tokyo treat box!!! november 2015

look! i'm making a blog post again!! i ordered myself a tokyo treat box at the beginning of october and it finally arrived, so i thought i'd do a little review of sorts.

i ordered the premium box which is $34.99 (around £23 as i'm in the uk) and the website says that premium boxes have 13 to 17 full size candy snacks, 2 diy candy sets and a special item. you get free shipping for each type of box also! i decided on premium because diy sets sound fun and it's honestly the best value for money box out of the small, regular and premium options.

so what was in my box?

 all of this! i got sixteen items in all and a leaflet to tell me what the items all were, because they're all labelled in japanese. the leaflet also shows what would be in each type of box. for the small box you'd only get five of the items. the regular box wuld get the small contents plus six more things. then the premium got both small and regular plus another five items on top of that. you can see why i chose this one.

the box is pretty big. bigger than i was expecting and i cannot get everything back into the box now that i've taken it out.

there is a pretty good selection of savory and sweet items included. more sweet than savoury, but that's fair enough for a 'treat' box i think. i'm gonna write a little bit about each item individually with a picture of each item. i'll also include the name that the leaflet gives for them because y'know... i don't know japanese. also worth noting, all opinions on these candies are mine because i'm super weird about food, so if i say something is gross but you absolutely love it then that's cool and i respect that. i'm just sayin' how i feel about 'em.

first up, this is "chilled candy (ginger and honey)" and it  was gross actually. i don't really like honey myself, so i thought was soon as ai read it that i wouldn't like it. the can itself is pretty small and i do like the pattern on it. from previous experiance with canned drinks, i usually expect them to be fizzy and when they aren't it sorta weirds me out a little bit. this was one of those times. the flavour started out nicely. you get hit with ginger straight off but then you're overwhelmed by honey and it sticks with you. it's incredibly syrupy and sweet. not a fav.

i was excited for this one!! pokemon candy! i love pokemon!! sadly, i didn't like this one either.  i was super confused at first because it wasn't pictured on the leaflet. i found it eventually, the last listed item in the premium section, but they'd accidentally used another item's picture. anyway, this is "east pigeon pokemon milk snack" ...oh. i thought it was going to be some kind of cookie. i tried it anyway. it was... weird. milky and sweet and vanilla flavour, but too sweet. not pleasant. i did get a mega salamance sticker though. i'm going to put it on this laptop later.

the third item was "gummy maru  takeshi grilled egg" and i'm not even gonna lie this was the worst thing in the box. the drink was bad but oh boy nothing can prepare you for grilled egg horror. i don't like eggs. i don't like sweet flavoured egg mochi cakes either, apparently, according to the leaflet, this "80 year old snack has been a staple in households for decades" and i'm glad i've not been living in those households.

something good for a change! "12 grains LOOK (harvest la mode fruitful)"
i mean i don't know what that says but they were nice! a small box of chocolates with four flavoured fillings. each chocolate has a letter printed so you can see which flavour you've picked up, and they spell out the word LOOK so that's cute. the flavours are not something i'm used to. three were nice, one was edible but kinda weird, if anything. the three nice were pumpkin, grape and chestnut. the weird one was sweet potato. i've never eaten a sweet potato, but if i do i won't be covering it with chocolate. the chocolate itself was so so so nice, actually. less sweet than british chocolate (i think we put like ten mountains of sugar in ours or something?) and it really reminded me of a sweet that i love but i still can't remember what it was. hmm.

"assassination classroom sugar cola flavour chewy candy"
i've not seen assassination classroom. have been thinking about watching it, though. i'm not sure how it ties into the show but it must have something to do with the face and  the weird yellow guy on the back. the candies were sour. like painfully so. and they're very hard to chew. it's like a punishment or something. but they were very nice and the pack is resealable so i can eat one and then leave them alone for like a day and they'll still be nice. the cola flavouring is pretty generic so that's good.

I'M GONNA CAPSLOCK THIS ENTIRE SECTION BECAUSE OH BOY I LOVE THESE. "MEIJI'S CURRY CURLS" ARE A BIT LIKE MONSTERMUCH BUT CURLED UP AND THEY'RE CURRY FLAVOURED AND THEY'RE SO NICE I'M IN LOVE.





"yaokin rice cracker" i like rice crackers. these are excellent rice crackers. very thin and sweet flavoured. i don't really have a lot to say about them. i really liked them. the packaging has this cute lil guy on it.






you can kinda see inthis picture that ive already eaten most of these before thinking 'hmm i should blog this'
these are (or were heh) "kyooya cherry rice cake" and they're a bit like unsugared jelly tots? that's the only way i can really explain them. they're a bit soft and you get a little stick to get them out of the packaging with. i liked them.

i got a little excited by these. as soon as i took them out of the box i recognized this cute guy from the killers' video for read my mind which is one of my fav songs!! can never remember his name. turns out it's 'gachapin.' cute. these are "glico's pretz mild salad" and they are just ok. they're pretzel sticks with a mild salady flavour. the packaging is better than the sticks in my opinion.

i've left the video to read my mind here because 1) it's a great song and 2) i don't need a reason, it's my blog. cool.




this is just a piece of gum. i'll edit if there's anything particularly spectacular about it.









