Oishii food delights

I haven't reviewed about these wacky drop candies from Sakuma in a while so today I will be reviewing 2 flavors of these candies, the Okonomiyaki flavor from the city of Osaka, and the pudding flavor from the city of Kobe in Japan.
I ordered both of these with my last order with JList.com.

Firstly the Pudding flavor from Kobe:

I was excited upon seeing this particular flavor in their catalogue as I love caramel pudding so I knew I just had to try this out, and I wasn't disappointed. Each piece of candy was bursting with sweet goodness with a hint of pudding flavor.
Kobe is famous for its beef dishes, but their pudding is also popular, Kobe pudding has a rather different taste to typical caramel pudding, it tends to be less sweet because a bit of liquor is often added to the caramel sauce, so it's sometimes not suitable for kids, but rather for adults. However, the taste of liquor was nonexistent in these candies or perhaps it was never added to begin with, probably because the makers at Sakuma want these candies to be kids-friendly.
Overall these Kobe pudding drop candies were packed with good sweetness, a little less accurate in the flavoring, but nonetheless, candies are suppose to be sweet and these were no doubt lovely & sweet.

My rating (overall):

here's another goodie I ordered from J-List.com, and it's another container of drop candies from Sakuma! Upon seeing the vast majority of Sakuma candies being sold out on their site, I took the liberty of ordering up as many flavors of these Sakuma candies still in stock from their site, and I ended up ordering 4 remaining different flavors.

Aside from the Choco Banana crepe flavor I reviewed a few weeks ago, this is the Matcha flavor from the city of Kyoto; the oldest city of Japan, which is the home of many legacies of Japanese history & culture as well as serving as the capital city of Japan up until 1869. I love Kyoto, it is one of my favorite cities in Japan besides Tokyo, Osaka and Nagoya, as well as being one of my most favourite places in the world to visit!

For those who aren't familiar with Matcha, it is a type of Japanese green tea which is fine powdered, it's very high-end and is the staple in traditional Japanese tea ceremonies. Because matcha is very rich & bitter in flavor, it is typically served with sweets that are particularly sweet to wash down the bitterness of the matcha. Matcha powder has also become a very popular flavouring used in traditional Japanese sweets such as Wagashi, as well as ice cream and western-style sweets & confectioneries.
Matcha powder itself is generally quite expensive just for a less than decent amount, so unless you're rich, it's typically bought for special occasions or not so often.

Anyway, enough with the lecture about Matcha, so let's move on to the review:

It's been months since I last blogged about these wacky drop candies from Sakuma, so I decided it's high time I brought the attention back to these fascinating candies, and this time I'm going to shine some light on another sweet food-inspired Sakuma candy.

Like many of Sakuma's candies which are special releases from certain regions or cities across Japan, these Choco Banana crepe flavored candies are from the famous diverse fashion district of Harajuku located in Tokyo, Harajuku is also one of the most popular fashion capitals in the world:

as soon as I opened the tin, my senses were immediately welcomed by the sweet smell of chocolate, which took me by surprise. I eagerly popped a candy into my mouth and was further pleasantly taken aback by the accurate sweetness infused into these candies. The sweet aroma and taste of chocolate was surprisingly strong and accurate, the flavor of the banana was also detectable by my taste buds. Initially the flavor of the banana bear much similarities to artificial flavoring, however I dismissed the probability of the use of artificial banana flavoring when the natural somewhat slight bitter aftertaste of banana kicked in. Since artificial banana flavorings do not leave any natural aftertaste.

Among all the different Sakuma flavored drop candies I've tried over the years, I think these choco banana crepe flavored candies are the most accurately executed in terms of flavor, as well as 1 of the best in my opinion. This has also become my new personal favorite Sakuma flavor candyjust slightly trumping the Cheesecake flavor.

