So a mysterious package was delivered today. Inside was this:

It comes from candyjapan.com, a pretty cool place that will send you a package of mystery Japanese candy twice a month, for $23.95 per month, with free shipping, even to Australia. Now personally I’m dirt poor, so I couldn’t afford that price, but my good friend Frits could. And the cool thing about Candy Japan is they have a ‘sign up a friend’ feature. A subscriber can sign up a friend to be put on a reserve list, then if they have any spare candy left over for a particular month, they send it out to their reserve list for free. So I got these cool candies for absolutely nothing.

First is Calpis Soft Candy. “This is NOT bubble gum, it’s similar to hi-chew. Calpis is a soft drink brand and this candy is made to taste similar. In the US, Calpis is branded as “Calipico Water”.

These reminded me of Starburst Fruit Chews, but with a lighter, almost lemonade flavour, and not as overwhemingly sugary as Starburst tend to me. I quite liked them.

Next is Mogimogi Fruits. “These are grape, muscat grape and melon soda flavoured gummies. They are shaped like hanging fruit to make them fun to remove from the sheet.”

They come on a plastic sheet so you peel them off one by one as you eat them. They are really really soft gummi, and personally I prefer my gummi much firmer than this. Taste-wise, they’re pretty average too. Put simply, they taste like fruit.

And finally is Puchitto Kudamono. “Kudamono means ‘fruit’ and you are supposed to pretend that these candies represent oranges. You can first peel the orange open by removing the outer ring and then eating the invididual slices. Do monkeys actually eat oranges (there’s a monkey on the cover)? I did the googling for you, and the answer appears to be yes, they need the vitamin C too.

These taste more like Mandarins then Oranges to me, but the taste is nice either way. You’re supposed to eat each segment separately but they’re a little too small for me, so I just shove them in my mouth. A nice, subtle flavour. It’s refreshing not be overpowered by sugariness for once.

If I had the money I honestly would sign up to get my regular shipment of Japanese Candy, because these ones were pretty awesome.

• ‘that awkward moment…’ memes
• people that enter through the exit
• random encounters in old RPGs
• slow drivers
• seafood
• fast drivers
• being interrupted
• vests
• assumptions
• stereotypes
• people that complain without providing a possible solution
• infinately respawning enemies
• enemies that spawn out of nowhere
• that thing in games where you walk into a room and the camera pans around to show you every square inch of it
• people who interrupt your reading to ask what book it is
• people who block the whole aisle in the grocery store
• forgetting more things that I hate

Through careful research I’ve discovered something quite remarkable. If I lose something, I have a fail-safe way to find it again. I simply ask somebody where it is, and a minute after I complain about losing it, I find it again.

For example, I have a notebook where I jot down writing ideas, and just now I lost it. After searching for about ten minutes, I went into the chat-room frequented by my friends and complained.

[20:24] <@Leck> Grr I lost my notebook.
[20:24] <@Leck> I swear it was here a minute ago
[20:25] <@Leck> oh found it

And exactly a minute later, I found it again. I swear, this works every time. It’s like the act of complaining ‘tempts fate’, and makes the object turn up again. I think of it a bit like reverse psychology. When I complain about losing something, I find it.

Seriously, it really works. Try it!