strawberry here if you need a refresher<\/a>) and I’m happy to say that in the year and a quarter since I’ve visited this brand of mochi, they have revamped their packaging. Before they just had their mochi in a plastic bag like packaging which…did the trick but looked like the slum cousin to the fancy-fancy boxed Mikawaya. Now Maeda-en is on the boxed bandwagon and although it shouldn’t matter really, mentally I like the box much better. It seems more…professional? Stylish? Top notch? Well something.<\/p>\n![\"Maeda-enGTMochiBack\"](\"https:\/\/quirkspace.com\/jsfr\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/08\/Maeda-enGTMochiBack.jpg\" "\\"Maeda-enGTMochiBack\\"")
\nIt was indeed nice to see Maeda-en in a box but I wondered why the change? Then I flipped it over and lo! English? What? It seems like Maeda-en has a US facility in Irvine, California…perhaps they decided to fancy up the packaging? Also props to the neat lessons on the back.<\/p>\n
Sadly, I still think Mikawaya has Maeda-en beat in terms of ice cream quality. It’s not that Maeda-en has poor ice cream, but rather that it has a decent ice cream whereas Mikawaya has always had stellar ice cream. I kept wanting the Maeda-en ice cream to be creamier as I was eating my mochi and it wasn’t. My green tea Guinea Pigs, on the other hand, thought these mochi were all that AND a bag of chips. They really liked the green tea flavor (I found it bitter and a tad grass clippy) and thought the ice cream was nicely not so sweet; a good counterpart to the tea flavor. They all agreed they would get Maeda-en green tea mochi again. I say go for it, I’ll just get something else.<\/p>\n
The Guinea Pigs Rate<\/a> Maeda-en Mochi (green tea) 3.5 wasabi peas<\/strong> out of a possible 5 wasabi peas.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,34,23,21],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-806","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-35-peas","category-grean-tea","category-mochi","category-sweet"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quirkspace.com\/jsfr\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/806","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quirkspace.com\/jsfr\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quirkspace.com\/jsfr\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quirkspace.com\/jsfr\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quirkspace.com\/jsfr\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=806"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/quirkspace.com\/jsfr\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/806\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":824,"href":"https:\/\/quirkspace.com\/jsfr\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/806\/revisions\/824"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quirkspace.com\/jsfr\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=806"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quirkspace.com\/jsfr\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=806"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quirkspace.com\/jsfr\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=806"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
![\"Maeda-enMochiGreetTea\"](\"https:\/\/quirkspace.com\/jsfr\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/08\/Maeda-enMochiGreetTea.jpg\" "\\"Maeda-enMochiGreetTea\\"")