"doraemon's cup chocolate" is pretty much what that says. it's a cup with doraemon on it. it's full of little corn nuggets covered in chocolate. they were quite nice. i used them as a control while i was trying the other treats, because they were so simply and nice enough to get rid of any bad tastes (egg mochi, anyone? no. never). there's a lot of them in the cup and no way to reseal which is a bit of a downside, but if you're sharing they'd be perfect. i'm storing them in a ziploc bag for now. they've spilled everywhere.

"sato petite pack of meiji bamboo shoots"

not actually bamboo shoots. actually cookies made to look like bamboo shoots. i only ate one but they're okay. the cookie reminds me of those sponge fingers you get in trifle mixes but a bit harder. the leaflet says the petite packaging is in a effort to control portion size, which is a pretty cool idea.



i was really hoping for a calpico item because i see the drinks a lot on tumblr and never really know what they are, so i was very pleased with this item. "glico's capri cocotte strawberry and vanilla" are super yummy, very airy little hear shaped chocolates in strawberry and vanilla flavours. because of the airiness of the chocolates they reminded me of mousse or ice cream. i liked them a lot.

"umai-bou 3 set"

these little things confused me no end. the pictures give nothing away. the leaflet was pretty vague also,only mentioning that they were salty corn snacks, not whether they were flavoured or anything.

i opened one, the yellow packet, and took a bite. bbq chicken. a bit strong for me. not at all what i'm used to. i open a second one.  cheese. i hate cheese flavourings. couldn't eat it at all. i opened the third. cheese again.

dammit.

"kracie's fun ramen shop"

this is one of the diy kits. the leaflet says it's very rare and they're pleased to be able to include it, so i hope i enjoy  it.

at first glance, it looks like a pack of ramen. which is almost is. it's gummy ramen. and i'm not sure how i feel about that.

i haven't made it yet and i'll hopefully make a separate post on the making of this and the other diy kit i recieved.

finally, the box's special item for the month!!! "meiji's mushroom mountain diy snacks"

i'm really excited to make these. it seems that you melt the tubes  of coloured chocolate and fill molds to make cute little mushrooms. there seems to be plain, white and pink chocolates included.

i hope to add this to a separate post along with the gummy ramen when i make them.



overall, i really enjoyed this box! this is the second of this type of box i've received, after getting a few loot crates in the past (which are honestly awful now, too much marvel rubbish and nothing of particular quality) so i think i will continue getting tokyo treat boxes for a few more months at least. i'll leave  a few links below so you can sign up too if you're interested!! thanks for reading :3

https://tokyotreat.com   |    facebook    |    twitter    |    instagram

this blog didn't really pan out, did it?

i've not posted in months!

i've had a few people add me on pokemini based on my last post which is super good, though! i'm glad that it helped a few people get into the game. i've almost maxed out my level there now, uh oh!!

i suppose this blog may make a comeback one day, if i ever do anything interesting.

x

my new fav app - pokemini!

hiya!! i wanted to make a lil post about a cute game i found!! i'll post app store links at the bottom of my post!!

pokemini is a really cute dressup and avatar social app. there's a story shown when you first load the app which explains that the minis live in the pockets of humans (because it's on your phone which is kept in your pocket, how cute!!) on little planets, and eat donuts. loads of donuts.

so you get you little friend and a planet and a tree. you start with a pretty basic tree but you can get much fancier ones over time. as you can see i have a choco mint dream tree currently which i bought from the store along with my rainy day tree (which produces teru teru bozu!!) and my kitty bell tree which i got from one of the gumball machines. i'll write about them in a bit.

you can water your tree, but for it to grow it needs a lot of waters!! that's where the social element comes in. you go and visit other mini's planets, water their trees and hope that they return the favour! each mini also has a 'slapboard' inside their homes which you can slap, like a hi-five, once a day for extra experience and medals.

the picture to the right shows what my planet looks like at the minute. you can't see my tree because no one has watered it, boo!!

all of my items on the planets, except the main section of the planet, the ice cream cone, came from gumball machines. these work like gumball machines, or gacha machines in real life. you pay for a turn and recieve a random item. the gumballs come in sets on pokemini. there's usually one for planet items, clothes items, accessories and interior items. the first time you use a gumball it will only cost you 60 donuts, and the price will go up a bit each time until it costs 200. some start at 200, though, but only the super premium special ones. you can also earn gumball tickets which give you a free pass to use a gumball without spending your donuts.

