So I Ordered a Bunch of Japanese Snacks Part 1

Cracked is one of my favorite websites and is a huge basis on the layout of my blog posts. Some of the best articles are ones that involve food (like this and this and let's not forget this one) but it all started for me with a blog called The Sneeze under a section called Steve Don't Eat It. While looking for some bento tools on Amazon they recommended a big bag of Japanese snacks so I decided why not?

First was Amazon Prime's shipping. For it to get here in two days meant there was no possible way it could have come directly from Japan. Amazon probably gets a couple of them in advance and keeps them in a warehouse.

Actual photo of Amazon warehouse.

It took me a few days to gain the courage to actually open and start eating them. First was...

The Crispy Tube and Naked Pocky

I have no idea what's going on.

I got three crispy tubes, although I originally thought they were stacks of crackers, like Ritz. Just before work my brother convinced me to pick a snack and try one. I chose this one because the mascot is familiar to me for some reason, although I can't place him.

Inside was a tube of crisp with a hollow inside about the circumference of a pen. The smell was spot on as I thought to myself "This isn't going to taste very good."

It also made me vaguely uncomfortable for some reason...

It was salt with a bit of spice (if "spice" also includes Satan's stank farts). I had a rule to myself that I would finish off every snack and I broke my rule after the very first one.

You can actually see when my soul dies.

The taste not only lingers, but gets worse over time. My brother was hesitant to try it after I did, and he was right to do so. I'm pretty sure he ate an alcohol pad to get the taste out of his mouth.

Twinkie the Kid lost weight.

Pocky are chocolate covered biscuit sticks you will find in nearly every grocery store in the Asian food aisle. I've tried them and they're unimpressive, naked pocky is is even more so. They were crunchy with a little salt, like pretzels.

Next was...

Meat Pencil, Birth Control, and Gel Tube

Japan seems to have a thing for junk food in tubes.

The Meat Pencil actually had some English on it: Pencil Calpas. After some reading apparently Calpas originate from Russia and apparently contain the meats of chicken, pork, and horse. I already ate at McDonald's today so none of that should be new to me.

It had a texture like a Slim Jim but with none of the spice, more like one of those sausages mall kiosks sell at Christmas. It was actually much more preferable to a Slim Jim (and probably contains much less horse meat.)

The Birth Control was simplest but also the most amusing. It was milk chocolate in a candy shell, but I liked the packaging, you had to pop them out of the foil backing, like sudafed. Children are known to eat medications, mistaking them for candy, so let's make candy look like medication!

The Gel Tube had one ominous English word on it: Jelly. It had a zip strip down one side so that you didn't just eat it from the top, you had to expose it in all its oozy glory. That, of course, didn't work, so instead I cut one end off and squeezed it out, which is a horror that can only be described via the magic of video:

(Play in background for full effect.)

The texture was like those fake bait packages in the fishing section of a sporting goods store. It was unpleasant to both my fingers and my mouth. The taste was fake pineapple, which was uninviting, but the texture will likely haunt me for the rest of my days. It was only after another forced bite that I realized where it really belonged.

The pineapple has since laid eggs in my cerebellum.

After such a spread I was less brave to try...

The Wheat

Panda fresh!

I was expecting roasted, salted sunflower seeds in these, but instead I was treated to slightly sweet puffed wheat like what you would expect in American breakfast cereal.

I forgot to rotate the picture.

Next was pretty much the same thing, except one was covered in chocolate and the other was covered in strawberry flavoring, like strawberry milk. Both of these I actually enjoyed.

With a renewed sense of bravery I followed up with...

 Frog Balls and Samurai Snacks

 

The Frog Balls were bigger than I expected (hurr durr), about the size of a tater tot. Immediately there is a burst of dill pickle flavor, which eventually gives way to that fried crisp flavor. They are oddly addictive.

The Samurai Snacks have the words "Aji Curry" on them. I know what curry is, but looking up aji Wikipedia says "Ají is a spicy sauce that often contains tomatoes, cilantro, ají pepper, onions, and water."

No horses? Oh well.

The Samurai Snacks tasted like chicken broth on a cheeseless Cheeto. Not unpleasant. To my surprise, my brother actually enjoyed them.

This, logically, led to...

Fried Extras

These tasted like an unflavored version of the fried everything else I had been trying. The most entertaining thing about them were the bags themselves.

What I especially loved was the random sad tiger/monkey thing on the back of one of them. He's seen things man...

He's seen things...