00:02 John Daub: I'm back! I reserved Sunday to be one of those days where I would pick up a bag of convenience store cake from all three of them and we would compare. So I'm pretty excited about this. Cake time. Shidama. Alright, so let's give this a try. Here is our lineup. We're expecting kind of a shorter live stream. Short and sweet. This is a competition between three convenience store chains: mille crêpe. These crepes have lots of layers and lots of cream, and I got this because every convenience store had this in common, and all these layers could represent the years of marriage that are about to come. The symbolism of it.

01:32 John Daub: She's made tea. Let me show you the lineup of wonderful cakes that we have here and see which one is going to win. Number one from 7-Eleven: this is the rare cheese mille crêpe. You can see there are dozens of layers, an infinite amount, so many I can't count them. Number two, FamilyMart: fruits and sandōshita (double-layered) milk crêpe. They put some fruits in there, so FamilyMart went a little step further than 7-Eleven, although this one has cream cheese, which I'm very interested in. America has Philadelphia cream cheese; Japan has this brand which I believe comes from France. Then boom, this one comes from Lawson's: melty milk crêpe. Look at the layers on that, but you can see the color is different on each one, so there's bound to be a difference in taste. And this is our anniversary cake because I can't go out and get them, but if you just look from the side, it is a beautiful thing. All those layers, all those years. I should have taken a thumbnail from this angle, huh? The bakery has closed; some of the bakeries are closed down. I guess it's not a necessity of daily life, but our options for cake are limited. Oh, and by the way, there are some bonus items here as well that we're going to be trying, one from all three of the convenience stores.

03:27 John Daub: Are you ready for the cake? Alright, good. It's almost 3pm. It's okashi (snack) time, cake time, tea time. So which one do we try first, Kanae? Which one should we go for first? Forget the names; let's go by convenience store: 7-Eleven, Lawson's, and FamilyMart. Which one is going first? This one is Lawson's. Wow, because the top is like shining. I guess they put some kind of butter on top or something. Alright, we're going to go for Lawson's first. Let's do the unboxing. Lawson's is the least popular of the three convenience stores right now in Japan. By the way, I'm sort of faking that I just came in. I came in earlier and we washed these down according to our protocol. Maybe we should just open them all up and give them a very good look through. Alright, go ahead and open them all up, Kanae.

05:00 John Daub: Oh, that looks so good. Look at this. This is the Lawson's, and all three of them have these cakes. Look at the layers on them. Oh man. This one is 7-Eleven and this is the cream cheese layered cake. This is insane. What are we doing to ourselves? I think this one might be the winner. Take the plastic off. Oh wow, that's so beautiful. That's just so beautiful of a shot. Alright, hold on a second, guys. I gotta take a thumbnail of this. Give me one second. Sorry, we're back again. This is too delicious not to. So we're going to now take a look at all three of these in our stomachs. This is gonna be a battle royale. You decided to take the FamilyMart one.

06:40 John Daub: Japanese convenience stores do a pretty good job of making the desserts look good. In fact, when I go to the convenience stores, my time is spent in the little cake corner. My friend Tom, who came to visit us in Japan, spent most of his time in the dessert corner as well, just with eyes like this. And at midnight, it's even more appetizing. Many a foreign visitor to Japan has eaten convenience store cake. Now, the prices varied a lot. This one has two pieces; this was actually about $4. This one was $2.50, the 7-Eleven cheesecake. And then this one was about $1.75.

07:42 John Daub: Convenience store cakes are amazing. And they do a really good job because I'm pretty sure that there's scientists there just studying every single aspect of it, analyzing the deliciousness and what ways to get people to part with their dollar fifty to three dollars. And it happens quite often. Alright, we have a beautiful rose hip tea here. We've decided to go with the Lawson's cake first. So let's give this a try. And I want to take some of your questions here. Tony P's here. Hey Tony, thank you. Shane, hi John and Kanae from Shane and Ida. I love the cakes from Lawson's. Uh-oh. Tony writes in, John and Kanae, those look delicious. Lisa D's here. Happy anniversary. Thanks. Alright, let's get this done. Lawson's. Ladies first.

09:09 Kanae Daub: It's good.

