Japanese sweets box from Amazon Japan is a treasure trove of dagashi nostalgia

A treasure chest filled with cute and nostalgic Japanese sweets!

For a lot of people in Japan, cheap sweets called dagashi are filled with nostalgia, conjuring up childhood memories of running to the local candy shop, where a few hundred yen could net you dozens of small sweets.

So when our reporter Masanuki Sunakoma saw a “Dagashi Assortment Set” on Amazon Japan priced at 1,999 yen (US$15.13), he couldn’t resist taking a trip down memory lane, adding it to his cart and checking out immediately, before his adult self could stop his inner child from splurging on the item.

▼ When the package arrived, Masanuki felt a sense of childhood glee surge through him as he scrambled to open the parcel.

The store that sold the box said the Dagashi Assortment Set contained “really delicious candy” that had been selected based on the results of a questionnaire and tasting by staff.

▼ Masanuki hoped that meant there would be some familiar favourites awaiting him inside the box.

▼ When he pulled aside the paper packaging, he discovered…

▼ …the box was actually a treasure chest!

If Masanuki had received something like this when he was in elementary school, he would have jumped up and down with excitement. Heck, he was a grown man and he still couldn’t stop his feet from doing a little jig of joy as he opened the lid of the treasure chest.

▼ Inside the treasure chest was a pile of colourful dagashi!

The first package to greet him at the top o the pile was Takoyaki Naniwa, which he’d never actually seen before, but it seemed to be related to Takoyaki-flavoured Umaibo, seeing as the Umaibo stick was pictured on the front of it.

▼ Beside that was a pack of fried chicken snacks. Cute!

Delving further into the precious pile of treasure revealed a good assortment of Umaibo snacks.

Assortment was the key word here, as the variety was truly outstanding. After a quick count, Masanuki figured there were over 50 sweets in the treasure chest, and his inner child had never been happier.

Some of the most nostalgic items that stood out for Masanuki straight away were the “Beware of Sour Grapes” candy…

…and the “Bubble Wrap Fortune-telling Chocolate Balls“.

Each of these chocolate balls has a corresponding topic beneath it, like “gaming” or “travel”, and once you pop that chocolate out, your fortune will be revealed on the foil behind it.

▼ The foil behind Masanuki’s “future” chocolate had a circle on it, which meant…

▼ … a “fairly good” result! A double circle is the best result, while a triangle indicates “ordinary” and a cross indicates “no good”.

Masanuki remembers being greatly affected by the results of the fortune-telling chocolate balls as a child, but as an adult he now knows to take it all with a grain of salt. And speaking of salt, this big pack of candy also included another two of those salty Umaibo sticks.

Scanning his eyes across his haul, Masanuki found another fortune-telling item — the “Scratch Omikuji“, which was more like a scratch card than a traditional omikuji fortune.

Peeling the seal off the small package revealed a scattering of soda-flavoured candies, and beneath it all was the “Scratch Omikuji“.

According to the instructions, if you scratch the card and find a beckoning cat you’ll receive 100 yen. A daruma will net you 50 yen, while a small mallet gets you one more Scratch Omikuji.

▼ That’s all well and good if you’re in a candy store with someone operating a till behind the counter, but what was Masanuki meant to do if he won something now?

▼ Surely he wouldn’t have to go through Amazon Japan to get his measly prize winnings?

With those thoughts running through his head, Masanuki scratched off the silver-coloured panels and found…

▼…he wasn’t a winner anyway.

Oh well. Retrieving his winnings would’ve been more trouble than it was worth so Masanuki was glad that he didn’t win anything in the end. Still, with the haul of sweets and childhood memories before him, Masanuki felt like a winner — or even better, the king of his own Dagashi Bar!

Images © SoraNews24
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