to the left is an image of the item list for one of the sakura themed gumballs that were released a few months ago. as you can see, i've played this gumball a number of times and have all but one of the items. the gumball mechanics are not quite as random as you'd expect, and some items are definitely more rare than others. all i wanted from this gumball was the moonlit sakura long hair. i spun this gumballs 50+ times to try and get it out. i squealed a little bit when i got it. i'm not going to try to complete the set, because i'm not really a gumball completionist and i only really spin them until i get the item i want. the sakura lady kimono item i have 5 of from trying to get the hair i wanted.

the best thing about pokemini to me is the avatar customisation. to the right is a picture of the edit style screen where you change your mini's clothes, hair and accessories that you've got from the gumballs or the store. it's broken up into sections, hair, tops and bottoms, full outfits, shoes, accessories and saved outfits. the hair works much differently to other games like this in that you get a front and back part of the hair and can mix and match. the sakura long hair i mentioned earlier is broken up into the front white bangs and the long white and pink section at the back, so you could take the long part and add bangs from a brown hair to make a chocolate strawberry look, or black bangs to make a cute pop punk kind of thing. it makes creating unique looks a lot more fun and easy.



there's a huge range of differently styled outfits also. i mainly wear the full outfit options because they're easier to style than the top and bottoms options. some of my favourite outfits include the strawberry bambi dress my mini is wearing in the picture, a cute sherlock holmes themed dress and the cute bat outfit from the monster gumball.

you can also edit your looks!! there are a million different options in here to make the most unique and pretty mini you can. there's face shapes, eye styles, eyebrows, noses, mouths and cheeks. it's updated pretty regularly also, so there's often many new styles to try out and see how your mini can change.

there's a whole bunch of colours for each section also. you can have natural colours or you can go for a more rainbow mini look and have pink eyes with blue skin if you want.

i suppose i'll quickly mention cooking, although it's a pretty small part of the game.

visiting a mini, watering their tree and slapping their slapboard costs hunger points, as with any of these free apps. eventually, mini gets too hungry and cannot do any more actions!! there are a few ways to fix this. a level up will always fill mini up completely. you can pay in donuts to fill her up completely, or you can cook food.

cooking does not cost any hunger points, and when you eat the yummy food your hunger points go up so you can finish visiting other minis.


ingredients for cooking are gained from trees. you can harvest your own tree or trees of friends for free when they are fully grown, or for a whole bunch of donuts you can harvest from anyone's tree. but that's not worth it. you can put those donuts in the gumballs. i'm not addicted.


look! my mini learnt to cook something new!! when you learn a new recipe you gain skill points in cooking. it takes a lot of points to level up your cooking skill. i'm a level 48 mini now and i have not upped my cooking skill.  it's still worth cooking if you get ingredients, though. most recipes fill up about 30 hunger points, which is enough for three actions!!

recently, pokemini has been running a new mini game of sorts named fashion fever.

you'll be given a theme and your goal is to make an outfit around that theme. you can see a few of the examples in the picture. others from this round (this was the third round of fashion fever, number four should be coming soon!!) included dark elf,  proud bookworm and biker girl.

it's not as simple as just making a look though, there are many things you have to take into account. the themes sometimes come with rules, such as biker girl had to be wearing trousers. the bee theme had to include yellow and black items.

then, you have two bars when you're making the look. unworn and gumball. you get more points for wearing items you've never used in fashion fever, and more points for items gained through spinning gumball than items bought from the store. this can make creating a look really quite tricky, because you want to do your best to fit the theme, but you also want to max out those two bars to get the best score.

eventually, the theme will close and it will then open for voting. voting is done perfectly in fashion fever and the more popular minis won't always win because they can ask more friends to vote for them. when voting you will be shown two minis. no names. you just pick the one that matches the theme better. the one you pick will gain points, the other will not. if you are both good (or both awful sorry) you can decide to vote for neither of them.

voting is also how you get to enter more themes. to enter a theme you must have enough tickets. you get two tickets per five votes, so it doesn't take much to stock up on them.

when voting for a theme ends you can check on how you did. i chose to show my results for friendly vet because it was the only one i did particularly well in. you can see i got 3.79 points from other minis voting, and .30 points for unworn and gumball items, giving me a total of 4.39.

depending on your final score you get rewards!!! for a super good five heart win you get a very rare item, lower down results get less rare items, but it still beats paying for them. you can also share your result to get a gumball ticket which is useful as it adds another item to your collection that will possibly give you the unworn and gumball points in the next theme you enter.




