Waaahhhgwaaan Steemaz? ( Wahhgwaan = whats up) It's a Monday here in Japan as I type this. It's the type of Monday that feels like Sunday part 2 because its a holiday. This holiday is called Taikai no hi (体育の日) -"sports day" and it all started in 1965 when the Olympics was first held in Tokyo. It was the first time the Olympics was ever held in Asia as a matter of fact.
Now you'd think on a day called sports day I'd be doing some sports with the boys right? Well the only sports we did was run from zombie dad in the park then made a run to the candy shop ( no, not that candy shop, I'm married with twins :(
OKASHI YA SAN ( SNACK SHOP)
These Okashiya san ( Snack shops) are all over Japan, as a matter of fact just 200 meters from my house this kids-fly trap can be found. I've been trying to hide this place from my kids since birth, I didn't want my children's teeth looking like rotting wood like a lot of the kids I see around. Today I decided to take them as I thought it would be a good prize seeing as they just wrapped up their sports day on Saturday. How did they do you ask? Well lets just say Yumar was on his sensei's back for 80% of the event, Kamar won a race and then cried his face off saying " Lets go home, I wanna go home". U know, I don't blame them, they are only three, they don't want anything to do with crowds and competition.
As you can see it's a decent size store, not Walmart or Costso big but keep in mind its only candy and snacks.
Independence through candy
We gave them their own baskets and made them rome and get what they wanted ( though they have no clue what 98% of the snacks were. It was interesting to see their different approaches to shopping. Yumar was very conservative, when he found a new gem, he put something less worthy back, he always kept his basket at 3-5 items. ( I was very surprised, shvt this is a candy shop not century 21 designer discounts in NYC (( did I just sound like a Bhick aying that?)) ). Kamar on the other hand was on a shopping spree ( not surprised, Kamar wants what he wants) he couldn't stop putting things in the basket.
Yup there he goes:)
The good thing about these candy shops is that they have a lot of really cheap stuff, as low as 0.10 cents ( I almost put bitcoin instead of cent). The bad thing about it, its candy and the kids will want to come again and again for the first and subtly-the most addictive narcotics in the history of man kind, SUGAR.
Lets take a look at some of the Shvt, I mean candy and snacks they have to offer.
Rice crackers called kakimochi, this is a corn potage flavor it seems. ( never heard about corn potage till I came here, sounds so facny but it really isn't LOL
Think these are some sort of rice crackers too (rice cracker sound like a curse word doesn't it? lets use it in a sentence: "You damn rice cracker!" )
As I said, they got a lot of really cheap candy here. So its a quick fix for the kids and parents ( For the parents, when the child is loosing it, take em to the candy shop/ when u wanna reward your child)
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Now when I saw this in the pic , as well as those longer versions the boys where holding in the pic before this, I thought it looked kinda like a............... I think it would be a good substitute, especially for a woman that doesn't wanna go to that type of shop or have traces online;) ( Did I go too far? that is just my crazy mind shaped by this crazy world.)
Cheap Chocolaty snacks , they aren't bad, not good either ;)
Cheap asf chalky sugar with a cute rabbit to appeal to the kiddies.
Holy shiznit, who remembers Felix? This I think is another chalk based sugar snack. SMH it's only when we get older we realize the crap or parents were trying to keep us away from.
Source)
A crispy cream sandwich shaped like a fish, very common here.
Candy looking fake ice cream- It makes perfect sense, kids love ice cream but parents hate the mess, whoever made this is genius.
Japanese old snacks
These rice based treats are usually bland as is but come in various flavors.
Imagine that, squid flavored corn thingys ( in Jamaica I'd say squid flavored cheese tricks )
One of my favorite old school Japanese snacks, these peanut cookie things are the bombdizzle. They have a more ghetto version that's round and tougher. These are the classier types.
The snacks to the left of my peanuty cookies are some sugar cake puffs and below that are some harder cake puffs. To the right we see the peanut-less version of my faaav.
I love these!! They are made form real sweet potatoes, the only thing is they add more sugar to it...... for that reason I don't eFf with them too often.
These are some classic Japanese snackings right here. They are called Fuchan. It's made of brown sugar, wheat flour, wheat protein, rice candy, honey and caramel. Its light, big and sweet. I'm not much of a fan but it seems to be the classics of classics here.
The foreign/ western looking stuff
All these snacks below reminded me of something from Europe or the USA. Lets take a look at what I mean.
Pretz, sounds familiar? Yeah its like a stick version of pretzels, a bit softer though. very dainty snacking. I like em.
In this pic, the snacks at the top took there packaging from pringles I assume ( could be the other way around), but without the hardcore cylindrical box, just plastic. Below are some mini cake pies that were common in the states ( idk about now). They have the matcha version in he pic too.
And here we have the actually pringles looking chips, again I'm not sure who started this packaging first, keep in mind, Japan did make the original power rangers and transformers as well as other things. We can also see a fish looking cheesy snack that looks like that fish cheesy snack I've seen around in my journey.
I have no clue why they holding their throat, must have been anticipating the YUM.
They really didn't buy much, I'm kinda worried.
We gave them no restrictions and this is what they got for themselves. Hmmmmmmm. I can't say they are mirroring us, but I think its the times we've went to the super market together and we denied their " buy me this and that" request ( yeah, even if you don't have kids you know what I'm talking about)
Some of the stuff we got ( we ate a lot before we could take pics of them all)
Squid in apple viniger ( wife's choice).
A 50 Yen shaped choco ( it sucked, had barely a choco taste, I stole a piece form Kamar as he is too mean to share with me at times, actually all the time. Yumar will always share on the first request)
Cheese flour stick, good stuff, kids love it.
More squid made snacks ( wife's choice)
A choco cake pie ( hmm I think I'm gonna fvk that up tonight LOL
Mini donuts, mehhhh!
What I got
I just go these too right here..... and then stole a couple things from my wife LOL
chocolate peanut balls
I call these gummi bears. What do you call them?
Thanks for stopping buy, and if you'd like any of these sacks just check ebay, tuns of foreigners have been shoving them on the site recently. ( Hmmmm I should just start a package deal with " 20 must taste Japanese snacks" on ebay". Let me know in the comments if you would be interested or if you have tried any of these snacks yourself.
