Japanese Snacks お菓子

Snacks! or Okashi in Japanese..Ahh.. Where would life be without them?
There are so many types..chips, crackers, confectionery, chocolate, icecream, instant noodles, or for the healthier people, fruits, vegie, cheeses.

I live in a suburb close to one of the biggest asian shopping centres in Melbourne: Box Hill :P
The good thing is that there are many food stores and restaurants.
There are milk bar-style stores that stock up with loads of cheap snacks.

Here are a few epic japanese snacks:




Hello Panda

Hello Panda is small hollow panda-shaped biscuit filled with various flavours of cream. Such flavours include milk, strawberry or chocolate. The filling just melts in your mouth :)





Pocky (ポッキー)

Surely you've heard of this one.
If not, its a biscuit stick dipped in common flavours such as chocolate, almond, strawberry and dark chocolate. However, a whole range of other flavours are available, though only in Japan. These include milk, mousse, green tea, honey, banana and coconut. Its also available in peanut butter in the US- the Americans seem to love their peanut butter.. :|

Pocky is named after the sound it makes when bitten on.





Mochi 餅

Mochi is probably my favourite Japanese snack. The outside is made of glutinous rice flour, which gives it a really nice chewy texture and the inside is filled with pastes of green tea, red bean, sesame, taro and peanut butter. I have to admit, peanut butter is my favourite mochi.

There is also mochi icecream, where the outside skin of glutinous rice is very thin. The inside is filled with various icecreams.





Green Tea Drumstick

Another cool invention of the Japanese. It's really nice.
Put simply, its like a regular drumstick, except the icecream used is green tea, as the name suggests.
Very few asian stores have it, so ask me if you want to try it :)
However, the cone can sometimes be soggy- perhaps from a long flight from Asian manufacturers.




Hokkaido Milk Icecream

This is just icecream without any flavours added, from the region of Hokkaido in Japan. However the milk has a sweetness and.. addictive quality normal vanilla icecream simply does not have.

It's worth a try, I bought it from breadtop for about $3.

This will probably be one of my last posts until the start of holidays.
So, take care :D

WB.