Living in Japan, you inevitably end up at the convenience store a lot, so here are some products that left an impression on me.
Tsuta’s cup ramen
The place famous for its Michelin star.
The contents
They use a lot of oil, so the broth is seriously hot, but apart from that it is quite a fine piece of work.
Shin-jaga (new potato) chips
Every year around this time I buy a bag and eat it. To mark the arrival of winter, you know.
Butakimu (pork kimchi) abura soba
The butakimu series suits Korean tastes well. But there was so much noodle that I was stuffed to bursting..
Ohayo’s BRULEE
I bought it because I heard it was good, but it was rock hard, and eating it with a plastic spoon was quite a struggle. If I had eaten it at home I probably would have been impressed.
Konjiki Hototogisu’s Goku Nibo
Lots of niboshi-style cup ramen are coming out lately, and fundamentally with the niboshi type, if you dump in a load of dried sardine powder you get pretty much the same taste as at the shop. So you can eat them with total peace of mind, I guess.
Konjiki Hototogisu’s rich clam broth shoyu soba
As a cup ramen sommelier who has eaten countless cup ramen.. my conclusion is that once butter and clams go into a cup ramen, there is no way it can taste good. Because it cannot even come close to the real thing. And the tori-paitan (chicken broth) ones are full of landmines too. Since this one carries the name of a famous shop like Konjiki Hototogisu I bought it just in case, but as expected, no.
This one is not food.. it is an iPhone case shop in Ginza called GRAMAS.
I had nowhere else to put it, so it goes in this post. They sell some cases I quite like. There is even a crocodile leather case, but the problem is it costs as much as an iPhone..
Halloween cakes
These days Halloween is not made as much of as you would think. The top dessert shops in particular go straight into Christmas mode, so only the slightly lesser dessert shops put out Halloween-limited menus. I bought mine at the InterContinental hotel bakery.
Koikeya’s Imakane Danshaku potato chips
I heard they only sell it as a limited edition every year, so I got curious and bought a bag.
Something like this..
They are the thin style, but the crunch is all there. You wonder, is this actually good? And yet your hand keeps reaching for more. Addictive. I thought they were only sold online, but they showed up at convenience stores as a limited edition too. They disappeared quickly, though.
Kilkerran 12 Year Old
A whisky I picked up for around 4,000 yen, but the quality was such that I would have believed it if you told me it cost over 10,000. It vanishes as soon as it hits the market, but since it is not a closed distillery, stock does keep coming.
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