The Best Japanese Snacks for Summer
Summer is an odd time for J-List, especially our snacks section. Because summer is so hot in Japan, were forced to remove all chocolate from the site, to keep it from turning it into so much MeltyKiss®. That’s okay though: there are so many other wonderful summer-friendly foods from Japan, and were going to introduce the best ones to you now.
A lot of these snacks will be well known to enemy fans, thanks to the Dagash Kashi, an anime that celebrated the traditional candies of the Showa (post WWII) period. Since we have sold these snacks for years, our customers probably knew most of them already, too.
First up is Bontan Ame, a traditional soft candy that’s covered with a wrapper made from rice, so you can eat the candy, wrapper and all. It’s really delicious, a citrus flavor made with fruit from Okinawa. A box is only two dollars, so order one now!
One of the wildest rides we’ve had as a snack-selling company is the boom in “DIY” snacks, like the Popin’ Cookin’ and Happy Kitchen toys from Kracie (and others), which involve kits in which you make your own candy snacks, tiny detailed sushi in this case. They’re totally fun to make, and fun to eat. Browse our DIY snacks page here.
One of the most famous sweets in Japan is actually from Germany, or Switzerland, or Hungary, depending on who you ask. It’s baumkuchen, and it means “tree cake” which is named for the “rings” that are formed when batter is added to a roller as it rotates next to a fire. It’s not an overstatement to say that the Japanese love baumkuchen more than Germans (or other baumkuchen-loving peoples of Europe). So do J-List customers.
Another legendary food in and anime a lot is melon pan, which is bread shaped like a melon. It’s slightly sweet and really delicious, and there’s an urban legend that it makes you smarter, since it sort of looks like a brain. While we can’t sell real melon pan — all commercial Japanese bread products are made without preservatives, meaning that they go bad in 3-4 days — we do have these delicious melon pan and chocolate flavored cookies.
One the most hilariously named food products from Japan is Collon, the delicious chocolate filled cookie that totally doesn’t make you think of your large intestine. Try some now!
We sell a lot of potato chips on the site, and one of my favorite flavors is nori-shio, or seaweed and salt. This is a great brand of potato chips made with natural potatoes from Hokkaido. Try a bag or three!
