Sakuraco

Note: I was given a Sakuraco box in exchange for a review on this blog. All opinions are my own.

Up until a few months ago, I did not know you could get subscription boxes filled with all sorts of treats from around the world. I only found out about these when they started popping up in my social media feed. Sakuraco is one such subscription box company. I was pleasantly surprised when Sakuraco reached out to me to see if I was interested in writing a review on my blog in exchange for the November 2021 box.

Sakuraco gives you 20 Japanese snacks/treats/items in a box, highlighting various Japanese snack-makers.

After providing my email address, I get shipping updates from DHL. It’s packed and shipped from Tokyo and reaches me in just 4 days. Impressive. The box arrives wrapped in bubble wrap, and smaller than expected to fit 20 items, but is quite heavy. I take the bubble wrap off to find the box slightly dented (nothing major) and am happy to discover the box itself is thick all around to safely protect the goods inside.

Going through all the treats in the box, 99% of everything is in Japanese. I do not read Japanese and can’t help but think I’m going to play Russian Roulette / Japanese Roulette to find out what I’ll be eating, until I notice what’s on top of all the snacks – a snack guide brochure! Tradition and authenticity is important, and I like that that includes the brochure itself with the brochure opening from left to right.

I have received the ‘Autumn in Kyushu‘ snack box. The first page of the brochure provides a brief explanation of the flavours in the box. November in Japan is the

I enjoy reading the rest of the brochure which provides snack maker highlights, photos and descriptions of each of the 20 snacks/items, prefecture spotlight on Fukuoka, and some information around Japanese culture.

So what’s in the box?

• Sweet potato karinto coated in sugar – after the initial shock of eating sweet crunchy chips, the savoury comes through and I realise it is actually a good balance between sweet and savoury.
• Purple imo bread – purple sweet potato paste within the sweet potato bread. The bread is drier than expected considering the description states it’s a fluffy sweet bread.
• Sweet potato monaka – smooth sweet potato filling sandwiched between two wafers. This is exactly as described and very sweet. I leave it after a few bites as it’s too sweet, even for me, and save the rest for later.
• Kumamoto Castle Under the Moon chestnut manju x2 – a soft manju cake filled with smooth azuki sweet beans and chestnuts. This is a small bite sized sweet treat, perfect with the green tea provided in the box.
• Fukamushi green tea x2 – two packets of green tea bags from Shizuoka made using fukamushi leaves unique to the region.
• Chestnut baumkuchen – I like the chestnut flavour in each of the layers of this German-style cake.
• Chestnut manju – it even looks a little like a chestnut with chestnut infused within the whole cake. This is on the dry side for me.
• Chestnut jelly including sweet azuki beans – both chestnut and azuki beans complement each other so well in this sweet jelly.
• Brown sugar donuts – made with Okinawa brown sugar, the description states these donuts are lightly fried to keep the centre soft and moist. I find the centre is dry, almost powdery dry, which is a shame. There are three individually wrapped donuts in this box.
• Kumamoto Castle ginkgo pie – Not exactly a ‘pie’ by Western standards (but most likely translates to pie as with some Chinese sweets), this delicate pastry is made with ginkgo leaf powder, comes in the shape of a ginkgo leaf, is a flakey and crunchy snack topped with sugar.
• Black bean senbei x2 – this rice cracker is mixed with lots of black bean, one of the more savoury snacks. Mr FPJ enjoys this more than I do.
• Daimaru senbei – this rice cracker is thicker than expected, comes coated in honey and soy but is still a nice savoury snack. I enjoy this one more than the black bean senbei.
• Yawaraka milk cookie – this cookie is so soft, buttery, and does taste like milk! It melts in my mouth and only takes me a few bites to finish it off.
• Amanatsu citrus jelly – made from orange citrus from the Kumamoto prefecture.
• Brown sugar bolo – disappointed that this brown sugar cake is super dry. I had to throw it away after one bite.
• Honey castella cake – a soft cake sweetened with honey.
• Spring autumn rabbit owan lacquerware bowl with leaping rabbits printed along the sides.

My thoughts

Apart from a couple of treats that were a little dry, it was such a delight to see what was inside and getting to try snacks I never would have been exposed to otherwise. There’s a good variety of cake/biscuit/cracker/pastry/jelly/tea, plus a Japanese home good (bowl/cup etc). It’s like bringing a little part of Japan home. A great idea during these Covid times!

Prices on the website are in US dollars. To try it out for one month (US$37.50), would cost around AU$50 and that doesn’t include shipping. It gets cheaper the more months you subscribe. An expensive price tag where you’re paying roughly AU$2.50 per snack/item.

However, it would make a good gift for someone who really loves Japanese sweets and can’t get to Japan. I feel that I should point out the desserts/snacks are quite different to Western desserts/snacks, so you need to really like eating things like bean pastes (which my husband does not) in your desserts. In saying that, there are several non-paste like snacks as well. So again, it would make a nice treat for someone that loves Japanese sweets and snacks.

How does the subscription box work?

I’m not going to go into the details here when the Sakuraco website is self-explanatory.

But basically you choose how long you want the subscription to go for (1 month or up to 12 months) and you get a different box of treats each month. You can preview the next month’s box (Winter flavours of Hokkaido is in the December 2021 box) on the website.

Note: Shipping to Australia seems to be US$12.50. See the website for more details.

Thank you to Sakuraco for this box of treats!

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