the sharing does shove a whole bunch of hashtags onto your twitter, though. also you can see i did pretty bad at the fairy godmother theme. i thought she looked cute >:(

there's also a screen showing the top rated looks from each theme.  they usually look pretty similar. tapping any of the popular looks will show you what they used in the outfit, and allows you to buy it, even if its a gumball item but it will cos you. i tried to buy the sakura long hair this way before i got it from the gumball and it was over 2000 donuts. that's about £8 if you were to buy donuts to buy the hair.

buying donuts is very simple, though. i've done it a few times. occasionally pokemini runs a 1.5x or 2x donut promotion where you get extra donuts for your money. i've only spent about £4/5 but got a lot of things for it. i don't really see the harm in paying for this kind of game if you're really into it.

okay, last thing i wanna show off!! recently pokemini added pokecam!! you can use your phone or tablet's camera to put your mini into the real world and take pictures with them!

i asked mini to help me write this post, ;)

pokemini also run contests on instagram using this feature where you can win in game items.


you can download pokemini for yourself here:

google play store

ios app store

you can find out more about the app and interact with other minis here:

facebook | twitter | instagram

if you happen to download the game from this post, add me using the mini code in the first image of this post. or if you already have the game, add me the same way!!

bye :)

food fair

i went to a food fair a while ago!! i meant to post this just after i went but never got around to it, so here it is, i guess.

 there was fudge. it was expensive, but we got some anyway. there were cool flavours like red bull, bubblegum and oreo!!! i liked oreo a lot and i don't even like fudge.

i got a strawberrys and cream gelato which was super good, but left craig and i arguing over what the difference between gelato and ice cream is. so i googled it just now:

Gelato is the Italian word for ice cream. It starts out with a similar custard base as ice cream, but has a higher proportion of milk and a lower proportion of cream and eggs (or no eggs at all). It is churned at a much slower rate, incorporating less air and leaving the gelato denser than ice cream.

there we go. there's a bit of a difference. so i was right. but like, it was super good so whatever, really.

i took a brownie home from this fancy brownie stand!! it was raspberry and amaretto (i think!!) and it was perfectly gooey and yummy i was very pleased with it. i'd like ten million more of them.
 i also took home a bottle of posh pop. it was strawberry and rhubarb and i got a pink straw. i wasn't too impressed by it, really. it was just fizzy juice. it was really nice, yeah, but it didn't seem all that special to me.

so that was a pretty nice time. we didn't really stay that long because it was very busy. and i didn't get any hog roast. boo.

first post - peacocks tea rooms

it's been so long since i did a blog. when i was around thirteen i had a super angsty teenage mess of a blog, and i'd like to redeem myself here, maybe. i think this blog will be a happy place mostly. i'll talk about the games i'm playing, new music i've heard, things i've done and probably new stuff i've bought that i want to share. to get back intot he swing of things, i'm going to try and write a tiny bit about a place that i've always knows about but never even thought to visit; peacocks tea rooms.

image from http://www.peacockstearoom.co.uk

firstly, the outside of the place is beautiful. secondly, i was super dumb to not take a picture of it for myself. i borrowed this one from their website, i'm sure they won't mind.

we were quickly seated and given the absolutely huge menu. they serve so many different types of tea it would take forever to try them all. i thought the sherlock holmes themes teas were quite cute, 

it was a pretty warm day when i visited, so i decided against tea, but if i'd had one i'd probably have gone for kashmiri: 

"Kashmiri - Our first and best Chai: a rich blend of Indian spices, orange peel and more"

i decided to just get a banana milkshake which was super good! it was the kind made with ice cream so it was super thick and i drank it too quickly which sucked. craig (that's the bf if anyone reading this doesn't already know me) got a fentiman's curiosity cola. 

"This curiously invigorating recreation of colas from yesteryear is made using infusions of the finest herbal ingredients."

basically, this is the best stuff. i don't really know how to describe it, but it was so good. and it came in this fancy bottle which i was allowed to bring home. i've been collecting cool drinks bottles and cans recently. maybe i'll show them here one day. also, the dog on the bottle neck reminded me a bit of the doge meme.

much cola. very wow.

we didn't try any of the food there so i can't say anything about it, however the specials board said they were serving pineapple upside down cake and they wrote upside down upside down. i was amused.

the place itself is a bit pricey, but i think that's to be expected from this kind of place. it's cute and a nice place to go for a treat, i think. 

last thing! the inside was so cute. the table we were sitting at was right beside the shelf in the picture below. it was crammed full of old tea tins and had mugs hanging up infront of them. also there was a couple of toy cars? the walls had a lot of vintage signs and artwork it all made the place very cosy and comfortable. 

i should have a ratings system. 

✿✿✿✿/✿✿✿✿✿

there. now i have one. it's flowers. how cute.

that means four out of five flowers it's not really that obvious but i'll work on it. 

bye ✍