Subscription box: Japan Crate June 2020
Price: $35 per month, shipping included.
Includes: 18-20 snacks, 1 drink and 1 DIY kit guaranteed!
Japan Crate, founded in 2015, is a subscription box that focuses on various Japanese snacks, sweets, and drinks! The box I’ll be reviewing is the premium version, which includes 18-20 snacks, a Japan-exclusive drink and a monthly bonus item (which in this case, a pack of Japanese Kit-Kat). Without further ado, let’s get into this unboxing!
*Subscription box was provided by Japan Crate for free for review.
Box Contents:
Kit Kat Ocean Salt: Newly released in Japan, these Ocean Salt Kit Kats are a delicious balance of sweet and salty from the white chocolate and the sea salt (Which comes from Japan’s Seto Inland Sea). Definitely different from the basic white chocolate Kit Kat, the sea salt is more apparent during the after taste.
Roasted Shrimp & Garlic Craft Scone: One of Scone’s newest snack, it brings a great mix of savory and umami with taste of roasted shrimp and garlic. Unfortunately I was unable to try this snack due to the pork/gelatin in the ingredients.
Edo-Style Soy Sauce Chip Star: Chip Star is one of Japan’s most popular potato chip brands (similar to Pringles chips here in the US). This one in particular is Edo-style soy sauce flavored, which when trying this, it for sure didn’t taste like ordinary soy sauce. As mentioned in the description, its a mix of shoyu and dashi flavors, so it’s not a surprised that it taste like ramen in chips form.
Chocolate Pie: This sweet bar features a crispy outer pie-like crust with a slightly butter chocolate filing. Before reading, I ate this thinking it would be a soft pastry to my surprise that it was flaky and crispy. It was tasty overall!
Sour Jerky: Squid is the most common when it comes to jerky in Japan, the dried squid is seasoned with mainly salt and vinegar. I’ve eaten dried squid but I was taken aback by the sour taste. It’s not as bad as it seems, definitely brings out the squid flavor in a different way.
JR Limited Express Chocolate: Packaged like a JR train, this snack contains small chocolate balls (kind of like mini m&ms) inside the train packaging. This sweet doubles as a figurine if you want to put the train on display!
Chameleon Ramune: Ramune, if you don’t know, is a Japanese carbonated drink mainly with a lemon-lime flavor (other flavors are available too). Each candy have a color and flavor that is revealed towards the end!
Sakura Chiffon: A Japan exclusive flavor, Oreo released a sakura chiffon cake flavor. Filled with a cherry like cream, not overly sweet. The Oreo is similar to the Oreo Thins we have here, the cherry sakura flavor was pretty subtle.
Gabrichu Kishu Nanko Ume: This sweet and fruity long taffy features the flavor from Kishu Nanko plum juice. Unfortunately this is another sweet I couldn’t try due to it having gelatin.
Grape Sour Long Gum: This candy is pretty straight forward, its a huge piece of gum that happens to be sour grape flavored. It was pretty good overall, the flavor lasted for a good amount of time.
Fanta Socata: The drink for the June 2020 box, Socata is a traditional Romanian soft drink made from elderflowers and is produced by naturally fermenting the flowers in a lemon and honey solution. If you guys are familiar with any Agrum flavored soft drinks (basically a citrus blend), this tastes exactly like it!
Instant Tapioca DIY: This DIY kit allows you to make your own boba tea milk drink in just 5 minutes! This was my most anticipated item in the box, I got the Matcha DIY (luckily my favorite milk tea flavor).
Lemon Gum: This lemon gum packs a punch, it’s soft to chew but it doesn’t take long for the strong sourness to kick in.
Lemon Corit: Similar to hard candies, this lemon corit is everything sweet without the sourness.
Mini Fresh: These small pellets for candy are light in flavor, mainly the taste of Ramune!
Animal Land Chocolate: These fun pack of chocolate candy come in various animal shapes, the one I got was a wild boar. These chocolate candies are pretty similar to m&ms.
My Melody Chocolate: This mini chocolate treat is a mix of strawberry and milk chocolate in the form of My Melody. It comes with a omikuji (which is a fortune) on the back of the foil.
Mini Monster Fruit Flavor: Similar to a Fruit by the Foot candy roll, these fruity sour gummies come in various flavors such as lemon, apple, cherry, etc.!