Fran Double Chocolate

Brand: Meiji

Price: 120 yen

Found At: Yamadai

When I was a kid, pocky was always a rare novelty treat that we could only get when we traveled up to the big city with the Asian grocery store. By the time I was in high school, we started to see them in the Safeways and the Albertsons in Tacoma. Now, we can find it all over – a pretty standard West Coast candy. But what I didn’t know before I went to Japan is that pocky has a whole new dimension here. Not only are there the traditional pocky and the novelty pocky that we know and love, but there is a whole range of adult pocky and non-pocky-brand chocolate sticks available in the supermarkets and the convenience stores. This one particularly caught my eye because of the box, elegantly designed to market to the strong, elegant, independent woman that I sometimes aspire to be.

And it was, indeed, exactly what the elegant lady in me wanted. It was decadently chocolaty. By what I can only assume is magic, Meiji has managed to recreate the softness of dark chocolate mousse (or whip, as it is advertised on the packaging) into a smooth, velvety, fluffy, chocolaty wrapping around a crunchy dark-chocolate stick. It is just the right balance of bitter chocolate and sweet creaminess to appeal to the Daisy Buchanan in me – to entice my inner hedonist and make me feel less like a scruffy English teacher, and more like the wealthy heiress in my heart.

It is so indulgent, in fact, that they have helpfully packaged it in sets of three sticks, knowing perfectly well that if it was only one package, that I would eat the whole thing.

As if they could stop me so easily.