Japanese Kit Kats Review

The fact is you like Japanese Kit Kats. A million flavors are possible, and they change from season to season. A rainbow of awesomeness. Here's my treasure trove I squirreled away in 2013:

So here is:
* Matcha with Sakura
* Matcha
* Strawberry
* Yatsuhashi (those cinnamony cookie things in Kyoto)
* Roasted Green Tea
* Dark Chocolate/Adult
* Blueberry Cheesecake
* Passionfruit (also adult line).
Some of these came from a former coworker who went in early Summer, some from when I went in the Fall.

There's actually only a few that are really milk or dark chocolate. It's mostly white chocolate so you can get the subtler fruity/desserty/beverage flavor.

Kit Kat Review:

Roasted Green Tea: A creamy, distinctly tea flavor. Like black tea, which shouldn't be surprising, because black tea is roasted, I think. Novel in that it tastes right, but not my favorite.

Blueberry Cheesecake. Kinda a bit on the fake side, and just okayish. Fake cheesecake is never all that great a facsimile. Blueberry is subtle and meh.

Yatsuhashi: One of my favs. Tiny crunchy yatsuhashi cookie pieces, nice balance of cinnamon. Excellent flavor and texture.

Strawberry. After you try the first one and say, oh yes! Strawberry! Then it's a little plain. Just okay for me. Maybe they should have called it "Strawberries and Cream".

I think this one is the Matcha and Sakura one. Slighly lighter in color, and the matcha might be toned down just a little bit so the slightly sweet/fruity sakura can play. I can't say, "Wow, this is so sakura here," because I never had the real deal. Is it suppose to be cherry-y? Pretty subtle, whatever it is.

One of the Otona/Adult flavors. It's a little darker and has a fine sandy texture, which sounds bad, but I really love it.One of my favs. After all that sweet white chocolate, it's a nice change of pace back to the heart of chocolate.

Passion Fruit: Like the other Otona/Adult one, it has a sort of sandy finish, which I still love. And the flavor is awesome. I love passion fruit flavor. Tangy like a sophisticated pineapple. This is great.

Matcha: It's one of the best sellers, and the reason is that it's good. Matcha has a definite green tea flavor that you don't have to replicate. It's there, and you know who's boss. Mossy musky bitter green tea meets creamy, sweet, crispy Kit Kat. It's all good.

I can't help but continue to look for more and more flavors. Another one of my favorites, not shown, is the dark honey/molasses flavor. I hear apple is really good, and that always makes an appearance, I think. I always wanted to try pumpkin, too. I regretted trying Wasabi, but I wouldn't mind some of the weirder ones, corn or soy sauce or ginger ale.
Oh yeah, and I really want to try this one!:

Yaki Kitto Katto!? Baked Kit Kats?? Yeah!
Check out more stuff in the official Breaktown.

Japanese Low Table Part III: Joining the Tabletop Boards

Since I spend a good bit of money on these mahogany boards, I want this done right.

So I was a little wary of putting my own hands to work. But I have Dad! And Dad has Wood Wizard Neighbor! If you want to look at my plans and dimensions, check out my earlier post. Here we go.

Step 1: Join the table top.
Three boards must become one. Flip them around, decide which layout and wood color variation pattern you like. Pinch them together with clamps. Dad dragged the pencil across a few time to make line that can be lined up later if need be.

He sanded some of the rougher inside edges so the board-to-board connection was a little more tight. Once clamped, he and the Wizard also banged these board in place with a mallet for maximum perfect smooth awesomeness. The point here is that you get it the way you want it so you can make the pencil lines at the places you want to put biscuits...

You can wedge these suckers in wide-side-in and the wood will become pretty well stuck together. When I say "wedge" them in, you have to make a biscuit-sized hole to do that. So you need a biscuit-cutter tool. The bottom has a clear plate that you can line up with your biscuit-purposed pencil marks. Like so:

You could start the gluing at this point, but wait: The Wood Wizard had an addition method of making these boards joined together like...like...

...like something really joined. Anyway, that method uses a little silver L-shaped thing that, once clamped on, allows one to drill holes at a diagonal into the wood to that you can actually use screws without the danger of breaking through the top.

You can sand off the rough bit there. Now you have a perfect little tunnel for your screw. Time to glue.

The glue- Gorilla Wood Glue- goes in a line over/down into the biscuit hole. Then apply the biscuits as shown. Then the oozing beads of glue can be spread out and maybe a thin line of glue goes across the whole edge of that board, spread down like jam a little bit. I think once the other biscuit holes on the other board are glued, you don't need an addition line on that side. Speaking of glue, the work surface was covered in wax paper. Good idea, huh?

Note: If you're using quick-set glue, make sure you have a wet rag handy to wipe up the oozey bits. NOW!

Yay! Now all that's left is to clamp it, maybe mallet-whack a little if you're trying to even things out, then screw in the screws after that. The Wizard reminded us that once the biscuits are in, the mallet-whacking will only do so much.  Don't forget to screw in the screws. Dad used a hand screwdriver. You can see below the 6 screw holes along the middle board.

It needs to be clamped for however long your glue tells you- 20 minutes or whatever. Then unclamp and voila!

Once it gets 24 hours of setting, then it's ready for more action. Like sanding. Hope that blue end there goes away.

