The Danger of Buying Shrimp Snacks

Last week while grocery shopping I thought I'd pick up some snack-type food.  "I've been eating too healthy!" I said to myself. "Let's INDULGE."  So I bought a bag of shrimp-flavored chips.

Shrimptacular!

Don't look at me like that.  I'd had the shrimp snacks before and they were surprisingly good!  And for 86 yen (roughly 90 cents) a bag, they weren't too shabby.  But what I failed to do is actually read the package.  For you see, in the yellow letters it reads "MAYONEEZU."  That's right, I bought shrimp and mayonnaise flavored chips.  I mean, shoot, it should have been obvious.  That shrimp is totally squirting a tube of mayo all over the place!

Something you should know about Japan is that there are a million flavors of everything.  It's just how they do it here.  Some examples: during training, my fellow trainee bought a bag of fish-flavored chips.  They were weird and delicious.  The first week I was at my school one of my co-workers brought in soy sauce flavored Kit-Kat bars.  They too were weird and delicious.  My co-worker Yoko told me about celery flavored Coca Cola.  My guess?  It was probably weird and delicious.

As for the shrimp and mayo snacks?  Yep, weird and delicious.  But in spite of that I learned a valuable lesson about reading packages.