Dagashi !! Japanese snacks

I am such a space cadet, here i am moping to you guys about delayed boxes and i completely forgot about a dagashi pack i ordered on ebay a while ago and it came today :-D

Dagashi are pocket money sweets and snacks that cost around 100 yen.They were traditionally sold in little specialist dagashi shops but now they tend to be sold in 100 yen shops.

I bought this one on ebay for £4.88 free postage so whilst it's a lot for something that is sold for about £1, it's important to remember that they usually sell for around £10.00 on ebay and you get quite a few wee treats inside that are hard to come by and usually different to what you get in the subscription boxes.

So firstly i wanna show the lovely little bonus items included by the seller in the bag.

Inside the bag was a little orange bonbon, a business card and a snack that i love 'Kabayaki Taro'. Kabayaki Taro is supposed to be a dried eel snack however due to increased eel prices it's actually a dried fish past snack. However don't let this fool you! it has a super sticky chewy texture yet it has this wonderful soy/sweet glaze that is bliss. I love this stuff and it's very low in calories too! i hought it was all a very nice touch by the vendor.

Inside the bag the first thing i removed was this monkey packet.

 

I'm not entirely sure what flavour it is but it feels and looks like a cheaper version of the umaibo brand. It's a large corn puff tube (think giant wotsit- british snack) and this one is just a little wider and flatter than a normal umaibo. I love all flavours of these except the corn one (i find it a little sweet). Actually i'll give it a taste just now it has a strange very very mild salty sweet taste, i think it is just salted maybe and the sweetness is from the puff itself, nice though. These things are great for lunchboxes too.

Next in the box was a double pack of ramune whistles, again love these wee sweets.

There was a pack of hard mini orange bon bons as well.

Then there was another little pack of corn puffs.

A tiny little strawberry bon bon.

And finally a tiny packet of orange coloured pill shaped sweeties

I'm not sure what flavour these ones are, they are called kuppy ramune but they melt very quickly on the tongue leaving a sweet taste that is a very mild ramune flavour. All in all i'm quite impressed with the pack will def keep me going till my boxes come. If you are tempted to buy snacks on ebay please make sure that you check postage, i would never pay more than £7 including postage for one of these. Also be sure to check the sell by date of anything when it arrives and ensure that the packet is sealed and has not been tampered with. I'm super intrigued by the business card as it states 'i find what you need' and i'm very tempted to put that to the test, so if i do i'll let you know.

Feel free to leave me a msg if you want more info or want to see something in particular featured on this blog, thanks!

Japanese subscription box update

Okay just a quick wee update....

Tokyo treat have lured me back and i subscribed to their premium April box for one awesome reason!!!!

Inside they will have the brand spanking new, limited edition Sakura Pepsi!!!

I am so excited to try it! Having tasted the previous reviews snacks i wasn't overwhelmed it was a lot of the same flavours and some items were not very good i.e the strawberry shortcake thing. So i think that this next box will definitely be make or break for me, as to whether i buy it again or not.

The Okashi connection sumo box shipped on the 4th so i reckon I'll get it around the 21st. They also had a surprise announcement to say that they had added to each sumo box a whole bag of mini kit kats - the new limited edition pancake flavour.

I am really looking forward to trying these and you usually get around 12 mini kit kats in a bag like this, meaning I'll be able to share these out more. I've struggled to find any reviews for a sumo box so I'm really intrigued to find out how good it is.

Lastly Japan crate emailed to say that their box is delayed by a week so i will likely get it at the start of April, they said they will add an extra bonus item to the April box to make up for it. However I'm a little worried about this box, there has been a lot of murmurings online that their boxes often turn up late and with items missing so whilst I've not had a japan crate before, i have had crappy boxes before and I'm getting that sinking feeling :-(

Anyway as soon as each of the boxes arrive i will post an unboxing and let you see what i got. I'm thinking of trying oyatsu box next but if you have any other suggestions let me know in the comments below.

thanks!

QQ Sweeper Vol 1.

For a long time now, I've been dying to read 'Dengeki Daisy' by Kyousuke Motomi. It's one of those things that whenever i intend to buy the series i inevitably end up buying something else. So when i heard the author had a new manga series, i decided to check it out. There were several five star reviews on amazon so i bought issue one.

The story revolves around a girl called Fumi Nishioka whose path crosses with a boy named Kyutaro Horikita. Kyutaro turns out to be a sweeper whose jobs is to clean the negative energy from people's hearts and soon Fumi becomes his apprentice.

I always judge a manga on five things;

1. It's plot
2. It's artwork
3. It's script
4. It's potential
5. How i feel when i put it down.

So I'll start with the plot and the script since they go hand in hand.

The setting of a high school may not be new in the shojo world but the way in which it's handled in QQ Sweeper is different, the school building is part of the intrigue and doesn't limit the story. I like that the plot focusing on the torment in peoples hearts brings a darkness to the manga to bring something a little different than the normal romance.The heroine felt to me a little two dimensional, i didn't see a great amount of personality from Fumi, though we should sympathize with her i never grew to care about her in any way. The fact that she is a gold digger perhaps didn't help. It felt like even though there was a sense of mystery to both the characters future and past it was quite superficial meaning it lacked the ability to hold my attention. In fact it took me three goes to finish the volume as i kept getting bored.

As for the volumes artwork there was no coloured insert but there were plenty of full page art pieces, Five in fact. Some where really nicely done, others were a Little flat (see below). However where the artist really impresses is in the tiny details such as the pattern on the shirt or futon. These little details really make an image more complete.

 

However when i put the book down i felt underwhelmed, i can see where the book is going but i never got excited by it, i never felt like i couldn't put it down and i think it will be a slow burner.

Overall i know lots of people love it and i respect that but for me it just wasn't a good fit and i don't think I'll buy anymore of the series.(incidentally i may give this volume away in a future prizedraw if that is something you are all interested in.