Japanese Low Table Part II: Picking out the Wood

Ah, wood, the stuff of trees! If you look at any of your furniture, you'll notice it's actually pretty crappy. That's because everything is particle board these days.
Ikea's stock of particles outside factory:

Maybe you have something nice that says it is made of hardwood. That means it has a thin layer of nice hardwood over top your crap fake wood. What I'm saying here is that I wanted to use some decent wood to make my table.

I went with mahogany because it's a great hardwood for furniture, has a bit of a pretty reddish color. You don't really need to stain it...leave as is and after twenty years of chipping the crap out of it with your
ninja stars, just sand it down, maybe reseal it. Try that on your BORGSJÖ. 

Home Depot and Lowe's don't have mahogany. The lumber yard is the way to go. (No shame in harboring Home Depot love for you oak and pine fans.) The lumber yard has some precut planed stuff, but this stuff was unplaned, 14 feet long. For a small fee, they'll plane and cut it for you. That way it has a consistent width and 90 degree angles all over the place. We look the entire 14' 1-inch thick board and 18 inches from a 2-inch thick board (for the legs. We wanted 12 inches, but 18 was the minimum.). Plane time.

 From all that effort (and the discovery that they gave away their planed scraps so we nabbed a long bit of cedar wood to play with), we have this:

You can almost picture the table top here. Our next step is to glue and biscuit (like jamming a wood cookie into both edges) the 3 pieces together for the table top. Then we can treat it as 1 big table top piece and sand it down all together. Stay tuned.

Japanese Oreos vs American Oreos

I read on one of my favorite We-Import-Fun-Japanese-Stuff websites that Japanese Oreos taste different. Hm, could it be true or are they just trying to get you to buy something with Japanese packaging that tastes exactly the same as the stuff you can buy for $3 or $4 in the store and get 3 times as many per pack? After all, this is a fairly classic American product.

In Japan I had snacked on some mini Oreos, and I couldn't detect anything too different. Then again, sometimes you're taste buds loose their perspective 7,249 miles away. I sent myself some J-Oreos in the mail and decided to try a taste test.

Can you pick out the gigantic, ad-embedded American one? Good for you! Now let's make things harder...

One side is "A" and the other is "B". I took this tin to work and told everyone to try one of each and cast a vote. The cookies look almost identical, but the cookie stamp is just a little different.

All survey answers were written on old card catalog cards and folded into a secure container.

And the results of the "Which one is the Japanese Oreo" Survey are:
B: 8 votes
A: 1 vote

The answer: B.
Some people said there is some odd "tang" or taste that set the Japanese ones apart. To me, it tastes like the Japanese ones are missing something rather than having an odd flavor. In other words, they tasted more like a generic sandwich cookie to me. But it is interesting that there was a decided difference that most people could discern when tasted side-by-side.

The Lowrider of Tables: Japanese Low Table Part 1: Making a Plan

A Plan Hatches: In which I decide to build a Japanese low table.

Japanese traditional furniture. Picture a traditional Japanese room, the kind with the tatami floor and all the cool, clean lines.

Not a lot of furniture? Well, traditionally, if you need something, you can pull it out. Space is a premium, and you need to think outside the box that you live in. Your living room can also be your dining room and bedroom. It can be anything! (Except a bathroom- that's the rules, man.)

You can add futons. Easy to drag out.

In the morning, pack them away and you can bring out a table.

Not to say that all Japanese houses consist of one room, but I think I'm pointing out how darn practical Japanese furniture can be. And how much I like those low tables. We had a low table in the last trip at Koya-san in the monastery.

I think to myself- no way I can buy furniture in Japan and stuff it in my suitcase. And no way I'm paying crazy shipping either. Solution: make a table.
To start, I wanted to see what variety there is. I quickly learned that there are distinctions between standard low tables like this that can be desk/dining table/coffee table and other types of tables.
You're probably familiar with kotatsu.
Kotatsu

The major difference here is the fact that it's made to hold a flat heater unit insulated with a thick comforter between frame and tabletop. Heavenly for wintery places! Like, not Florida places. Next:

Chabudai

Translation: tea table. Cool. Looks similar to a regular Japanese low table, except...they're mostly round. And kinda intended for tea. Okay, round it nice and all, but I just want a standard grade A table.

Te-buru
I can't find the name of a this. It is just "table"? I know the name of the cushions one sits on at such a table (zabuton), but what about the table itself? The important thing is I know what it looks like.

And I know what it feels like. And I can measure how tall it needs to be to fit over my American thighs. I can personalize it with shelves. I can pick out the wood I want. I can build it, too, because I have an expert wood craftsman on staff, aka "Dad".

The Plan
Here's my Sketchup mockup:

Now to pick out wood! There's a wood warehouse place in town. Lots of varieties, and it looks like a lot of exotic wood if from Africa, and does not have a Japanese vibe. The teak looks very nice, and is the only Asian wood in the place. I would jump on that if it weren't for the fact that it's $17 a board foot. Okay, so I narrowed it down to:
Mahogany, below

Walnut, above. I went back and forth. Both hardwoods, good for furniture. Mahogany is a little cheaper. Walnut has a pretty dusky brown color. Mahogany is reddish. I decided to go for mahogany. Maybe it was that little girl in me that remembers all the pretty mahogany furniture in historic houses I've seen. Maybe I was afraid the dusky brown Walnut would look too dull in a bright carpeted room. I dunno. We'll see how it turns out. Tune in later as this thing gets off the ground. (But only by 12 inches.)