delicious.

Different types of potato chips and snacks from Calbee.  I really like their curry potato chips.

Hard candies and gummy candy that is ramune flavour (a type of Japanese lemon flavour - very nice).  The Super Soda candies have a really sour coating.

Meltykiss chocolates.  These are pretty deluxe little chocolates with an intensely flavoured center of green tea and strawberry in the boxes shown below.  They come in individually wrapped cubes and are very good.

Instant miso soup.  You have a dried ingredient pouch and another pouch holding the miso soup paste.  Very popular in Japan.

This is another kind of instant miso soup that is freeze dried.  This is from an American company and the little puck rehydrates almost instantly with boiling water.  Quite good.

The rehydrated miso soup below.

This is a type of summer watermelon gummy candy that is pretty delicious, but available for the summer months mainly.

Puccho sour plum flavour chews.

Ramune soda.  These are bottled like sodas were in North America in the early 20th century.  The bottles are sealed with a marble under a cap and you have to push the marble in with a special tool that comes with the bottle.  There are two notches in the glass on the inside of the bottle to hold the marble back when you sip.

Takoyaki flavoured corn puffs.

Ramune bubble gum candy.

Summer watermelon candy

More ramune chewy candy.

Ema hard fruit candies.  These are sugarless.

These are good tasting chocolate biscuits with strawberry cream chocolate mushroom tops.

Tiny potato chips in a long tube.  These are chicken flavour.

Hi-Chew chewy candies.  This was a big bag available at Costco once upon a time.

These are more Pocky but chocolate and crushed almonds.

That's just a few of the hundreds or thousands of Japanese snacks you can get.

A Secret Hankering For Foreign Chips

Potato chips. Crunch. Crunch.  That savoury, salty, or otherwise flavoured deep fried wafer of potato.  Every country pretty much has their own local type of potato chip.  Here in Canada, there are plenty of varieties too, but I still like to try other chips from other countries.

First, lets start with Lays Canada.  They have been promoting regional flavours of chips, and asking for Canadians to vote for their favourite.  I actually liked their butter chicken and more recently, their wasabi ginger flavours.  The butter chicken was a pretty good approximation that hit the highlights of the seasoning for it (sans chicken of course), and the wasabi ginger really appealed to tastebuds familiar with wasabi and ginger.  The wasabi wasn't too strong though, which was good, and I bought a few bags to munch on before they vanished.

Butter Chicken and more

Wasabi Ginger.  It was a nice combination of Asian flavours.

Then there are chips from Japan.  They have plenty of strange flavours, but they can do a very nice potato chip when they want to.  They have every odd flavour you can think of from plain to sour plum or pepsi flavoured, but there are many tasty varieties in between.  Here are a few that I've tried.

One time I was in Tokyo at the right time and actually found these limited edition chips in a konbini.  They didn't taste like KFC, but there were some similiarities, and they were tasty.

This isn't actually Japanese, but it could have been.  Crispy battered strips of seaweed.  Quite tasty.

From left to right.  Here are prawn crackers, lobster bisque flavour, and lobster flavour.  They do like seafood flavours.  I found the lobster flavours okay, a little fishy, but okay.  The shrimp is usually pretty good from any asian country.

On of my favourites is on the left.  It is curry!  Tastes very much like a Japanese curry.  The pizza was kind of the generic tomato, cheese flavour, and the one on the right was one I have forgotten I even tried.

Last year I went to France and lo and behold, some very tasty French potato chips.  I was pretty busy eating normal French food while I was there, but I did pack some back as souvenirs.

Lays did an awesome roast chicken chip (actually had chicken in the seasoning).  From top left to bottom right.  Olive flavoured chips (quite good), cheese chips (so authentically cheesy and good), Soy chips (were okay - kind of salty if I remember right), the amazing roast chicken, ham, and chorizo were okay, but the chorizo were kind of like BBQ flavour.

I also like these Greek type snacks, and am fond of the oregano flavoured potato chips from that country.  I spent a bunch of time living there and still miss having a good gyro or roast lamb.

Pistachios, bagel crisps, jam filled croissants, and Tsakiris oregano chips!

I think I'll be having a few chips tonight after this post...