These candies are weird omiyage (edible souvenirs) given to a friend of mine who generously (and possibly gratefully) donated them to my strange-candy-eating effort.

On the right: dried scallop candy. Yeah. Out of its wrapping, it really looked like a little mummified piece of an unidentified internal organ which had no place calling itself "candy." Or even "food." But once I got over its alien-spleen appearance and actually put it in my mouth, it wasn't so bad. Chewy and teriyaki-flavored and honestly not that different from teriyaki-flavored beef jerky, except for the slightly fishy undertone. Was it terrible? No. Do I think scallops have any business being candy? Most definitely not.

In the middle: Hida beef taffy. Hida, an area in Gifu Prefecture, is famous for its tender and flavorful beef. As you may know, there's not a lot of grazing room in Japan, so beef is much more expensive than in the U.S. Taffy, on the other hand, is a mixture of sugar and butter and is therefore relatively cheap. It doesn't take a genius to figure out this money-making equation: sell the delicious flavor of beef in taffy form! Wrap it like a Now & Later and call it candy! It will have the unsettling taste of garlic and soy sauce! But don't worry, it strangely won't be as gross as the dried scallop candy! You might even consider eating it again!

On the left: wine hard candy. Though at first glance, this candy was the most appealing, possibly because it was the only one not involving the flavor of surf and/or turf, it was ultimately the most disappointing. I think my hopes were too high. The texture was that of the sugar-free candies I used to get from my dentist when I was a kid and the flavor was... rotten grape. I'm not saying it doesn't make sense that a wine candy would taste like what wine is, I'm just saying I'd rather have some wine. Ironically, I hate most of the wine I can get in Japan because it's way too sweet. So the wine candy tastes too much like wine and the wine tastes too much like wine candy. I can't wait to be back in California....*

In retrospect, this was kind of like eating a meal at Black Angus in candy form: an appetizer of scallops, a juicy steak and a glass of red wine. Wasn't Willy Wonka trying to invent this exact thing? Good thing I didn't eat the last omiyage in the bunch -- it was chocolate covered blueberries.**

*I will be back, and soon: March 11 - 22, to be exact. Mark your calendars, my friends!

**This really was the other kind of candy given to me, which I decided not to include because it seemed like it might actually be good, not because I was afraid I would balloon into a giant blueberry like Violet Beauregarde.