Impulsive Sukiyaki + mouth open wide for a delicious stick.

Sunday, August 9, 2009 - 11:30 pm     English  |  日本語

I started my weekend very frantically! There was this Japanese dinner hosted by Yun-ji and I was co-hosting and cooked up some Japanese style roasted Pork etc. (I’ll of course blog about this later on.)

Saturday was finally my pretty laid back day – did some shopping in the morning, cleaned my room, catching up with friends who recently just came back from a trip back to Japan. Mayuri and I were planning on having a Yakiniku Dinner but somewhat that turned out to do Sukiyaki at her place.

(Damn it! I brought my camera but forgot the battery!! Poor quality iPhone camera..)

Mayuri and Lily (both came back from trip to Japan) kindly brought me back a bagful of Japanese & Chez snacks! These are all yummy and addictive, but there was this particular snack that caught my attention. – Umai Bo! (means “delicious stick” in Japanese)

Umai Bo falls into a category called “Dagashi” – confectionery and snacks that Japanese kids grow up with! They are cheap, individually wrapped or sold out of jar at local dagashi shops – sort of like a Japanese version of candy shop. I remember that I’d grabbed my allowance money and head out to a dagashi shop with my friends for afterschool sugar fix!

Umai bo is one another thing I could write a whole article about followed by Japanese KitKat. They have so many flavours and region/sesonal limited ones available too – and not just number of flavous but unordinary flavours! (Natto, for example!)

I’m not going to yap yap about the flavours this time.
Umai Bo comes in a cylindrical shape, and it’s rather hard to eat – crumbles everywhere for every bite + you need to open your mouth wide and bite into it – like eating a banana. Have I mentioned that Umai Bo means delicious stick in Japanese? *giggling for obvious reasons*

There’s this little trick/technique to show off. I’m sure Japanese people would ask you “How do you know that!” (or they wouldn’t even know about it!)

Place unopened Umai Bo between your hands. Slowly and carefully apply pressure on it evenly. If you did this well, Umai Bo would evenly break into 4 stick shaped pieces! Yay! Woohoo! … Horrrraaay! … uhm. that’s it. ;p It just makes it easier to eat without someone (James ;p ) commenting like “Woo I see you’ve done it before.” or share with your friends.

Now let me enjoy another Umai Bo without looking like an idiot.