I love it when people buy me candy. I have a regular job that doesn’t involve eating sweets and writing about them, and the people I work with often bring me stuff. #KudosToThem

These are Japanese candies that Amy brought me from her last work trip. They look… hmm … homemade? I think that’s the word for it. Between you and me, I have a small aversion to candies in packages like this one. I realize it’s unsubstantiated. Why do I feel that much more comfortable eating a confection created en masse in a big factory, compared to the small batch candies? No idea. It shouldn’t bug me. Plus I ate a bunch of these Kapibarasan Japanese candies already and here I am, alive and writing about them.

I dismissed these before I started in on them, assuming they would be generic sweet with no flavor. Simple little candies that sit in the bottom of a gramma candy jar and dumped at the end of the holidays.

Color me wrong. These are actually quite good. The sweetness is sharp, and the flavors are big. The orange – normally the lame flavor of a bag – is actually the best. Tangy. And the blue (berry I assume) is also good. Yellow has an actual lemon taste and red I have no idea what it is. Probably cherry. Easily bite-able, yes, but sucking them is better. When they start to dissolve, they get Zotz-like (understated, but the feel is there), and thus give your mouth a mini tart explosion.

I wonder how they make these? The inside faces I mean.

(Side note: they remind me of the Totoro character – watch the Japanese movie if you get a chance – but these are actually another character called Kapibarasan which I think is like Pokemon just without the narrative. IE, it’s a soft, plush toy. Not a cartoon.)

The candies are the size of a paper hole-punched hole, just thicker. So the faces in the middle are tiny. Who is rolling these things out?

(If you haven’t seen how they make candy like this, check out the vid below. Scroll to about 9 mins in.)

Anyhoo – the fun thing about these is you’ll need to go to Japan to get them! Have fun!