this sake is the bomb

these character glass sakes continue to make my life tolerable.  triple hearts to the new daruma and noodle pup glasses and their contents!

dagashi 3.0

who got the greatest package this past holiday? US YES US my padre and step mom sent me and leff a HUGE package of dagashi all of which you can see below.

that's a LOT of dagashi, folks! in fact, it took us over a month to eat it all. 

and while it had many, many new surprises, some of our old favorites were also included. 

kyabetsu tarō, cuppy ramune were in 2.0 pack, hot chocolate marshamallow in 1.0. i would love it if there were included in a dagashi 4.0 pack as well.

these were two new types of umaibo! (you know we love umaibo!) some sort of cheese (?) flavor and lobster(!).

leff really liked the lobster. he's from maryland. they love seafoody things there, yeah?

also slightly different but in the "have had before" category were a new package of candy cigarettes

and a mint cola instead of sour cola.

different versions of both were included in 2.0. both were also very good and not chalky.

something entirely new this time, however, was my recognizing snacks from anime. hahaha I KNOW i knoooooooow i so know already so you don' t have to say anything.

but, hey, in episode 7 of "non non biyori" there was some cherry mochi.

renge even picked some up. (here's the episode link if you're interested.)

it's really good stuff too. chewy! the cherry flavor was very subtle.

here it is unwrapped.

it's dynamite!

speaking of dynamite tastes, when i was watching "nobunaga concerto" guess what was in the end credits

and also in episode 2.

yes, baby star ramen!

this stuff is so good that i'm considering buying a 5 pack of different flavors. so crunchy and salty and haaaa it would go good with rice (that is a joke from the episode but, like, no, really. it *would* go good with rice.)

so would this aji curry snack.

these were somehow dense but also light with a lovely warm yellow curry flavor.

i'm glad that we had two packs of the aji curry because it would have been tough to share.

do you know what would go really well with beer? dondon yaki! we got two flavors of these cute treats! the first were soy and nori flavored. it might be replicating okonomiyaki in taste? so good.

the second pack were crunchy with just the right amount of salt.

i adore the packaging of the dondon yaki. so. cute!

riska corn potage crisps, however, are allllll about the flavor. how are they so delicious?! HOW DOES IT TASTE SO MUCH LIKE CORN CHOWDER?!

i have no answer to either of those questions but i HIGHLY RECOMMEND that you try these. they are incredible. the bags need to be bigger. XD XD

maeda biscuits though. eh, they're ok. they're like less buttery ritz. the horse on the package is super cool.

i am not sure what these next snacks are called, sorry. i referred to them as "puppy biscuits" for obvious reasons.

like the maeda crackers, these weren't my absolute favorites. they had a nice crunch but they were a little chalky and had some slight dashi aftertaste that i wasn't expecting. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

the rice puffs were a nice surprise though! i wasn't expecting much from them but they were very similar to sugar smacks.

no, that's wrong, they were *much* nicer than sugar smacks in that they weren't cloyingly sweet. they were just sweet enough. they probably would have been nice in milk but i didn't try them that way. this was more of my thing than leff's.

another snack that i don't know the name of (again, apologies) is what we termed "cowboy sticks". gee, wonder why.

they were ok. kind of like pocky minus the coating. leff enjoyed them.

leff ALSO liked the meat portion of this dagashi pack! YES MEAT!! it was very surprising but also fun. leff said that the dried fish was sweet.

it looks like it would have tasted like jerky but i'm told that it did not just, kinda terriyaki and fish flavor.

the pencil calpis meat stick DID taste exactly the way one would expect. and that is like a nice slim jim.

i am not knocking slim jims, btw. there is absolutely a time and place for them esp if they are the double pack that includes a cheese stick. (YUM!!!!!)

while we are still on the subject of sticks, here's a sweet konnyaku tube!

a detail for you.

this might have been lightly lemon flavored? (sorry, have lost notes on it.) it's made from the same plant as the konnyaku that we've been eating in oden this winter. so versatile!

ah, now we are firmly in sweets territory! takaoka! takaoka is SO GOOD! it's a wheat puff that is surrounded by a flavored chocolate. we had two kinds in this pack strawberry, which tasted similar to strawberry qwik only less powerful,

and chocolate. a very mild, lovely, nutty chocolate.

i ate the whole bag of chocolate myself. sorry, leff.

in addition to the cherry "non non biyori" packet, we also had this super cute mochi variety pack.

the flavors were melon (green), cherry (pink) and i think pineapple (yellow). i can never tell if something is supposed to be pineapple. (just like those pale, pale lifesavers in the 5 pack original.)

there were two types of gum in this dagashi pack. not pictured (sorry) was the grape version of the gum that i had in the 2.0 version. you would not be surprised to learn that it was intensely grape flavored and purple. yum!

the second gum had a nice surprise inside!

since i only had one piece (name of the treasure, etc), i didn't realize that the gum was actually three different versions, 1 sweet, 1 super sweet and 1 super sour. i had the regular sweet and leff had the other two which miiiiight explain why i enjoyed this more than he did. ha!

the obvious surprise was the fizzy middle. hooray for fizz!!

last but not least were some tasty candy covered chocolates. lovely! brightly colored! cute blister pack that makes it look like medicine!

the coatings were not different flavors but they did taste somewhat like canadian smarties. and here are all four colors hanging out near an interpretation of rainbow bridge. awwww!

and so ends dagashi 3.0. if you need more dagashi posts, here are links to 1.0 and 2.0.  dagashi 4.0 if/when we have another pack will be posted after we move.