Happy Hanukkah to all my Jewish friends and family! So, I have a bit of a confession. I totally failed at my blogmas challenge! *sob* I forgot to put a post up yesterday. But, I'm not giving up, and I will try to finish out the rest of the challenge!
So today, mostly since I'm hungry, I wanted to review for you November's J-list Snack Subscription Box. In case you aren't familiar, J-List is a website that sells items directly from Japan. They have a wide range of anime items, along with kitchen and household things, snacks, and more. The "more" includes a lot of "ecchi" or adult items, so if that kind of thing offends you you can always check out the J-Box site, which is a G rated version of J-List. This subscription is actually not currently available from the website. J-List recently changed over to a completely new site and they are still working to transfer things like subscriptions over. Unfortunately, this means I don't have any information about pricing for you at this time. (I prepaid a year in advance, so it doesn't get charged every month.) I will update this post as soon as the subscriptions go live again!
There are a ton of tasty treats included in this months box, so let's eat!
The info card this month has the same blurb as last months about Autumn, but the snack names have changed to reflect what's in the box this month.
Also included in each month's box is a special bag that some of the treats are packed into. This month it's a nice pattern of autumn leaves. The bag is not plastic or paper, but a thin material that is great for re-use. I often use them to carry snacks to work.
The first food item this month is the "Extremely Light Snowy Milk Chocolate Snack". This large bag contains four smaller, personal portion size bags, which allows you to snack on one while keeping the rest fresh. These have a really interesting flavor to them - almost like a white chocolate coated popcorn. They definitely have an "extremely light" texture.
This is a product we've actually received in the snack subscription before, though I'm still not entirely sure what it is, since it's not included on the information card. (And I cannot read Kanji.) This bag is filled with individually wrapped, very thin cookies with a very strong green tea flavor.
Next up are Mini Red Bean Sweet "Shiruko" Biscuits. I love the flavor of adzuki, or sweet red beans, so I was really excited to try this! Unfortunately I didn't detect much of a red bean flavor - it mostly just tasted like a really yummy version of animal crackers to me.
Switching gears to savory, I picked up the Konnyaku Senbei Snack - Soy Sauce Flavor. Konnyaku (Konjac in English) is a type of yam that is widely used in making a particular kind of jelly block and noodles in Japan. The texture was nice, lighter than I expected, but I didn't enjoy the flavor very much as the aftertaste was very bitter to me.
This next snack was one I was definitely looking forward to trying! I LOVE curry, so a Fried Curry Udon Snack really had me excited! (Udon is a kind of thick noodle made with wheat flour, usually served in a soup.) This snack was great, with a powerful, sweet, curry taste and aroma. The fried udon noodles were the perfect vehicle, having a nice, firm crunch to them. There was a little bit of heat to the curry, but just enough to keep it interesting without setting my mouth of fire. I'm probably going to order more of these, if I can find them!
Okay, this is hilarious. The next snack is actually a candy called "Unchi Chan Tablet" and the container is shaped like... well.. a poop. The Japanese consider poop to be lucky (I don't know, man, I DON'T KNOW) so it's actually not unusual to find candy and toys shaped like "Unchi Chan" (Little Poop). This packet also contained stickers so you could decorate your own Unchi Chan. The candy, which appropriately dispenses out the back, and is also poop shaped, is candy coated chocolate. Layers and layers. Can I just go back to the Curry snack?
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| WHY IS THIS POOP SO HAPPY?? |
The box came with two versions of the next snack "Gokujou Hiritsu" in both chocolate and strawberry cream cake. Since I just sampled a chocolate bar, I thought I would try the strawberry one. This was an interesting snack, it has a "rim" of chocolate all around the edge, but you can see the cake in the middle. I could definitely smell the strawberry as soon as I took it out of the package, as well. This was like some sort of strange hybrid between a filled chocolate and a filled cake - the strawberry filling extended past the cake and filled up the chocolate rim as well. This was REALLY good! The filling tasted like actual strawberries, not fake strawberry flavoring, the cake was soft and not too sweet, and the chocolate was a nice ganache that had a good snap to it but melted easily in the mouth. I was going to save the other one for my husband but.. that might be tougher than I thought.
And the final item this month is "Gaburichu Shaved Ice Flavor Gum". This was a sweet and fruity flavor that had some sort of crystals in it that crunch when you chew. A fun fact about Japanese gum - the Japanese consider spitting things out to be extremely rude, so many of their "gums" (such as Hi-Chew and this one) are made to be chewed for a while and then swallowed.
Final Thoughts: There are some real winners in this month's box, and only one I didn't really care for. Even with that one, however, I am glad I got the opportunity to try it! I have so much fun exploring other cultures through their food and this box really helps me do that.
What do you think of this box? Are there any snack foods you're addicted to right now? Let me know in the comments!
And hey, thanks for hanging out!
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