Reviewed by
Mary
August in Japan is full of wonderful festivals featuring fireworks, so this month’s box is celebrating all things whizzbang and pop with the Fireworks Flavorfest!
We’re got a full run-down of all the items inside, including a comprehensive allergens list. This is of course extremely useful, given that the packaging is all in Japanese!
There’s also a lot of cool things to read about the season in Japan. Different festivals, the wonderful street food and specialty festival treats, and the lowdown on the best displays all over the country. There are also the usual contributions and competitions to win lots of extra goodies.
The first item out is actually a mystery item, but there’s a code in the booklet to scan which tells you what the items are. This is a bag of Sakura Senbei, which are delicious little rice crackers delicately flavoured with shrimp and cherry blossom leaves. Sakura season may be over now, but these are a great reminder!
This month’s Japanese KitKat is Salt Lemon variety. Don’t be put off by the salt, this is a really delicious flavour. The tangy lemon is enhanced by the very subtle saltiness, which means they’re not too sweet but are beautifully refreshing and really amazing.
A popular snack at festivals in Japan is buttered grilled corn, and the Polinky Lightly Sweetened Corn Snack is a nice nod to this delicious sweet-salty flavour. The little crispy corn lattices are light and delicious, and really do taste of real sweetcorn.
7 Stick Chocolate Wafers are the perfect light and crunchy sweet treat. Wafer sticks are filled with lovely chocolate cream, rather like the filled pancakes and pastries sold at festivals.
The delicious taste of Japanese curry is in the Aja Curry Snack. They’re little corn sticks and the curry flavour is pleasantly spicy too.
This month’s ramen is Asari Miso Ramen. It’s a warm savoury mix that has a wonderful umami flavour from sari clams. It’s a wonderful flavour, and you can add any toppings you like, egg is particularly good!
Not only does Japan do crazy KitKat flavours, it also comes out the the famous What The Fanta? mystery flavour? It’s purple, and the flavour really is very difficult to pin down. I found that it was definitely fruity, but there was possibly a slight hint of vanilla too. Anyway, it’s a lot of fun to try to guess what you can pick up.
You can’t visit a festival without candy floss, and Osanpo Cotton Candy is magically preserved in this cute packaging so it tastes fresh out of the machine!
Salt Lemon Pretzels are another version of the lemon dn salt flavour combo. This time these crunchy pretzel sticks are slightly more on the savoury side, but they’re certainly very moreish.
We’ve got a rare TokyoTreat collaborations this month! They’ve got together with the candy store brand Papabubble, which is famous for its artisan handmade hard candies in shops all over Japan. They make candy right in stores, and they’ve created these fruit flavoured firework-themed designs exclusively for TokyoTreat. They’re really yummy, and almost too pretty to eat!
Sweet-savory is a favourite flavour profile in Japanese goodies, and Puchi Soy Sauce Senbei have the perfect balance of both. Ramune candy is usually made as tiny melting hard tabs, but the Gaburichew Ramune Soft Candy are delicious and chewy with the same sweet soda taste.
Star Ramune Candy is the traditional texture, but in tiny little star shapes. super cute and just like the night sky! Umaibo is one of the most popular dagashi snacks in Japan. It’s a corn puff tube and comes in many different flavours. This one is Tonkatsu Sauce flavour, just like the sauce which you find on many street food items at festivals.
Soba Snack are flavoured dried noodles in little bite-size pieces. It may sound like a strange thing to eat uncooked noodles, but these are really very good, flavoured with tangy sauce and nori seaweed, with some extra little rice cracker pieces.
