Snack Time

The number of weird and interesting food products sold in Tokyo could fill a book. Probably several. I list but a few:

Jelly in a Can

The plate is history and I've seen the future. In front of me is a very tasty tangerine jelly. In most respects it's a perfectly normal example of it's species, though there's one major difference. It came in a soft drinks can.

I noticed it on the way back from a shower, lurking on the bottom shelf of the dormitory vending machine. In went 60p (almost of it's own free will) and out clunked canned Jelly. Shake it vigorously and the jelly breaks into small bits which are easily slurped from the top of the can. I've just finished the last dollop and am seriously considering buying another.

The Green Tea Kitkat

It's green. It's a Kitkat.

From the taste, my guess is that this Kitkat was accidentally created when someone spilled their green tea into the white chocolate Kitkat mixture. It has a white chocolate flavor with a slightly bitter tea-ish after taste.

The most startling thing about it is the lurid green colour. It looks like the kind of food English shops sell around Halloween to scare the children.

Walky Walky

There are quite a few customs in Japan that if broken will get you the thousand cold stares. One of them is eating on the move. If you don't want to face the silent but overwhelming disapproval of the multitudes you must find somewhere to sit down and eat or you must go hungry.

Oddly enough, drinking on the go is just fine, which is where Walky Walky has its niche. These small bits of chocolate coated biscuit come cleverly packaged in a container that looks like a coffee cup. You can flip open the lid, knock them back and noone will glare at you.

They're pretty tasty too. In flavor very similar to "Pocky", another snack that's massively popular in here.

The "Post-a-Kitkat"

A really really big strawberry flavored Kitkat with space on the back to write a note and a little square box to affix a stamp to. It's a postcard... but it's a Kitkat. Somehow I can't quite get my head round that.

I don't know what the people at the Japanese Kitkat head office have been taking but it would probably get me deported.

Bottled "Afternoon Tea"

With surprising coherence, the text on the bottle reads:

Afternoon tea has been drunk by the English ever since the custom was started by the duchess of Bedford in the mid 19th century.

Well not like this it hasn't! Kirin's sugary milk tea comes chilled in a 750ml plastic bottle and would make the dutches of Bedford turn in her grave. It looks like tea, but tastes like nothing I've ever experienced. There's enough sugar in the stuff to knock out even the most hardened builder. One lump or twenty?

I hope I stop finding new and interesting tasties soon. If the lack of calcium and the salt poisoning doesn't get me, the type two diabetes will!