Hey guys!
Thanks to our last video where I showed you guys the foods that I miss the most from Japan,
which I got from Rakuten,
Rakuten has offered to continue sending us our favorite Japanese things that we can share with you guys!
So I'm super excited!
And today Jun and I picked out some really amazing Japanese snacks,
mostly sweets, that I think you guys are going to like a lot.
So, I can't wait to show them to you!
The first two that I'm going to show you are Jun's personal recommendations
for two Japanese sweets that he thinks are super delicious,
and I actually haven't tried before, so I'm going to try them with you for the first time!
The first is this Japanese crispy wafer.
And these are wafers with almonds and sauce on top of them.
So the first one is almonds and yuzu,
and yuzu is a citrus fruit that kind of looks like a lemon but is a little bit sweeter.
And then almonds and caramel [actually vanilla].
And then little crispy puffs with Okinawan black sugar.
So, I'm excited to try this. I hope it tastes really good!
Itadakimasu!
This is the yuzu one. I've never tasted anything like this.
It's really light and fluffy, and
it just has a little bit of tang from that yuzu flavor.
It's actually really good!
This one must be the [vanilla].
This is delicious! It's like the perfect amount of flavor.
And this would go reeeeally really well with tea.
This definitely has the little bit of a bitter flavor that really dark sugars have.
But it's really good, too.
All three of these combined give you a really good range.
You have the sour, you have the sweet, and then you have a little bit bitter.
These are absolutely perfect tea snacks.
I wish I had tea here now because this would be so good with tea!
And second we have this box.
And you may be thinking, "Why is that coming in a box?"
And that's because Jun and I found this really amazing snack website.
But it sells mostly omiyage, which are gifts that you're supposed to give to other people.
Except instead of buying it as a gift, I got it for myself!
So a lot of the snacks I have come in really nice little boxes.
So this one is...
These are called Western style crackers,
but they're not really crackers--they're supposed to be sweet.
And they're kind of like little sandwiches.
And inside of them they have
This one has vanilla, and inside of this one is matcha.
And Jun's had these before and he said they're super delicious.
I haven't had them before, though, so I'm going to try them with you guys!
This is really good! This is more like a Western style cookie
with a vanilla cream inside.
The cream is really soft and it's still creamy.
It's not like the cream we get in cookies here, where it's hard.
Matcha has this sort of flavor that's sweet,
but it's also got a little bit of a bitter twinge to it.
And you kind of taste it in the back of your mouth.
It's a really interesting experience.
The little bit of bitterness that you get with the matcha combined with the sweet cookie is really good.
Third is something I picked out! It's in a really cute box again.
And these are matcha-flavored chocolate crepes.
So it should be amazingly delicious!
This is so good!
Just the combination of having that matcha-flavored chocolate on the outside,
with the crepe, that's hard, on the inside,
it's so satisfying to bite into it!
I feel like that is something that I could eat all day if I had the room.
I would just want to keep chewing on it forever.
And then fourth, I wanted to get something a little bit salty because so far everything we have is sweet.
And so I picked this, and this is actually a really common snack that you'll see all over Japan.
It's a rice cracker with a little drop of cheese on it,
and usually I see them with almonds on top,
but I picked this one, which has little sakura-shaped flowers.
And they're shrimp crackers, and shrimp crackers are another really common Japanese snack
that are actually super delicious, so I think these will be really good.
That is such a unique combination of flavors that I never thought would work well together!
Japan doesn't use a lot of cheese, but when they do combine things with cheese,
for some reason it tastes really good.
I'm going to eat another one.
And finally, I picked this out just because it was so adorable and I couldn't resist!
It's a little candy sushi bento box!
It's so adorable!
It has little nigiri, So I guess this is maguro and ika, or squid.
And then this has kappa, which is cucumber, and
another type of maguro, a little roll!
And it has little chopsticks as well!
And Jun said I'm not supposed to eat this because it's just a hard candy that's for display,
but of course I'm going to try it for you guys! So let's see how it tastes!
I have my little sushi box!
Let's see if I can pick this up with chopsticks again...
I thought this was going to be really hard,
like a candy you would just have to suck on, which is boring.
But it's not.
It's really hard, but it's kind of crispy.
So it breaks apart in your mouth pretty easily. You can chew on it.
I wasn't expecting a lot from the taste because I thought it was more for display,
but it's actually really good.
It's not overwhelmingly sweet like American candies.
I don't know if I could eat all of them at once,
but it's still adorable and fun to eat.
And Jun and I were actually able to find a single store on Rakuten that sold all of these things on it,
and it's called "Kyoto Okashi-no-heya," which means
Kyoto snack house.
So a lot of the snacks on there are traditional Japanese snacks that you could get in Kyoto.
And the reason I love this website is because everything is so cute!
And I wanted to buy pretty much everything I saw on there.
I think they have a lot of really amazing things that are super adorable and delicious.
They have a little candy crayon that you can draw with,
and they have little bears with candy inside them,
and this little sushi set, and they have a different one, too!
And so I'm going to give you a link to that store!
Because I thought it might be easier for you guys if you can just pick one store
instead of trying to navigate the entire Rakuten website if you want to buy something.
Because last time you guys said you were a little confused about it.
So we just picked one store today, and I think it's really great!
And like last time we made this video, Rakuten is having a free shipping campaign
from May 13th through 17th.
So if you spend a certain amount of money then you can get free shipping.
And I wanted to get this video up before that starts so you can take advantage of it if you want to!
And I'll put a link with more details down in the description,
as well as links to everything we got here today!
And I really think you guys will like them, and especially a lot of other things on that website, too!
They have little natto snacks that I kind want to try, even though I don't like natto.
Jun said he thought he would like it,
but he likes natto so I don't know if I trust him on that.
And let us know what sort of things you're interested in from Japan,
so Jun and I can start thinking about what we personally would recommend,
so we can share that with you guys next time!
Thank you so much for watching! I'll see you guys later!