09:21 John Daub: Okay, don't say anything. Let me... I love it. I wanna make sure that we do this at like the same time. Here's what a piece looks like. It's very soft, nice bottom to it. We saw the top had like a caramel layer to it. It's not jam, it's straight caramel. Mmm. Wow. What I love about these crêpe cakes are each layer has kind of a tension to it. So when you bite into it, you're breaking down layer after layer. You can taste that and it's such a good consistency in the mouth. Just eating cream is no fun, but when you have layers of it, it's so much better with the crêpe in between. It's so delicate too. I like it. I like it too. Yeah. It's gonna be hard to beat though.

10:41 John Daub: Next up, we're gonna be trying this one from FamilyMart. Go ahead and cut this up and try it. I'm very impressed with FamilyMart's desserts. Strawberry, kiwi, mikan (mandarin orange)? Look at that kiwi. I think that's like a mikan. How come you're using the spoon instead of the fork? Okay, don't say if it's better or not. We have to compare. Seriously, this is scientific. I don't wanna make a judgement before I've tried all three of them. Alright. Here's what a bite looks like. Just for the record. That's a lot more cream in it. It's like a spoon of cream, pretty much, right? Interesting.

11:50 John Daub: Last but not least is 7-Eleven's cake here. This is the cream cheese mille. Give this a go. Now this is not cream but cream cheese, so I think it's going to be harder to cut. It's a little bit heavier, right? Yeah, it's a big one. Wow. Keep it still. Look at the layers on there. Alright. Try it. Uh-oh. Just by that, we got a winner. Just by the actions. Alright, now yours truly has got to give it a try here. For science. This is more than food. It's a little bit heavier and you can tell the color is different compared to the others.

13:13 John Daub: So Kanae, which one do you think goes in for the win here? We have Lawson's, FamilyMart, and 7-Eleven. And the winner is?

13:25 Kanae Daub: Seven.

13:27 John Daub: That's 7-Eleven. For you. For me, it is very, very close. I thought that this one was good with the fruit in it, but I have to be honest, there was too much cream in the middle of it. I like the layers, and this is missing layers and added fruit, and to me, I don't think that was good enough. It was different. But yeah, I'm going to have to give it to this one. Although the Lawson's one is a classic. I think it is more of a classic taste to it, and it's lighter than the 7-Eleven one. But if I'm just going to eat one piece of cake, there's something about the cream cheese in it. There's another flavor that hits on your tongue, another level. And for me, this one wins. My favorite part of the cake is not the front, it's the back, where the layers are without the cheese. I'm just a geek like that. If you don't want all the cheese, you can have the back end. There is a nice cake to it, and I tasted that as well. That also adds another kind of flavor to this.

14:58 Kanae Daub: The rest is yours, I'm on a diet. Lawson's was robbed.

15:02 John Daub: We had some people in here going, Lawson's was robbed. This is good. Strumento writes in, proof that you can't have your cake and eat it too. Well said. And Brendan Walker is here, this stream made me go grab coffee cake from the kitchen. Alright, so we've got this, and I'm actually going to save the rest of the slices for another time, because I went out and I bought bonus items here. That's right. Over here, because if you go into a convenience store... This one comes from Lawson's. Now for the supplementary one, I think Lawson's might win, because this one just looks so darn good. This one is a roll cake, and roll cakes are very popular in Japan. But what makes this special is that it's Hokkaido cream. And on the top here, it describes the cake as mochi (chewy/stretchy). Mochi shopan, meaning it's kind of springy, cushiony. Yeah, we say mochi mochi.

16:30 John Daub: These are just random things I found. This one, according to the label, is matcha no torokeru (melty) nama (raw/fresh) cheesecake. Rare cheesecake. This is the mochi mochi's got something up against here. Matcha rare cheesecake. This is from FamilyMart, by the way. Famima Sweets. And from 7-Eleven, I couldn't find too many things, so... I don't know why I picked this one up here. I just thought it was pretty unique. This is Detective Conan. A lot of you maybe you've read the manga. There's some movies on Netflix as well. It's a whopping $2.50, and probably half of that went to Bandai. But what does it look like? It looks like this. And inside there, you can see his little suit in there, and he's looking up through the cake. It kind of doesn't look like him, but we'll give this... we'll open it up and see how these three compete. It might win on just cuteness factor.

