03.03.07
Kurogo Pocky
They made more Pocky! So of course I had to pick it up because…ummm…they (the other they) may have also made more Pretz and I felt that I couldn’t pick up some new Pretz and not pick up new Pocky. So I did just that, except I spent a good deal of time dithering about it because…hadn’t I done Kurogoma Pocky already? Except this was Kurogo (no ma!) pocky which is different right?
Kurogo…kurogoma…I STILL CAN’T READ JAPANESE! The two Pockies look the same, maybe they were and it was just a repackaging thing? Errr and a missing “ma” thing and what’s with all the Kurowhatsits all over the box and oh hell. I know people who know Japanese and I could always ask them what the difference was, if any, between the two.
It bothered me, though, that missing “ma”. I mean…”ma”. Was it one of those ‘flavoring’ words or what? Maybe it was a regional thing or a colloquial thing and adding “ma” made the Pocky sound trendy or more formal. Or maybe adding “ma” changed the word substantially. Hrrrmm. Not reading Japanese sucks. But! I remembered looking up kurogoma and discovering that it broke down into black and sesame and hey! One of the five kuros was kurogoma. Huh. But what about the other four kuros? Black-Matsunomi? Black-Gome? What’s in this Pocky anyway?
AhhhhhHA!!! Black Sesame, Black Rice, Black Bean, Black Pine nut, and Black Chinese Orange! Five black ingredients and five Kurowhatsits on the Pocky!
Wait-a-minute…Kuro-go. D’oah! Go. As in five in Japanese. Also as in five black ingredients. Also also as in I should have had this figured out much sooner than I did.
Oh look over there! What could that be? A review? Why yes! It is! I have to say though, five ingredients is perhaps a bit busy in a Pocky. The black sesame was nutty with both a peanutty and a sesame flavor but also tempered with that nice smooth creamy Pocky coating. Kurogo has that same peanutty, sesame flavor as well as a hint of citrus bite from the orange plus a deep toasty pine nut flavor and also a depth of black beanieness and I have no idea what black rice tastes like. That’s a lot of flavors. I can’t even taste the smooth Pocky goo flavor there is so much going on in this Pocky.
Kurogo is not bad…just busy. I think Kurogoma is a better, simpler Pocky and personally, I’d rather munch on that, but Kurogo is still tasty in its own multi flavored way. I taste tested Kurogo with a couple of Guinea Pigs and they too liked the Pocky but weren’t ready to form a Kurogo cult. Some thought they were a 4 pea Pocky, others thought they were a 3 pea Pocky and then there was the one 3.5 pea person (hi!). Hmmm. Well, I’d give Kurogo a 3.75 if there were fractional pea points given but there aren’t. Let’s call it a really, really, high (and busy!)
Rating of 3.5 wasabi peas out of 5.
NiseiNihonNoGakusei said,
December 17, 2007 at 7:20 am
I’ve taken 2 years of Japanese, and so I can read some of it! I have to say that I was disappointed that I couldn’t find a place on the site where I could email you. Where does all your fanmail go? You need to get on that. When I just started reading your post, I decided to tell you what “kuro,” é»’, and “go,” 五, meant, but it seems youve beaten me to the punch. however, I do still have some comments that were meant for other article, but comments on those articles have been disabled (probably since theyre from 2003 lol). Just in case you never caught these mistakes, I’m noting them for you. On your review of Meiji Porte “Creamy Strawberry,” ( https://quirkspace.com/jsfr/?p=231 )* you claimed the picture had “cocoa butter” written on the top right. The top right, however, read “Kokoa Paudaa,” or Cocoa powder. Also, on the Porte/Porute/Polte issue, I have to say 2 things:
1. Porte, Porute, and Polte all have the same spelling in Japanese, and thus they all sound the same, and in fact are the same exact word (ãƒãƒ«ãƒ†), which is written on every single box of Porte/Porute/Polte/Polute
2. I think the alcohol you tasted in the whipped cream variety of the snack was port, probably because the snack’s name is written in almost the same way as theyd write the word “port” in Japanese (ãƒãƒ«ãƒƒãƒˆ), which is probably what the snack is named after
*Admin Note: I went and found the current JSFR entry and linked it in – boo
NiseiNihonNoGakusei said,
December 17, 2007 at 7:26 am
On a note I forgot to mention, regarding the satsumaimo pretz, https://quirkspace.com/jsfr/?p=379 *, I used babel fish and typed in the word “satsumaimo” ã•ã¤ã¾ã„ã‚‚ and it came up with sweet potato.
*Admin Note: I went and found the current JSFR entry and linked it in – boo
Boo said,
December 17, 2007 at 1:57 pm
Hi there NiseiNihonNoGakusei, welcome to the JSFR. As to my fan mail…ummm…you’re it! Seriously, the JSFR doesn’t get much fan mail so I figure I can address any questions in the comments. It’s worked so far but maybe I should set up an e-mail addie contact point somewhere.
Thanks for all the info, BTW. Wrock! I’ll have to look into the comments from 2003 because they *should* all have their comments set to “open”. Unless you are on the other site, which I deliberately set to “closed” when I pulled the JSFR out of my blog and made it its own thing this past August (07). It looks like, from the link, that you are indeed poking around the ancient defunct portions of the JSFR. All the entries were ported over to here so, in theory, both “Satsumaimo Pretz” and the Porte/Porute/whoever reviews should be hanging around and eagerly awaiting comments.