I love eating candy. I also love looking at candy: the smooth chocolate shells, shiny fruit colors, perfect swirls of caramel. And I love candy packaging, especially here in Japan where there is always some new and beguiling candy box prominently displayed on the shelves of my local supermarket. A few months ago, I made a pact with myself to buy a new kind of candy every time I went grocery shopping; this pact was tossed a few weeks later after the unfortunate purchase of the previously-mentioned, truly repulsive Meltykiss.

But on my kitchen shelf there still teeters precariously a large pile of half-eaten boxes of beautiful-looking, awful-tasting candy which I can't throw away because this box looks so pretty and this one is so funny and this one is amazingly strange. By initiating an official Candy Friday, a day each week when I can document one of these finds, I hope I can finally bring myself to throw them away. Or at least take them into work and make other people eat them.

(I'll also review some candies I like; there are a few.)

The first contender: FEEL SAFARI
Self-proclaimed flavor: "Bittersweet chocolate infused with a special blend of Cinnamon and spices."
Brand: Fujiya, released as part of their "Chocolat New York" series. They also released a similarly packaged candy called FEEL ENVY. This series apparently encompasses the glamorous life of New York City. In candy form.

Obviously, I bought this for the package. How can you resist candy that looks like a giant box of exotic condoms? Indeed, the packaging is the only reason to buy Feel Safari, as the chocolate itself is chalky (as is much of the chocolate in Japan, I've found) with a mild spiced flavor, like Mexican hot chocolate without any of the creamy yumminess. The wafers, shaped life the wooden paddles that came with ice cream cups in elementary school, just kind of sit unmeltingly on your tongue until you chew them up, and then they crumble.

But the package! It's like a big wallet made of snakeskin and leopard fur and it closes with a cool tucking action. And on the inside flap there's a crazy neon-orange picture of a leopard on a turquoise background. Every time I look at it I have the urge to carry it around in my back pocket, so I can pull it out whenever I run into someone and say, "Do YOU feel Safari?"while offering them a candy.

At the very least, it would be a way of getting rid of the contents. Then I could keep the wallet and feel safari every day.