Nov 14th 2015 | Japanese Snacks In a Bag
This month's shipment was a box containing three items. This shipment will likely arrive around mid-December. The contents featured funny sounding chewey candy, Morinaga Disney cookies and crispy snacks.
Soda Puccho
Sweet and crunchy on the outside, with a slightly sour gummy chewey center. Like most candy in Japan, there are a ton of different flavors of Puccho, and most are regional and can be difficult to find, even in Tokyo! These soda flavored Puccho are a real treat. The box can slide open and close, so don't just rip into them.
Mickey Chocolate Cream Biscuits
Being an American I really just want to call these cookies like a normal person, but so it goes. These yummy treats feature Disney characters on a crispy COOKIE shell, filled with a sweet and smooth chocolate center. Disney basically owns Japan so I'm kind of used to seeing Mickey's face on everything.
BBQ Scones
Japan loves BBQ too! Real talk. I used to buy these every day my first couple of weeks in Japan. It was my first time living alone so I thought these, a rice ball and a chunk of melon bread would suffice as a daily and complete nutritious meal. If you like crunchy Cheetos, you'll love these. They're a perfect mix of sweet and salty. I really can't put them down!
In Japan punctuality is a big thing. When trains are late, you usually get a slip for the station apologizing for whatever made the train late (Bemmu's comment: your "real job" sounds very strict!). Sometimes your boss won't take your word for it, so you have to scrounge up a slip from every station you stopped at. Sometimes you over do it. Like so.
2015 is almost over. What did you accomplish this year?
Maybe a third of my time was spent on Candy Japan stuff. Here's a yearly report I did for 2014, I'll do a similar post again for this year. Another third was spent on dull tax paperwork and writing a book.
The rest I try to spend on whatever random interests I happen to have. I keep a diary, which makes it a lot easier for to look back, but it's so detailed it takes forever to read. So far I've only read through the first three months.
- Tried to learn how to play the piano and make music in general, new programming skills such as retro 68000 assembler and Meteor, podcasting and other stuff I didn't really follow through with.
- Learned a ton about photography and took some half decent photos, gained the necessary courage to do street shots too.
- Tried meditation and it stuck as a habit I still sometimes do.
- Spent a ton of time unproductively on Reddit, Facebook, playing Battlefield and watching tons of movies.
- Let two random visitors from Norway crash at our house and drove them around Tokushima area showing them things.
- Visited Cambodia.
- Went to many meetups in Osaka, Kobe and Kyoto, but they weren't so useful.
- Accidentally appeared on Japanese TV. There was a meetup going on and a TV crew just happened to be there and decided to interview me. Later on it was aired (I didn't see it).
- Started a dream diary and felt like I've gained some better connection to my dream life.
- Spent a lot of time learning more Japanese characters and made good progress.
- Tried to quit drinking coffee, kept at it for a few weeks and then bailed. So seems I'm doing a lot of stuff that if I spent it on work instead, Candy Japan might be a lot bigger now. But I can't say I regret doing the other stuff! I think you need to keep your mind open, you never know when you might hit upon something really interesting.