18:04 John Daub: Which one do you want to try first? The mochi mochi because this one is just exciting. So the stream does continue with the bonus because we got the 200 likes. Now let's get the 500, the next tier. It's nice. It's six pieces. This piece is dedicated to you. Look at that cream in there. That's a lot of cream. Mille cakes equals thousands of layers. Thank you. I thought that was a good anniversary cake, right? Because each layer represents a year like a tree. You know, like when trees get older, they make one ring. Just my warped sense of thinking here. Go ahead, Kanae. You can go first. I'm very curious to see the mochi mochi in action. Each bite gives a spring. Why don't you smash... try to give it some... oh yeah. I think this middle one is mochi mochi. Yeah. Alright, give it a try. It's a lot of whipped cream. And I would probably eat the cake and then suck the cream out because I eat my Reese's peanut butter cup sort of the same way. I bite around the edges and then I just separate the chocolate from the peanut butter.

19:41 Kanae Daub: It's good. Mochi mochi? It's almost whipped cream. It's just whipped cream. But it's good.

19:55 John Daub: It's gone. What's here today is gone today. It is pretty voluminous. Heavy would be the more appropriate word. But it's got some volume to it. And you can see the difference in the color. It looks like there's a plain old bread cake to it and then on the outside a different color. Dense. That's a good word. It's got some spring to the bite. That's my mochi mochi. It's gonna be hard to beat.

20:56 John Daub: Next up, we're gonna have to go with the matcha. We are gonna have a very nice dessert after dinner as well. I think this stuff will keep. Alright, let's get a close up of this matcha cream here. Without the covering. Yeah, matcha is infused into the cream when they do this. I've seen chefs make a matcha cream, but that color is so representative of matcha. A deep color means it's probably pretty good matcha. If it's a brighter green then it's a little bit more suspect. But this does look like a little bit brighter of a green down the bottom. It'll be interesting to see if it's any good. Go ahead, Kanae.

22:07 Kanae Daub: Wow, it's almost cream. Matcha. Big matcha taste.

22:44 John Daub: Let's start. I'm gonna try to get a little bit of everything. Start off with some of that filling on the top. Oh wow. That's a great cut through. Yeah, you have the cake, the cream. Matcha? In cakes and cuisines, matcha has this very bitter taste to it. Why matcha works so well in desserts is that bitterness that hits another part of the tongue. The cream is cream. But there's certain ingredients like chocolate and matcha and strawberry. Little things that hit different, like the tartness of the strawberry, the bitterness of the matcha, that rich thickness of the chocolate. Matcha is one thing that just works well with sweets. Like bitter chocolate would be a near comparison. But the tea of it, if you like matcha, you're gonna like matcha desserts.

24:21 John Daub: You like green tea? Real green tea, matcha? The problem is that I'm affected by caffeine a lot. And matcha has more caffeine than coffee. So my heart, when I start drinking matcha, goes like this. And if I do, I'm lucky it's still like 3:20. Because if I eat or drink matcha after 5pm, I have trouble sleeping. That's how much the matcha affects me. So I don't eat a lot of matcha foods after a certain time. Even this will contain a ton of matcha in there. Is this Japanese matcha? Can you check? It doesn't write Uji matcha. That would mean that it would come from the famous Kyoto area. It's still pretty good. It gave you bitterness. When you looked at the cross layer, you got to see different kinds of textures and different kinds of tastes. And that's pretty important for dessert. Which means that this thing besides the cuteness factor is going to have a tough time to compete. Conan is going to get unboxed right now.

25:37 John Daub: It's like jewelry, right? Happy anniversary! Detective Conan! It's very nice. It's Japanese cake. Conan's private... See, I told you. He's locked in there. You're not supposed to close the capsule hotel. There's no lock on capsule hotels. How did he seal himself in? Conan doesn't want to come out. Careful. Oh, look at this. Look, his head's on a cookie! His head is on a cookie! Welcome to the world! I'm sorry we didn't want to bring you out of your capsule, but I know that you're going to love where you're going to go next, which is a nice warm place where you're going to be broken up into several thousands of pieces and ingested through the intestines. It's going to be quite a ride. Tell us what you find down there, right buddy? But this is pretty cute, and it's going to be hard to beat on taste. Which part should I eat? The head, of course. This one is all for you. I'll take the leftovers. But Conan's head, cut him in half.

