As the holidays near, the alcoholic chocolates have begun appearing on the shelves, wrapped up in packages as shiny as the red faces of the drunk salarymen on the last train home. Or my red face after drinking one beer, if it comes down to that.

My tendency to turn hopelessly red in a way that prompts everyone around me to say, "Oh my god, you are so RED!" after only half a drink may be why I keep trying alcoholic chocolate. (I have an inactive enzyme aldehyde dehydrogenase 2 and therefore cannot process alcohol, if you're wondering. Thanks, Dad.) Because even I can handle a mere 0.9% alcohol. This has, of course, led to mistakes (cough*Rummy*cough), even in the realm of wine candy (oh, the yucky omiyage).

But Winoa is actually, amazingly kind of good. Much like umeshu chocolate, Winoa has a fruity, raspberry-like flavor that blends well with the dark chocolate coating. One little stick is enough to satisfy a mild chocolate-and-red-wine craving. Though it's definitely not as good as sipping a glass of cheap-but-good Trader Joe's wine while eating a handful of the TJ's dark and milk chocolate covered cranberries. Mmm...

[Insert 5 minute fantasy about wandering the aisles of Trader Joe's. While eating a taco.]

Anyway. Within the box, the candies are packaged in a strange sort of flat pudding pack. There are two servings which you can split apart and peel the foil coverings from. I can only assume this is some way of sharing Winoa with your sweetie, the way you might split a bottle of wine together after a romantic candlelit dinner. Except it would be more like splitting some Jello pudding packs together. So I guess this candy is good for kids. Red-faced drunks and kids.

One of my dreams has finally come true: I have a knitting group in Japan! What started with just my friend Liz and I knitting together on my couch grew last week into a group of almost fifteen girls meeting at a cafe in Gifu City for a night of...uh, knitting. But also coconut milk tea, lots of fun, a broken beer glass and a waitstaff possibly traumatized by a giant group of foreign girls armed with needles. And we're doing it again this week!

This means I won't have to do so much knitting alone in my living while listening to audiobooks. Not that this is such a bad pastime, mind you. It recently produced two finished winter accessories, just in time for the recent temperature drop: a turquoise merino wool mistake rib scarf and an Artyarns Supermerino Panta. Both the yarn and pattern for the latter were sent to me by the lovely Cirilia and I already have plans for making several more as Christmas gifts. Panta really does live up to all the hype, people. Especially when you have to ride your bike to work on a frigid day and are wearing your hair in a ponytail which would doubtlessly create a weird lump under your winter hat. So what I mean is: when you don't want to sacrifice vanity for comfort.

If you ask my mother what my favorite colors are, chances are she'll say, "Pukey green and weird orange." This is the pronouncement she made a couple years ago and as she has been successfully buying me gifts in these colors ever since (luckily, they were everywhere in India), I really can't argue. In fact, this weekend I looked up to realize I had basically surrounded myself with green and orange. First, there are the new shoes I bought, on sale possibly because no one else is interested in "pukey green." Fools!

Second, there is my refurbished kotatsu, with its orange quilted blanket underneath and green Indian tablecloth on top. Did you know the kotatsu is the single greatest invention in Japanese wintertime history? (Except for baths, of course.) It is basically a table with a space heater underneath, covered by a thick blanket. Last year I didn't have one because I couldn't understand what the big deal was, but after reading a bunch of essays by my students about how much they love sitting under the kotatsu in winter, I had to try it out. And now I don't really want to ever leave mine.

Especially when, third, I'm sitting under it knitting a new winter hat with some (primarily) orange and green Noro Kureyon. Listening to an audiobook read by Tim Curry. Eating a mikan and drinking Beaujolais Nouveau....

If you'll excuse me, I'm going to slip into a cozy winter coma now. Wake me up when the sakura bloom.

A bit of holiday cheer from the Vie de France bakery I thought you might enjoy: "Weiner in Christmas Wreath," although the Japanese name is simply "Weiner Wreath." It's a circle of dough with cocktail weiners stuffed around the edge. Um, how Christmas-y.

(I know I am now dooming myself to a million hits from people searching for porn involving weiners and wreaths, but it's worth it. Anyway, the kind of person who would look for porn by Googling "weiner" can't be all that bad.)

Meltykiss Cacao Style: A pop quiz

1. Considering my last experience with Meltykiss was so bad, how did I end up with a box of it?
a) It was a gift from an amorous student.
b) Sometimes I experience "chocolate blackouts" during which I purchase candy for which I cannot be held accountable.
c) I still can't resist the name. Meltykiss?! Come on!

2. The taste and texture of Meltykiss can be compared to:
a) a Hershey's Kiss left in a warm pocket all day.
b) frozen chocolate frosting.
c) the mud cakes you made in the backyard as a 6-year-old.

3. Meltykiss's name _______ Meltykiss's taste
a) <
b) >
c) =

4. The Meltykiss slogan is grammatically correct.
a) true
b) false

5. I am late in posting this entry because:
a) I have found a glamorous job as a professional Japanese candy taster, which is taking up all my time.
b) I am a terrible person.
c) I was drunk, which also might make me a terrible person.

Answers after the jump....

