The Anime Blog – We Go Beyond Anime!

Senbei, okaki, and arare, the elusive Japanese rice crackers. Or I should say, good senbei, okaki and arare are elusive. I’ve had my fair share of senbei and arare mixes, most of which have been underwhelming in terms of excitement and enjoyability. They all seem to taste the same with varying [...]

Halloween and Christmas this year were one and the same as David made my Pocky dreams come true by buying me a Halloween Pocky variety pack with Pumpkin Pocky!!
I’ve wanted to try the pumpkin Pocky ever since I discovered it on the Pocky Gallery two years ago. I silently craved to try this Pocky, [...]

Hard candy doesn’t really wow me; it’s a lump of flavored sugar that’s only function is to dissolve. Oh so not impressive. I like my candy with texture and personality, not some lazy piece of sucrose. However, if hard candy meets me halfway in terms of being more than a slightly [...]

Variety is the spice of life, right? If that’s true, than today’s snack review is muy picante (super spicy)! I have two, sample-size variety packs of tasty-looking Meiji candy; equaling a total of eight different Japanese candies.

Meiji is one of the big Japanese candy companies; up there with Glico, Kasugai, and Morinaga. They’re [...]

There’s a hierarchy of confections and snacks (okashi) in Japan, for those who didn’t know. At the top of the Japanese sugar mountain are wagashi.
Wagashi, as denoted by the wa-, are the traditional sweets of Japan which are painstakingly handcrafted with the finest ingredients. They include daifuku, dango, and botamochi/ ohagi. Many [...]

Here’s an East meets West snack that I’ve been putting off reviewing for a loonngg time. I usually don’t mind chowing down on the new and unusual, but something about the packaging gave the product a sinister quality. Maybe it was the command “Just Pack” or maybe it was the way the [...]

I like senbei (Japanese rice crackers). They satisfy my carb craving in a wheat free manner (mostly) so I can add another notch to my eating right regimen (Yeah right! Who am I kidding?). They’re also a good way to get my nori fix when the Seaweed Shakes come around (who else [...]

When I first started down my Japanese snack journey, many things were new, strange, and often times, frightening. Fish snacks skewered on sticks and lathered in soy and sake can look pretty daunting to an average Jane. All the Japanese words on the packaging, while written in romanji, are still a mystery to the [...]