#subscription box

Shipping timeline for this box:

September 14 - Shipping Email Received

September 20 - Box Arrived in US, West Coast

September 27 - Box Received in Mail, East Coast

The box arrived just in time for me to enjoy these snacks leading up to the Moon Festival (September 29th). It shipped around the same part of the month as last time, so it looks like I should expect boxes to arrive towards the end of the month in general.

Pre-Opening the Box

I was a little weary when I saw that the box was packed like this again

but I was actually pleasantly surprised when the label peeled off cleanly without any lifting or damaging of the box!

I think a major difference this time is that there's no additional packing tape on top of the bag? But maybe the box itself is a bit higher quality too because there's no semi-circle of lifting where I took off the sealing circle of tape.

I know I'm putting a lot of attention on this, but since saving and displaying these boxes was something I was greatly looking forward to, I really appreciate having that small boost in quality. Not to mention that I love the design of this month's box, and was hoping that I would be able to show it off!

Now let's take a look inside!

Taking everything out of the box and seeing so many cute rabbit snacks just made me more and more excited. Not only is it really fun to look at, but it also made me curious about what the unique character of each snack would be. (Note: There are 18 individually packaged snacks for a total of 12 unique snacks, and two teas)

The booklet is 23 pages and has information about the snacks and the traditions of Japanese moon viewing. I forgot to mention this last time, but the paper of the booklet is pretty nice, with a feel similar to a quality magazine.

Opening the flat white box in the back reveals a cute Tsukimi (moon viewing) dish!

The dish has a diameter of about 12 cm or just under 5 inches. It says it's both microwave and dishwasher safe.

Incidentally, if right now you're confused why rabbits play such a strong theme in this box, the booklet tells us it's because of a Japanese folktale, Tsuki no Usagi (Moon Rabbit), which the booklet goes on to share with us.

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Ok, it's time to taste some snacks.

With Gliss's glowing comments about her White Chocolate Strawberry, when I saw this in my box I knew I would have to try it first. Opening the package, you get a fragrant aroma just like a ripe strawberry's; however, after taking a bite I found that the texture is more like chocolate. The smooth white chocolate flavor hits first and then the strawberry flavor joins in soon after. As a whole, I'd say the flavors are well balanced without being too sweet.

Next I thought I'd try the Usagi Pon Senbei.

Each package had 2 senbei in it. They had that classic umami flavor (from soy sauces), but ran a bit on the salty side.

Personal preference, but I've found that I enjoy lighter, crispier senbei more than the kind that's hard to bite into. In this one you can see how it's more light while still preserving that crispiness.

At this point, I had to open the Peach Jelly. I'd been eyeing it this entire time and couldn't resist any longer. (The Sakuraco boxes having jelly was a pretty big selling point for me. I didn't really try any during my recent trip to Japan because jelly was actually pretty expensive in comparison to other snacks.)

The two layers sort of separated when I popped it out of its container, but I don't mind. The clear layer of jelly was on top, and it had these little jelly leaves which I loved looking at. The darker layer with the red beans in it was on the bottom. The top layer had a refreshingly sweet, somewhat fruity taste, while the bottom layer was a bit thicker and more starchy, with a more pronounced fruit flavor. I'm saying "fruit" here because at first I thought it was maybe apple or pear, so I was a bit surprised to read that it's peach.

I could just be wrong, but mine also looks different from the picture, so I'm not sure if the jelly came in different designs or if I got a different jelly altogether? Either way, it was quite tasty.

Afterwards I went to the Black Okoshi.

It's a little like an Asian granola bar. There's some peanuts, karinto (deep fried puff) and black sesame seeds in here, all coated in an Okinawan brown sugar glaze. Crunchy, with a good ratio of peanuts to puff. A bit too sweet for me, but the serving size was small enough that I didn't grow tired of it before I could finish.

At this point I'd like to talk about the teas. Yes, plural! Last time we got two packets of the same type of tea, this time it's two different packets of tea.

The left one was like a barley tea while the right one was like a green tea. I think the green tea was this month's 'surprise', along with the next snack below. I don't usually drink tea so all I can say here is that they were pretty good, no complaints. I do want to point out though that in this month's booklet, they included brewing instructions!!

I did leave some feedback on their website last month that it would be nice if they included this, so it's really cool to see that they took that feedback seriously. Following the instructions, the tea didn't get bitter at all, letting me properly enjoy it while it's flavor was at it's best.

Ok let's continue with the snacks.