My rating (overall):

It's been so many months since I last blogged about these legendary but always fascinating candies from Sakuma, the last Sakuma drops candy I reviewed was the Takoyaki flavor back in March.
If you've followed this blog for a long time, then you might remember I had pointed out before that Sakuma mostly draws their inspiration from various Japanese savory foods and cuisine, although they have released a couple of sweet food-inspired candies too. The number of different flavors for these Sakuma drop candies available are in abundance, and ever so growing with more new flavors added each year.
Here is another one of Sakuma's many savory food-inspired candy; Anago-meshi from Hiroshima prefecture:

Hiroshima prefecture located south-west of Honshu (Japan's largest and main island) is the birthplace of the famous Japanese savory pancake dish Okonomiyaki. But it's a lesser known fact that Hiroshima is also famous for another popular dish called Anago-meshi, which is basically broiled conger eel on top of rice. Hiroshima was one of the destinations I was fortunate to visit during a trip I took to Japan about 3 years ago, had several pleasant experiences with this dish while I was in Hiroshima city and since then I've been quite fond of Anago-meshi.

I'm onto my fourth entry about Sakuma drop candies already! This time, it's yet another inspiration from a savory food; Takoyaki! I love Takoyaki, it's one of my all-time favorite Japanese foods. Takoyaki is a famous tasty savory snack, they're fried batter covered octopus balls, it's so delectable! Sometimes it only contains octopus inside, but other ingredients can be added too, such as green onion, pickled ginger etc...and it's usually served with okonomiyaki sauce and mayonnaise drizzled on top and sprinkled with shavings of fish meat (katsuobushi)...although often they are served plain without the sauce and fish shavings.
This particular Takoyaki-inspired Sakuma drops is a special regional flavor from Osaka; the birthplace of takoyaki.

Don't you just love cheesecake? And who doesn't love candy? So what do you get when you combine them both? Cheesecake Sakuma drops!

I've become so interested in these Sakuma drop candies, amazed at the vast range of unique & different flavors for these candy drops. So when I saw they have a cheesecake flavor one from the city of Kobe, I jumped up for joy because I love cheesecake!
As soon as I popped one candy into my mouth, a burst of pleasant sweetness overwhelmed my tastebuds!
Among all the unusual and strange flavors of Sakuma drops, these cheesecake ones actually seem more "normal", because it's an adaption of a sweet food, while most other Sakuma drops are adapted from various savory foods. It's fascinating with the vast amount of unique flavors for Sakuma drops, but the sweet ones are always the best! This cheesecake flavor is the best Sakuma drops flavor I have tried so far!

My rating (overall):

My second review on these fascinating Japanese food drops from Sakuma! I won't get into the introductions about Sakuma candy drops again since I've already explained briefly about them in my first Sakuma drop candy entry about the 'Ikura don' flavor here.
Ok, so for my second Sakuma drops entry, I will review about the potato chips flavor, yes, you read right, POTATO CHIPS!

Ok, so candies & lollies are one of the most loved type of confectioneries there is, and potato chips are perhaps the cream of the crop in the snacks world. But have you, or anyone else in this world for that matter, ever thought about how it would turn out if you combine the 2? Well, the people at Sakuma surely did! And not only did they came up with the idea, but they actually executed it! And here it is! A drop candy with all the flavor of potato chips! Oh the Japanese never fail to amaze me!
Well, how did they taste? Well, about a second after you pop each candy in your mouth, that strong taste of potato chips just hits you, it was quite incredible. I was amazed, the guys at Sakuma, really captured the real flavor of packed potato chips, and infused all those flavors into these pieces of candy drops!
Overall, not a bad creation from Sakuma, I enjoyed this flavor more than the 'Ikura don' flavor, and I had no problems savoring through half of the candies in the tin (my mum ate the other half). But...at the end of the day, I have to say, I still much prefer candies & potato chips to be separated!

My rating (overall):

Lately I have been very fascinated with these Sakuma drop candies, they've been around in Japan for almost a century...although they did experience a period of decline as more modern Japanese candies & confectioneries were produced in Japan...but in the last decade or so, these Sakuma food drops are gradually crawling their way back into the spotlight.

There's so many different flavors of Sakuma drops available, most of them are very unusual & wacky, the kind of flavors that you would NEVER imagine would be able to be executed in a candy! Most Sakuma flavors are savory, not sweet...although the candies mostly contain sweet flavorings, they basically just have a generous amount of their respective flavors added to each candy.
Just to give you an idea of just how wacky these flavors are, there's different kinds of ramen & udons flavors available, chili, potato chips, roasted sweet potato, hamburgers, Japanese sake etc, just to name a few...and this one, which is a special candy version rendition of the famous 'Ikura don' from Hokkaido: