Confectioneres
Japanese Sweets and Snacks, and the Four Seasons
Japanese confections place a lot of importance on the four seasons. With each change of the season, the making process changes as well.
Spring is represented by cherry blossoms and budding leaves, and symbolizes the fresh breath of life.
In summer, freshness and summer heat call for something cold.
Autumn is the time to feast and celebrate the harvest.
In winter, preserved foods and those that take the chill out of one's body prevail.
Enjoy each season with sweets and snacks for the occasion.
And so, replicating the flavor of each season, we have "seasonal snacks." When Japanese people hear the phrase "seasonal snack," we want to enjoy the peak of the season with products that tickle our fancy.
CHARACTERS
Japanese anime are loved by people around the world. There are a great number of snacks that employ anime characters in Japan. At first, it was just a matter of using the characters on the package, but this further developed into trading cards and small prizes contained in the package, and recently there are many characters. figurines.Children are delighted with these figurines as well as the delicious taste.
FLAVORING
There is a kind of rather strongly flavored cuisine in Japan known as "meshi-no-tane." Its name is meant to imply that it is a side dish with which a person can eat a lot of rice. By eating a small bite of such a side dish cuisine together with a mouthful of rice, the rice is flavored by the cuisine as you chew.
While this is a uniquely Japanese cultural tradition, this eating habit also has an influence on snacks and sweets. Many types of snacks and pastries filled with sweet red bean jam and so on are examples of this. Give it a try. Keep the idea in mind while eating, and you may discover something new!
HEALTH CONCERNS
While traditional Japanese dishes are said to be nutritionally well-balanced, the contemporary Japanese diet has become much more westernized and nutritionally less balanced. And as a natural result, there are now a variety of vitamin and calcium supplements in the form of snacks. Slogans make claims to the effect that one box contains all the nutrition a person needs per day.
A shift can be seen away from conventional gelatin, which is made from animal products, toward "kanten," which is a kind of agar gelatin, and "konyaku" jelly, both low calorie and both made solely from vegetable products. People are taking a fresh look at cookies made with sesame, millet, and various other assorted grains, and natural ingredients for flavoring, aroma, and coloring are being chosen over synthetic food coloring and such. Among low-calorie sweeteners there are those which have long shelf-lives and help maintain strong teeth. Without question, significant changes in the way people think about food have taken place over the past decade.
REGIONAL TASTE PREFERENCES
It is said that snacks that are highly popular in the Tokyo area might be considered too salty in other regions. While it could be said that the difference may be the result of different characteristics of the water or the type of flavoring used, generally speaking, people in west Japan prefer a lighter taste while easterners prefer stronger flavors. For this reason, major snack confectionary companies often make subtle changes in what is basically the same snack, depending on the region to which the products are shipped. This can be done through prudent quality control and delicate flavoring.
ANKO (sweet-bean jam)
"Anko" is one of Japan's traditional snacks made by cooking sweet red beans into a paste and making it sweeter still. "Koshian" (smooth jam) is very pliable and well suited for decorative designs, and is used in Japanese snacks for its soft, mouth-watering texture. When the sweet beans are only semi-crushed, they retain some semblance of the original bean texture, and this is called "tsubuan" (chunky jam). Tsubuan is often used as a filling inside "manju" and "mochi" in a style similar to a jelly donut. Japanese people often enjoy such foods together with green tea, but these snacks also go good with coffee and English tea.
NORI (dried seaweed)
Of the types of seaweed popularly eaten in Japan, there are "wakame," "tengusa," "nori," and so on. Of them, when nori is lightly toasted, it gives off a pleasant seaside aroma and takes on a melt-in-your-mouth texture that especially goes good with rice and/or soy sauce. Nori enhances the flavor of rice and is loved by Japanese.
It is also commonly used to garnish snacks made of rice such as "senbei" and "arare" cracker-like snacks. The crackers are either wrapped in nori, or the nori can be cut into small thin strips and the crackers wrapped in it.
ENJOY THE SOUNDS OF SNACKS
The Japanese language has a lot of onomatopoetic words that imitate the perceived sounds of certain actions or objects. For instance, "pari-pari" and "saku-saku" represent the sounds of munching on crisp textured crackers and snacks. Many Japanese people enjoy the crunching sounds made by munching on crispy foods as much as they enjoy the taste. While such onomatopoetic words are common throughout the language, this is especially so when it comes to food. If you have ever been to Japan, you will know how much Japanese enjoy the "tsuru-tsuru" sound of slurping noodles.
RICE
Japanese people love rice, and make many food dishes from it. Sticky ordinary (nonglutinous) rice, in addition to eating it cooked, is used in making sake, miso, senbei and so on, and the even stickier glutinous rice (called "mochi-gome") can be cooked and pounded into "mochi" and eaten as is, or processed into rice flour, and yet another form of mochi can be made from it. Rice cannot be overlooked as in integral part of Japanese Culture.
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