I didn't see this one in the booklet but scanning the QR code to check out this month's list of surprise snacks, I found it kind of looks like:

...Mame Mochi? Or at least this looked like the closest snack by far on the list. Reading the description made me slightly confused because I'm not sure I would describe the snack in my box as 'soft and fluffy'. It was more like puffed and crunchy. Biting down you get some crunch before the snack quickly disappears in your mouth and you hit those small black soybeans (?). It really was like eating a pocket of air and then finding you have some grain in your mouth.

Moving on, I was very excited to try the Black Sesame Mochi:

They came in a tray of 6, and were very cute. Although, after eating one I understand what Gliss was talking about when she said it was like tang yuan or the Chinese black sesame soup dumplings. (*Note: Bokksu had the exact same package of this snack in their box.) The black sesame mochi were bite sized and had the soft, chewy texture of mochi, with some smooth black sesame paste in the center. The main difference between the mochi and the soup dumpling is that the latter has way more filling and a thinner outer layer, whereas the mochi had a lot more rice cake. It was still pretty good, but my personal preference leans towards having more filling.

Going to another cute snack, the Usagi Marshmallow has a way of grabbing one's attention.

You can't really tell from this photo, but it actually has strawberry jam filling. If you've had marshmallow candy, then it basically tasted like that, plus some strawberry jam. Sweet and fluffy.

Continuing, below is the Chocolate Cream Danish.

This doesn't really seem like a traditional Japanese snack in any way.. But it sounded good so I was still interested in trying it. The pastry somewhat reminded me of a croissant, and the chocolate was very rich, like the coating you might find on top of a brownie (and of course, it was pretty sweet). The overall experience with this one was sort of a "huh, ok" for me.

At this point I really needed something salty to balance things out, so I decided to try the Peanut Arare.

And I'm really glad I did! Wow! Just one bite and I thought to myself "this is REALLY good." It had the perfect amount of crunch, a satisfying texture that was a little flakey and kind of melted in your mouth, as well as a savory flavor with some depth. The peanut didn't come through that strongly (at first I thought it tasted a bit more like a corn chip except less salty), but in retrospect it actually checks out that the depth came from the nuttiness of the peanuts. All aspects of this snack were a hit for me, and even when I finished what was given, I found myself wanting more!

The Anko Dorayaki was like a pancake with red bean paste filling.

The pancake part came through more strongly than the filling, but I like that they used yam flour in the dough to subtly add some more flavor. It was more light than I expected, and a tiny bit dry. Overall, I'd say this is the type of snack that pairs very well with tea.

Next, the Full Moon Cookie.

It tasted more or less like a vanilla cookie; thin, with a firm crunch that wasn't hard. It's not exactly a stand out snack in terms of taste (although fans of vanilla cookies would probably be delighted), but the design is indeed captivating and it wasn't too sweet.

Lastly, the Full Moon Soft Chew.

You can probably tell by now that I'm not a huge fan of candy (or anything that's too sweet). Not to mention that the designs on these are so cute that I would be ok with just setting them aside to look at them occasionally, but I should probably taste one for this blog.

They're definitely sweet, although I was surprised by the texture. It didn't really stick to my teeth and it had this granular quality to it that made this "ksh ksh ksh" sound while I chewed. This would definitely be a fun one for candy lovers.

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Final Thoughts

So this box definitely leaned harder to the sweet side, with only 3 salty snacks and 9 sweet. Of the sweet ones, my favorite was definitely the jelly because of how unique it was and how it harmonized appearance, flavor, and texture to make an eminently enjoyable snack. Some of the other sweets might've not hit quite all the marks for me, but that's just personal preference.

Buying a service whose goal is to cater towards a wide variety of snackers, I'm content that so far each box hasn't had anything that I outright disliked, and even had a couple snacks that I absolutely loved (my favorite salty snack, or maybe even overall snack so far is definitely the peanut arare!).

Still, I think this box was very fun to open and explore, and it probably left a stronger impression on me over the previous box because of its theming (I'm an especially big fan of when Sakuraco does unique box designs! I feel like it sets the mood from the start). I do appreciate how the Okinawa box had a more balanced sweet/salty ratio, though I understand that it's probably more challenging curating salty snacks to have as much variety as the sweet ones.

I would say something along the lines of 'see you next month' here, but this month Gliss and I will be writing another blog that does a more in depth comparison between how Bokksu and Sakuraco handled the Moon Festival theme (since they happened to choose the same theme this month).

So, see you soon!!