Aug 28th 2015 | Really Tasty Glue.
This month's shipment was a box containing three items. This shipment will likely arrive to you any day now. The contents were candy paste, savory butter and yogurt candies and fruit blasted milk hard candies!
Shirokuma Fruity Milk Candy With Azuki
Shirokuma is a particularly famous type of kakigori (shaved ice) in Japan. It's been around for a couple hundred years! It's made with condensed milk, any fruit you can find and azuki beans. This fine candy manages to pack all that flavor into a sweet bite-sized hard candy. Kuma is also Japanese for bear, which explains the mascot. Japanese absolutely love puns and mascots.
Chelsea Butter and Yogurt Hard Candy
These delightfully dainty candies look like caramel drops, but the favors are actually butter and yogurt! That have a really creamy taste and almost melt right in your mouth. This was another candy I should have hidden from my girlfriend. She snatched the bag and took off with them in her purse! :-/
Lifeguard Paste
Japan is the Mecca of the soda world. They seem to have every type and flavor of drink imaginable. Not satisfied with mere liquids, they've manage to take the popular lifeguard citrus energy drink and turn it into a fun sticky paste. I'm not kidding when I say this stuff is sticky, so be on your... guard. GET IT!? YOU PROBABLY DIDN'T GET IT 'CAUSE I WAS SO SUBTLE! (Ed.♫)
I just got back from silver week vacation to Izu in Shizuoka. I got to see the same port and waters that Matthew Perry (ed.note: this is before he became Chandler on Friends ) came to when he demanded Japan open its border for trade in 1852.
He basically told Japan that he would burn them to the ground if they didn't open up for trade, so I see him as a bad guy. The Japanese seem to love him though. His image was everywhere from candy to t-shirts. It's strange how that works out. His coming basically started the Meiji Restoration and civil war within Japan. Good 'ol USA. Getting involved in other peeps business since 1776.
U-S-A! U-S-A! U-S-A!
I visited Nara, a city famous for its free-roaming deer. Mostly confined to Nara park, they occasionally wander outside as well. Once I saw one standing at a notice board next to a roadway, munching on the attached maps and leaflets. Here's one stealing a map from a bystander.
Visitors come to Nara to feed the creatures and take a bunch of selfies with them. One popular shot is to engage in some risque mouth-to-mouth animal action with them.
"Mythological god Takemikazuchi arrived in Nara on a white deer to guard the newly built capital. " is how ancient Japanese scrolls... I mean Wikipedia explains the current reverence for deer in the area.
Makes sense. After all, deer are very graceful and intelligent.
