Jello in a can.

There's a new drink hitting the shelves of Japan, made by our favorite company, Fanta! Don't you want a Fanta? Maybe not this one. It's the equivalent of drink the sparkling Jello out of a can. Strange, but not terrible. Also it should be noted, Jello was never really intended to be consumed out of a 1/2 inch hole. Andrea hated it, she hates all of the jelly drinks in this country. Though I will say, this was unlike most of those. More often than not they tend to be hard gelatin in some kind of flavored liquid. Less like Jello and more like ballistics gel, for those of you who watch Mythbusters or CSI. I enjoyed this stuff, not so much that I would go out and buy it regularly, but I was happy enough to get it free with my chicken.

There's a great product at McDonald's here, shaka shaka chicken. Its essentially the chicken pattie type thing they use (it isn't completely made out of random chicken parts, but it also isn't completely 1 piece chicken breast) but without the bread and mayo. I've been meaning to look up how many calories this actually saves, because 2 of those would be half the cost of the sandwich. It would also prevent me getting useless fat and carbs from the bread and mayo I don't need. The obvious answer is to avoid fast food altogether, I know, but there are no edible frozen meals in this country and I can't cook EVERY meal. Especially when I'm engineering things for work.

On a sad note, Andrea won. We received a box(1 serving size) of Trix cereal from a friend of ours, and she gets to eat it. They have frosted flakes, chocolate flakes and all kinds of high fiber soy crap for cereal here. No fruit flavored sugary cereal. Oh well. I got Cinnamon Toast Crunch, Lucky Charms, and some form of Cheerios, all of which are prefectly enoyable. Next time the Trix are mine!!

So I've decided on a change.

I'm going to change my blog yet AGAIN. I'm going to make another blog that is just a general blog about my food adventures in Japan. It'll have recipes that I've figured out how to make with the ingredients I can get a hold of, as well as general commentary on the state of food in this country. Sorry for ignoring this blog and letting it die a painful death. It'll be easier when I don't try to post picture of every single topic or item I talk about. That was the down fall. Its not easy to just put up the pictures and format them properly so that is doesn't look like a 4 yearold put it together. Maybe there is an easier way, but I can't figure it out. Either way it will be better, and I'll update it more than once every 6 months. I'll come up with a name soon....


....and here it is http://japaneats.blogspot.com/

Let's start with something easy

Today's post will have everything to do with boxed tea. They sell them everywhere in Japan. Most often you'll see teenagers leaving the 7-11 with them as they go to cram school in the evening. For some reason they always give you a straw when you buy them. I normally drink right out of the carton when I'm at home.There are a variety of flavors; milk, grape, apple and lemon are the most popular. The milk one I haven't personally tried yet (though I can't say it sounds that good), but the fruit ones I have.

The lemon tea tastes exactly as you would think, tea with lemon in it. It is slightly sweetened and that's just the way I like my tea. This is a very basic tea drink that just about anyone can drink without too much trouble.

The apple tea is where I started looking closely at my decision to try as much as I could. It tastes like someone had just a half of a glass of black tea, and some waitress accidentally poured apple juice to fill up the rest of the glass. Its not bad after you get used to it, but it's certainly one of the stranger things I've tried so far. Not bad, but not my personal farvorite.

If I thought apple tea was strange, grape tea wins hands down. This is the same as the apple tea, except with grape juice. Compared to this I actually enjoyed the apple tea. At least with the apple tea the flavors went together ok. This is like mixing strawberries with prime rib. It doesn't sound horrifying, but the taste says otherwise. Personally I would stay away from this, if you happen to like a little grape juice in your tea then have at it.

Hopeully this was enlightening for some. This has been an experience, and I'm sure it will continue to be so. Next time I'll be tackling some of the beers, "beers" and "cocktails" I've sampled.

Look forward to it!

Short start

Just putting out a small post to make sure everything looks right. I'm trying to figure out how to post the pictures of the drinks without letting them take up the whole page. That and I need to find a place to host the pictures online, I'd rather keep my picasa album for just adventure pics. I'll work it out this weekend. BBL.