So this is what became of that Kureyon on my kotatsu: a colorful cloche. Very colorful. In earlier times, I would have been afraid of wearing a hat this aggressively bright, but this is Japan, people. I see boys with crazy blonde hair and girls in the most baffling fashion combinations every day. I can't figure out if I have been so blinded by weird fashion that I now have no taste or I have been so saturated by imaginative fashion that I have moved on to some higher realm, where anything goes and yeah, you totally need a pair of legwarmers to complete that outfit. Either way, I don't mind wearing clownishly bright hats.

So. About the hat. The pattern I used was the one-skein wonder cloche Cirilia devised, but knitted about an inch and a half longer than the pattern suggests, because I have a rather large head with a lot of hair to cover. The flower is based on the Two-Layer Irish Rose, which is a good pattern to have on hand, as it also makes a very cute pin and is a good way to use up bits of nice yarn.

And if I look a little sullen in the first picture, it's only because I took it the morning after the whiskey party. My new hat makes me very happy, I assure you.

The problem with me and Christmas shopping is that every time I find that perfect something for someone else, I find five perfect somethings for myself. Thus, this Christmas season has seen an accumulation of cuteness that isn't going with me on my holiday visit to L.A.

Actually, this little guy was a gift from a student. The face and clothes are printed on the package, which is think is such a smart way to package anthropomorphized candy. I hear he is made of chocolate, but I don't want to eat him to find out.

I bought these at the 100-yen store, two New-Year's-themed rubber stamps and small envelopes for giving New Year's money (otoshidama) to children. Last New Year's I visited the Hida Folk Museum in Takayama, where I saw a giant collection of these envelopes, dating back to who knows when. I have never been so tempted to steal something from a museum; all the colors and designs were amazing and inspirational.

The lower stamp features a picture of ozoni, the soup traditionally eaten on New Year's. You don't know how happy I am to now own a stamp depicting soup. (For more interesting facts about New Year's in Japan, read about it on Wikipedia. It's the best holiday in Japan and I'm sorry I'll be missing it this year.)

Finally, the latest addition to my ever-growing gift bag collection. The only problem is that the bags are so cute I rarely want to give them away. Chocoholic is a line of retro-looking super-cute goods. They have a thermos that makes me weak in the knees, but I just haven't been able to rationalize buying it yet. Maybe during my final Christmas gift run....

The Greek god Dionysus (Bacchus to the Romans) was said to have been the child of Zeus, the king of the gods, and a human woman. Hera, Zeus's jealous and crafty wife, tricked the woman into convincing Zeus to show her his true form, which promptly killed her. But Zeus, ever resourceful, swooped in, rescued his unborn baby and sewed him to his thigh, where he apparently enjoyed a successful gestation, although it couldn't have been very comfy for Zeus. At least the gods didn't wear pants.

The alternate story behind Bacchus's birth involves his mother eating his fetal heart and becoming impregnated. Isn't this the perfect holiday candy?

Okay, Bacchus is also associated with wine and drinking, so it makes sense that his name is attached to a candy so alcoholic it carries a warning about eating it and driving. (Japan has a zero-tolerance law.) Like its cousin Rummy, Bacchus is a recurring winter candy. I first tried it a year ago and didn't find it so alcoholic; that's because I had a drink in my hand at the time. Eating one today during my 8AM photo shoot, the cognac set the back of my throat afire and I actually felt a bit flushed a few minutes later. Still, it's not a bad candy. The milk chocolate shell is smooth and its sweetness tempers the cognac-syrup center. It's like those tiny foil-wrapped chocolate bottles filled with various alcohols, but better, because I often find the chocolate of the bottles disgustingly chalky. One piece of Bacchus post-dinner would be just fine. But I'd stay away from it post-lunch at work when you have a tendency to turn alarmingly red after drinking. Sigh.

I really like the old-style fancy look of Bacchus's packaging, as well as the red/green color scheme. It reminds me of old books of Christmas carols or maybe the cover of a late-'70s Christmas LP. Strangely, even though I only have a one-year holiday history with the candy, I now feel some kind of nostalgic fondness for it, like Oh, it's December and the Bacchus is here! Now if only it would snow....

I'm off to the airport and probably won't be posting very often for the next week and a half, but I will have a Very Special Japanese Candy Friday this week with a holiday surprise for everyone, so check back!

Here is the second-to-last thing I bought for myself on my second-to-last Christmas shopping run: a Decole card holder that looks like a bowl of ozoni! My soup accessory collection grows....

This year I received a box of traditional Japanese candy (wagashi) from an old-fashioned sweets shop in my town. This type of uncooked candy made from jellies or sweetened bean paste is called namagashi and this particular box is named shiki meguri, which is something like a round-up of the seasons. Each vertical row represents a season: spring, winter, summer and fall. (Or is it fall and summer? Any seasonal namagashi experts out there?)

As you can see, they were almost too pretty to eat. Eventually, I did eat them, but not before taking pictures of each piece and turning them into the above desktop wallpaper which you, my dear Japanese Candy Friday readers, may download and display on the computer of your choice. Enjoy!

Wagashi wallpaper (Right/Ctrl-click to save.)

A word on the taste: These types of candies tend to taste only of sugar, which makes them lovely accompaniments to a bowl of bitter matcha, but not so amazing just eaten on their own, except for the ume (plum) blossom (top left corner), which I could have eaten a whole bag of. Such beautiful candy is not intended to be eaten by the handful, though, so the simplicity of flavor makes sense. Oh, and the cute boar piece is in honor of the new year, which will be Year of the Boar according to the Chinese calendar.

For individual pictures of the candies, take a look at the Flickr set of all the photos I took.