[Elspode]

Last night, when I came home from band practice, my kids revealed to me that a friend had taken them to an Oriental market, and purchased about $65.00 worth of various Oriental snacks. A large selection was in fact laid out on my and my wife's desks for our sampling pleasure.

Most of the stuff was in original packaging, but some of it was in ziplok bags, having been doled out from apparent larger containers. One of these was a rather intriguing looking, sort of fish-shaped puffy cracker thingy, not unlike a puffy, curled up Goldfish cracker...which should have been my first clue.

I grabbed a small handful, shoved them into my mouth, and began to crunch...salty...a hint of teriyaki, perhaps? And something else...something not quite...crackerlike...but...familiar. Fish. It was a frigging fish (octopus, actually) flavored cracker.

Once I realized what it was, the compulsion to get the very, very lingering taste out of my mouth was rather pervasive. I yelled at the guilty kid, who thought it was pretty damn funny that he'd managed to dupe me into eating an octopus flavored cracker, and he came in a gave me a package of Pocky. Now, at this point, I am pretty suspicious of *anything* this monster is handing me, so I read the label. No eel. No tuna testes. No seaweed.

Good enough! I crunched down a whole package before I even paused. This then led me to research Pocky, whereupon I discovered that it was basically a pretzel stick with chocolate and other pleasant comestibles embedded thereupon. One site claims that it is the biggest selling treat in Japan, comparable to M&M's in the States.

Still, anything else Oriental and (allegedly) edible that comes into my house is going to be vetted for any signs of unexpected fish flavoring from here on out. I wish I could have read the package for those crackers, though, because I would really like to know...was it genuine octopus, or just artificial octopus flavoring?