27:48 John Daub: Presentation is five stars. And you can see the hair looks like it's some sort of chocolate icing, a cookie, white chocolate. I don't know what that bow tie is, but it looks good. I guess we're going to have to cut them in half. And the glasses are not really glasses, they're just indentations on there. You've got to cut him in two. So why don't I cut him, and then you... Can you get a knife? Maybe we'll get a knife. We've got to cut him somehow, and I don't want to cut him with a spoon. That's just cruel. This is cruel and unusual punishment. Let's get him a proper knife, you know? Alright, let's go back to medieval France and the guillotine's coming. You don't want that guillotine to be a spoon. It's just not right. And in fact, Conan doesn't deserve the guillotine at all. Surgical is the answer. Can you get the big plate? Because we're going to use this to cut him up on. Scalpel. Patient ready, please. Patient is ready. Anesthesia. Oh, it's cute. Put him to sleep. Please count backwards. 10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1. You're going to sleep now, Conan.

29:33 Kanae Daub: You're so pitiful.

29:36 John Daub: I've done this before. Surgery. It is surgery. What? Is this wrong? Should I stop? I'll stop if you want me to stop. Mr. Das says case is closed. Case closed. It's just a snack. I have to focus now. He's still asleep. He didn't hear any of that, thankfully. Here we go. Do it quickly. Incision is made. Very little bleeding. Let's open it up. What's inside? Interesting, huh? So, for all of you who are lovers of his show, this is what's inside Conan. Pretty much anko (sweet red bean paste). Yeah. Actually, he has a brain. Which is why the anesthesia took 10 seconds to work. The brain is made of red bean paste. Crazy. And he does have internal organs. Time of death is 3:27 and 5 seconds. Let's try Conan.

31:39 John Daub: Which half do you want? I cut him, you pick the half.

31:42 Kanae Daub: No, I have to pick the left one.

31:50 John Daub: Looks good, huh? Okay, this is crazy. I don't know why this is so much fun. Thank you, Conan, for your sacrifice. You know, all the mysteries of the world are starting to become clearer now. All the answers that I was searching for have been discovered. I actually like this because it's not cream. You see, we've been eating just basically cream, cream, cream, and Conan was the difference. That was the X factor. My detective powers have increased.

33:25 Kanae Daub: It's good. It's like manju (steamed bun cake). Yum.

33:30 John Daub: You know, I thought it was really good. It's not too sweet. It has enough of a... You know, American cake has a very heavy buttercream, right? I like this because it had that buttercream heaviness to it, whereas the other things... And this is Japanese cake. Japanese cake is made with this kind of nama cream. That's the icing. Icing in Japanese cakes is such a disappointment for so many Americans because it's too light. Although I can't say that I disagree. But when I have a cake, I want to have that butter richness to the icing. And maybe that's just because I grew up with it.

34:13 Kanae Daub: She doesn't like it. I don't like butter cake a lot. We don't even call it butter cake. It's just cake. But you don't like fruit cake, right? I don't want the fruits on the cake. Just give me the sugar. The butter.

34:24 John Daub: Let's go straight into it. If you want fruits, then you're in the wrong place. Is this only an American thing? No. There's people who like fruit cakes in America. Okay. And you know, okay. I'll tell you a little secret. When I do go home to America, I always get a birthday cake, even though it's not my birthday. It's nobody's birthday. I'll just buy one because I miss that thick, sweet, rich butter cake that I had when I was a kid. And I'll just get a small one. And usually I'll share it with everybody, but no one wants to eat it because there's no reason to eat the butter cake. And then in the end, I eat like 90% of it, which is not good for you. I always get a third chin. The last time, I think you can write something on it. And every time at the supermarket, they say, what do you want to write? And I don't know. I don't want to write happy birthday. So I always say something that'll make them smile. I said, this cake deserves better. And then the lady will write, this cake deserves better. And then I'll take a picture of it, and it just looks so pathetic. But still eat it. You had a sunshine cake last time. And I learned that they have the yellow food coloring comes from like smashed up little bugs or something. But in the end, I can't taste the bugs. I just taste the sunshine. So we had a yellow sunshine cake last time I went back.

