Lately we have been watching a lot of YouTube videos involving surprise eggs, PlayDoh, and food. We inevitably ended up on videos of people making those Japanese candy kits, which prompted a, “I wanna try that!” from the little one. So yesterday I went to the mall in search of some.

I started at the Tokyo Lifestyle store, where I tried to find the kit that looked the easiest to do, considering I was making it with a three-year-old, and none of us can read Japanese. I decided on the pudding, and also the chocolate and Oreo Pocky (the bottom row). Then I decided to try the Lolli and Pops store downstairs, since they have a pretty good international selection. I was also on the lookout for some cinnamon jelly beans and potentially some surprise eggs. They didn’t have only the cinnamon jelly beans and only had the Kinder Joys, not the plain chocolate eggs. But they did have gummies, another different flavor of Pocky, and my Pandas (which were also at the other store, but I was trying to be good). And, of course, I got taken in by the caramels hanging near the register.

Anyway, enough about the way too much candy I ended up buying. On to our adventures trying to make this kit. As you can see, the whole box is written in Japanese. My first thought was to re-download the Google translate app and just take pictures of each step. That turned out to be less than helpful. It translated well, but as often happens with straight translation, it wasn’t very understandable. After looking all over for pre-translated instructions, I finally just found this video on YouTube.

It took a lot of pausing and rewinding, but we managed to pull it together. It didn’t look quite like the picture, but it tasted really good. And isn’t that what making candy is all about?