I had a full house at my English lesson today with my Japanese grandmothers. One of them went to Hakone last weekend and brought us back plum candies. Not to be overshadowed by the Sakura, Ume (Plum Blossoms) are beautiful in the spring. The candies are made from the fruit. From my understanding, the plums are pitted and then pickled with a mixture of salt, sugar, and vinegar. The result, is a gummy, salty, sweet, and sour (tangy) piece of candy. Here is the package. According to Google Translate, it says “Han Hwa” – clearly, no help.
The plum candy is pictured below. Notice it has a slightly moist texture. To understand the texture, imagine a moist, dried apricot.
A picture for perspective. They were small, approximately an inch in circumference. They tasted very differently from candy I prefer to purchase (not chocolate). However, in a strange way, they reminded me of natural sour patch kids.
My grandmothers asked me to describe the taste to them in English. I said, “sweet, salty, and tangy”. They didn’t understand tangy. Tangy to me means my geographic tongue will hurt. That obviously would be lost in translation without me sticking out my tongue. And that would be so weird. Could you imagine? So, to save us all the pain of translating, I went with sour.
As you can see, I have five remaining. Who would like a sample!?! Tempting, I know!
