Lotte Chocolate Caramel Choco Pie in Ginza : The iconic snack Choco Pie from Korean brand Lotte is available in most places shops in Japan. This particular Ginza chocolate caramel cake flavor is part of a special edition "around the world" series which takes iconic desserts from various cities around the world. For example, it previously featured the NYC cheesecake. I've never actually heard of a Tokyo-specific chocolate caramel cake (and a quick Google Search comes up empty). This is a very decadent Choco Pie, with chocolate cake i... (read more) 3.0/5.0
japanese desserts inegaya lotte chocolate caramel choco pie in ginza 3.0
Lotte Strawberry Toppo: Toppo is another staple convenience store (kobini) snack in Japan. I read somewhere that they're like inverted Pocky sticks, but they're not so much inverted as redistributed: the snack consists of long straws with a neutral biscuit exterior filled with flavored hardened icing such as chocolate and strawberry. The strawberry flavor has a good balance of sweet and tart, reminding me of the Koala's March snacks but less sweet as there is a more balanced biscuit to icing ratio. Like many Jap... (read more) 3.0/5.0
japanese strawberry inegaya lotte toppo 3.0
Luna Vanilla Yogurt with Summer Hyuganatsu Citrus: This brand of yogurt comes in 3-packs, all with a different primary-colored label. Unfortunately, my inability to read Japanese made it impossible to know what those colored labels meant, but this particular yellow one shows a bear hugging a large yellow-colored fruit resembling a pomelo, which I assumed to be the flavor. Only after doing some research after I got home did I find that the fruit is a Hyuganatsu, which is a type of Japanese citrus hybrid between a yuzu and pomelo. I was sur... (read more) 3.0/5.0
yogurt japanese inegaya luna vanilla summer hyuganatsu citrus 3.0
Meiji Tanpact Cheese Biscuit with Milk Chocolate: I think I'm naturally sensitive to packaging design given my interest in visual design, but being in a foreign country where I don't know the language further deepens my reliance on food photography to make purchasing decisions. When I saw this box of biscuits, I assumed that they were plain crackers with a one-sided chocolate coating. It was only when I got home that I saw the smaller image underneath the product name showing 3 types of cheese (what appears to be blue cheese, gouda, and br... (read more) 3.0/5.0
japanese inegaya meiji tanpact cheese biscuit milk chocolate 3.0
Morinaga Annin Tofu: Morinaga is a common Japanese brand that can be found in the supermarket for all sorts of things, probably most popularly in the US for their Japanese instant pancake mix. Recently I've been trying their pudding sets, which are overall decent and affordable. This was their version of almond jello (called annin tofu, though it doesn't contain tofu but just resembles it in its look), the type you get in asian restaurants with canned fruit or goji berries. It has a familiar concentrated almo... (read more) 3.0/5.0
inegaya pudding japanese almond morinaga annin tofu 3.0 dessert sweets
Morinaga Mango Pudding Snack: This is another flavor of Morinaga pudding packs. They come in packs of three at the grocery store and are small pudding cups, about 2/3 the size of America ones. (To be fair, the 3-pack comes with smaller cups than the individually-sized pudding cups you can also buy, which are actually bigger than American ones). The mango one is extremely sweet and reminds me of mango-flavored gelatin snacks you get in those miniature squeeze packets from Chinese grocery stores (similar to the lychee g... (read more) 2.5/5.0
inegaya gelatin japanese dessert sweets morinaga mango pudding snack 2.5