Recommend me some japanese snacks

Putting aside the usual favorites such as Pocky, Daifuku Mochi, Rice Crackers and various gelatin snacks, I wish to try newer snacks. I see many different ones at the local japanese market but I’m not sure if they will fit my tastes. Plus given the pretty steep costs of these snacks, it limits me to how many and how often I would try newer stuff.

What are some of your favorite japanese snacks and it’d be also nice if you could provide a brief description of each snack.

Kasugai peanuts! Peanuts coated in a crunchy dough.

Also, the similar Kasugai roasted peas.

If you can find it, try garlic pickled in soy sauce (ninniku shoyu-zuke).

Well, Jovan beat me to the roasted peas with the horseradish crust - great beers friend.

Another one is BBQ’ed dried squid and cupie doll mayonnaise.

Dried squid comes in a plastic big. Take out a squid and roast it over hot coals or under the griller. It stinks but is worth it - believe me. When it is roasted - has little heat blisters all over it take it off the heat and cool. When it is cool enough tear into strips and dip into a bowl of cupie doll jap mayonnaise sprinkled with chillie/hemp seed mix.

Yum - strangely enough it is delicious. Very beers-friend. Try to get your friends to eat it as well, otherwise the smell will keep them away.

Does the market sell “raw” mochi in the form of hard white squares? If so, you might want to try grilling them. You can grill them on a rack over a stove burner (med-low heat) or in a toaster oven. Don’t microwave them - they get all pasty and nasty.

Grill them until they are golden brown on each side and have puffed up. Mochi expands as it cooks. Then, you can do either of the following:

Put some soy sauce in a small flat shallow bowl. Put the grilled mochi on the soy sauce, crushing it down with chopsticks, flipping it until it’s covered. You can eat it as is, or wrapped in nori. Use sushi nori, and toast it lightly by passing it over a burner.

Or, put some boiling water in a small flat shallow bowl. In another bowl, mix some kinako (soy flour) and sugar. Put the grilled mochi in the hot water, crushing it with chopsticks. Make sure it gets just barely damp - you don’t want waterlogged mochi. Transfer to kinako bowl, dusting it lightly with the powder.

My favorite Japanese snack are these hard squares of dark brown sugar. They taste of rich molasses. I love them, but have a hard time finding them even here in my area.

I don’t recall the Japanese name for them, but I found them in a liquor store in Chiba. I used to go through a couple packages of them a week.

Well, there’s Milky, a nice taffy-like candy. Meltykiss, which is soft chocolate with a light dusting of cocoa powder. Can’t think of any others right now.

my favorite snack is cuttlefish dried and sugared slightly…this also has msg in it, to give it that great msg flavor :wink: it goes great with beer

another i like it chinsuko, it is a cookie that melts in your mouth and i like it with milk.