Snacking Japanese: Shrimp and Chocolate?!

"You got chocolate on my shrimp!" "You got your shrimp on my chocolate!"

 Japan is the land of the unique snack. I make sure to browse the convenience stores and snack shops occasionally for new treats, and here are some of the recent finds. Above is a shrimp flavored snack, similar in design to Cheetos, and coated in dark chocolate. The shrimp flavor was mild, and the dark chocolate went well with the saltiness.

 The unfortunately-named Collon is a cylindrical snack with a creamy filling similar to oreo filling. Different flavors show up from time to time; this is a melon soda float flavor. There's a definite melon flavor along with vanilla. These were extremely sweet, but I thought they were pretty good!

 I've seen a bunch of new Doritos flavors lately; I've tried two so far. Pepper and Andes Rock Salt has a black color with white salt crystals. This was really good, actually - the pepper flavor especially worked well on the corn chip. Of course, most corn chips already have plenty of salt.

 The other Doritos flavor I tried is the "extremely hot" Hot Tacos flavor. Yes, it has a good bit of bite, and it does taste like tacos, or at least taco seasoning. A few of these are great, but an entire bag got dull after a while.

 Haagen-Dazs ice cream always has a few limited flavors available. The vegetable flavors have been really popular, but I went with Japonais.

It's a layered ice cream, with four layers: kinako kuromitsu (soybean + brown sugar) sauce, vanilla ice cream, sweet red bean paste sauce, and a milk sorbet. It has a definite Japanese flavor with the two sauces, but I enjoyed it. Red bean sweets are very sweet and have a distinct flavor, so it might not be for everyone.

I'm planning a big sweets spectacular soon, so expect more to come!