One of the smaller, yet still totally interesting things about Japan is their obsession with individually wrapping things. It makes giving things like omiyage (souveniers/gifts) easier, but I can't help but feel a little wasteful when I'm not giving things to people (which, it turns out, is often). Do they not snack?
I suppose it also has another (unintended? Or perhaps intended...) effect: I feel really guilty every freakin' time I open up one of the packages. Or finish a package. My brain goes, "What?! You just ate a WHOLE PACKET/PACKAGE BY YOURSELF. Pig." to which my stomach immediately responds with, "BUT THEY WERE SO SMALLLLLLL."
Seriously. Look at those packages I'm holding. Those butterfly cookies... two per package. I've had to unwrap three of those packages. And when I wanted to stop at five, well, I had to eat six cause the package came with TWO and I'm not about to waste one of those cookies...
I suppose I'd guess that omiyage, really, is the culprit behind the whole individually wrapped phenomena, and why Japan probably won't do away with it any time soon. It's a huge part of the culture here, wrapped up (lol) with the food tourism that seems to be pretty popular in Japan. You have to be able to easily give one to everyone, without your fingers ruining the presentation or what have you. Perhaps it's partially for germs as well, but something in me kind of doubts that.
Individually wrapped packages has had an interesting (and benevolent) side effect on the Japanese packaging industry as well. Japanese packages, especially compared to American packages, are ridiculously easy to open. Practically everything has some kind of perforation or cut opening or, as usually the case, a little triangle notch and triangle shaped bump on opposite sides of the package, indicating where you're supposed to tear. It really does make things easier, cause you're like "oh, I just tear here." Simple. I've found myself looking for them on packages and getting slightly annoyed when I don't find them.
Now this, is cognitive design right here. The Japanese packaging producers have offloaded the work of having to spend the time to look for where the slit (if there is one in the first place) and the skill it takes to open one of those small individually sized packages (or hunt for a place in the wrapper that looks like it has the most give) onto the package with two small changes to the package. People, therefore, are less likely to get frustrated eating your product, and will eat it faster and are more likely to enjoy the experience.
Ah, I love thinking about design sometimes. :) I miss taking those classes.
Also, note, that yes, that is a Ritz crackers (cheese) package. Inside of it are two of those shorter packages. I've also seen those mini packs, but I've yet to see anything bigger than that. They have the normal crackers... which are good, but these actually taste like the Ritz crackers back home. And in the absence of both Cheez-Its and Goldfish, well, Ritz has stepped up to the plate.
I gotta say, that's one thing I had not expected over here in Japan. That I would revert back to my middle/high school age self where I come home from school (literally too haha) and sit down and eat a snack. Good god. Or that omiyage, while annoying to have to get (especially when you have large schools or multiple schools; 40+ teacher schools add up really fast) are wonderful to receive. And oh man. The teachers will walk up to me and bring me snacks and go "Here's this thing from this teacher cause they went here. You should try it."
You can't say no to something like that.
My primary JTE who sits next to me too, enjoys feeding me chocolate. There will be times when she and I are working on something, or it'll be late but we're both there, and she'll pull out this tiny version of Mary Poppin's magic bag and just pull candy and chocolate out of it and give it to me.
Japan also has amazingly tasty snacks. Potato sticks that are kind of like baked crunchy french fries. Bacon flavored, cheese flavored, curry flavored, butter flavored, pasta flavored (they're super good!); they pretty much have my name written all over them. And the bread. Oh the bread. Don't get me started. There's this one bakery that's in Okayama City (thankfully, far away) that has not only focaccia bread, but CHEESE focaccia. CHEESE BREAD. OH MY WORD. Good bye money. Hello weight gain.
In addition to savories, Japan is also really good at doing sweet things. Oh the candy aisle... I've actually gotten better at walking down it without acquiring any new purchases, but sometimes I really want to run down that aisle screaming because the temptation is so great. Especially with these choco pie things. They're bite sized, made with that pastry dough, with chocolate inside. HEAVEN.
Japan also likes to seasonalize its food and candies. So these pies... were cappuccino flavored in the winter, strawberry flavored when that was in season, and I've found them in green tea flavor. Delicious.
This seasonalization of foods, along with the regionalization of foods, has led to many many flavors of things being available only in the places when you travel to them. Japan is OBSESSED with that. Local cuisine. Kitkats are perhaps the most abundant and famous example of this (that I know of anyways).
So you have your basic KitKat bar, right? Take the specialties of a region, and make it that flavor. Sell it only in that area (and some neighboring areas, maybe). I'm surprised I haven't seen a peach flavored kitkat, but you can buy orange flavored in Shikoku (they're famous for citrus), pudding flavor in Kobe (KOBE PUDDING~), green tea and hojicha tea flavor in Kyoto (oldschool j-culture icons) and I forget what else. Pear from somewhere. Wasabi KitKats (not as wasabi-like as you'd think; it's actually sweet).
A couple of people I know (past and present) have done/are doing the KitKat challenge. It's kind of amusing, but it means that I get to try new KitKat flavors as well since generally, people will bring it back as group omiyage.
This (and the whole, I don't want to go outside because it's so damn hot/cold/rainy depending on the season) are the reasons behind me gaining weight in Japan. I'm sure of it.
DAMN YOU TASTY CANDIES AND SNACKS. DAMN YOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOU.
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