35:45 John Daub: Alright. Enough of that. What I think is really good is this Conan. But which one of those three bonus items, Kanae, do you think takes the cake? Which one was the best?

35:55 Kanae Daub: I like this one. The mochi mochi roll cake. Yeah, this one was pretty good from Lawson's. Because it's six pieces inside. You can share with your family.

36:17 John Daub: We're going on taste, not on convenience. So Kanae's like ranking it in her mind based on convenience. Oh, it's made of six pieces and we can share it and eat over time. It tastes good too. Whereas this is just one big heap of mess and you can't share that. But this you can. She actually factored that in. I didn't even think about that. Well, you could actually give each family member one layer. Does that work? Yeah, I like this one a lot too. Alright. We're gonna do two breakdowns then. So you're going for the mochi cake. I'm going for Conan. Just because it was different. Not that it was any better or worse. It's just it was too much fun to cut him open. The process deserved in itself was a ritual that I will never forget. It's the best anniversary cake ever.

37:07 John Daub: So, in terms of the best one out of all of these, I'm gonna probably have to say this 7-Eleven cream cheese cake is the winner for me. We have a winner. How about you?

37:21 Kanae Daub: This one too.

37:23 John Daub: Yeah, looks like that's gonna be the winner there. Next time, get two Conans. Actually, when at the 7-Eleven, they didn't just have Conan. They had Conan and his whole cast. And I only bought one. I should have bought like four. Because they had like four different characters. So, that might mean that if I do a midnight snack run, I'll get the entire cast of Conan characters, perhaps, maybe. Thinking of ideas that only you can do when you're self-isolated. Why are you guys looking that way? We're over here. So, in the end, I think it's gonna be this cheesecake, the 7-Eleven that takes the cake. Happy anniversary.

38:14 Kanae Daub: Happy anniversary.

38:15 John Daub: One year. Two years. Not three years. I learned that the hard way with a hundred comments slapping me across the face really hard. It was tough. But we're gonna be doing another live stream next week. We have a bunch of them coming up. Actually, the Abe no Mask or the government masks that we're supposed to get. Get this, okay? They were recalled. This is a funny story. So, I read on the newspaper that the Abe no Masks were recalled. They were made in factories in Myanmar and I think it was either China or Vietnam. And the masks, some of them had human hair in them. So, they had to recall all the masks and the ones that went out, they said they had a funky smell and had human hair. I'm reading from the Japan Times, I think. Yeah, it was either Kyodo or Japan Times. So, we didn't get our government masks. Abe no Masks is what they call it because Prime Minister Abe, and I think it's a good thing, but not if the masks are contaminated. So, hopefully they come next week, the new masks, and we'll give you a review on them. Hopefully, we haven't gotten that. And next week, Kanae's going to make a dish from the Instant Pot, right? We have an Instant Pot that was gifted to us from Katayama, which is one of our supporters on Patreon, and we found ways to make Japanese recipes using it. So, we're going to bring you in our kitchen again and do some more Kanae's cooking. And I have a big announcement coming next week about the channel, and I'll be adding memberships to this channel starting next week as well. It's not something that's going to be cannibalizing. It'll add to it, and that's what I was looking for. A happy way to offer something for everybody. Things are getting pretty exciting. Maybe a little bit more midnight snack with a little bit of camping thrown in there? I don't know. I have a feeling. And some delivery. Kanae wants some unagi, so we might do an unagi home delivery. An Italian bombshell just said, Kanae, you should sew and make some masks. I think some Only in Japan masks would be pretty cool too. Only in Japan masks. Pretty cool. Alright, thank you guys. I appreciate the support, everybody. Mr. Das is up for the midnight snack. I'm sure there's going to be plenty of Asahi. Bye, guys.

40:45 Kanae Daub: Bye. See you soon.