Magnificent macarons by Sadaharu Aoki

(All photos from sadaharuaoki.fr)

I just watched a fascinating video by WSJ Asia about the different categories chocolatiers introduced to Japan to capitalize on Valentine's Day. Chocolates are marketed to women to give to female friends, male colleagues and male subordinates (like a T-shirt shaped chocolate that says "I gave you this, now can you work harder?").

Usually I disapprove of traditions that were created solely to sell people more stuff, but chocolate warps my powers of critical thinking. CHOCOLATE!!! The words "Japan" and "chocolate" make me think of the gorgeous macarons and candy by Sadaharu Aoki. He has a shop in Bellavita shopping mall here in Taipei. Everything is pricey, but I've sampled a few Sadaharu Aoki macarons before. They were so pretty to look at that I was sad to eat them, but eat them I did. The polka-dotted candies below are actually macarons enrobed in dark chocolate. My friend bought me some for my birthday and they were fantastic.

Boxing Day cookies

My friend Lauren threw a cookie decorating party on Boxing Day. It was awesome! I ate my year's allowance of sugar. Mmm... sugarrrrhhh...

In My Pod: Shelves in my home office

Left to right: Japanese photography magazines, Dover reproductions of vintage Sears catalogs, Taiwanese photography books and "Ways of Seeing" by John Berger


A cyanotype print I made from an old photo of my family

Candy doesn't count as empty calories if it comes in cute tins.


Reproductions of toys once popular in Taiwan and a card deck with vintage cartoon illustrations

Just Pretty: Japanese sugar candy

I bought some Japanese sugar candy from a store in Ximending, which an area known as Taipei's answer to Harajuku. Lots of teenagers and college students hang out there on the weekends.

The candy that looks like little stars is konpeito, a traditional Japanese confection that has its roots in Portugal and is handmade over the course of several days.

The rock candy often has miniatures of flowers, fruits or popular cartoon characters in the middle. Doesn't the rainbow one on the bottom right look like the Mac spinning marble of doom? Looking at it gave me dry heaves (remember, I just had a laptop break down on me for the second time in half a year) until I popped it into my mouth and ate it. Take that, marble of doom!

The little pearls are light, crunchy and powdery, and taste a little bit like fruitier Sweet Tarts. I think they would be so cute on cupcakes.

I hope you've enjoyed this trip through candyland! I love candy; it might show up again on The Renegade Bean :-)!

我愛日式糖果!