dagashi!!

remember way back in the precambian era say, oh, july 2nd, when i mentioned that leff had snagged us a bag full of dagashi? we finally finished the bag! 

just a refresher, dagashi stores are similar to british penny candy stores.  or, uh, the really inexpensive section of the bodega here in the u.s. you know, the place where you can buy sweet tart rolls, those weird individually wrapped caramels with a milky white swirl or those plastic fruits with flavored powdered sugar inside.

yeah, you're on the same page now.

anyway, our bag of dagashi came from an online retailer and, WOW, every single item was delicious!

one nice thing about dagashi is that there are savory as well as sweet items. we had two savory sticks in our package. the first that we tried was corn potage flavored.

both sticks were hollow

and absolutely AMAZING! the corn potage had a corn chowder flavor (naturally). so! good!

here is the second stick which was cheese flavored. very mild! it tasted like a grown up version of cheetos.

one of the more "out there" items was a blue flavored jelly,

i like how it glowed when held up to the light.

and also the baseball markings (stitching!) that were part of the mold. sadly, you can't see that here.

one of the more super delicious sweets was this hot chocolate flavored marshmallow.

"there is *no way* this is going to taste like hot chocolate!" i thought. then i was quickly proven wrong because look at this chocolatey center!!

i would love to buy a bag of these to use in real hot chocolate. oishii for sure!

when i was guessing at flavors from package clues, i thought that this might be cheese or maybe dairy flavored.

the back certainly didn't give me any clues.

i was pleasantly surprised by the milky coffee flavor! (the "co" on the cowboy's bottle must stand for "coffee"! ha!)

leff sampled the cola flavored chewing gum.

he said that this wasn't sour but that it was very cola and that the flavor lasted for a very long time. much nicer than american gum.

the last savory in our dagashi bag was a little confusing. was it taro flavored? was it made from taro roots?

i never found out (god, i should just learn kanjii already!) but these were nice. crispy and slightly tasting of  lightly buttered toast.

you know what i wish that pixie stix tasted like? yes, orange cat candies.

seriously, guys. these were addictive. so orange! so on the border between sweet and sour!

the last item we tried were these adorable stars? blossoms? sugary meteors? they were three different flavors! orange, cherry and, um, sugar.

they were like noncloying rock candy. i don't know how that was accomplished but it was incredibly enjoyable.

and so ends the dagashi bag review. i am absolutely going to try another bag in the near future!

ps-- if you'd like more info about dagashi stores, here's that great "begin japanology" episode again.

(dagashi 2.0 post is here.)