Konbini Kinyoubi: Karaage-kun Turns 35

Welcome to Konbini Kinyoubi, where every Friday (Kinyoubi) we visit our local convenience store (Konbini) and buy something delicious.

I’d like to tell you a tale, the tale of a young man, fresh out of college but still in that six-month window before you have to start paying back your student loans. This young man was so full of hope, pride, enthusiasm, and cheap Japanese beer. He yearned for adventure, and for something to snack on while drunk.

By the way, the young man is me. I’m talking about me here.

I was… 22? 23? Somewhere in there. I had been in Japan for only a couple months, and had already experienced an eviction and the bankruptcy of a major corporation. I was in Higashi-Hiroshima, the third city I’d lived in since my arrival in the country. It was 2007. It was late at night. I was drunk and hungry.

I stumbled into a convenience store called Lawson, not really knowing the difference between the konbinis at this point, probably planning to purchase a beer or sake or some disgusting drink they had. As I reached the front counter, I saw this staring back at me:

Note that all the different packages have different eyelashes and expressions.

“WHAT’S THAT CHICKEN GIMME THAT CHICKEN I WANT IT GIMME GIMME,” I said in delicate prose as I hurled money at the clerk. Upon receiving my prize, I saw that it contained five pieces of breaded chicken in a chicken-shaped container, including a toothpick with which to eat them.

Folks, I don’t want to veer into the realm of hyperbole, but those chicken bites were the greatest invention man has ever created and I’m including the polio vaccine and pornos. They were juicy. They were spicy. They were wonderful.

From then on, whenever we went out drinking, Jim and I would stop by Lawson’s to grab some chicken bites. After leaving Japan, I lusted after them for a decade before finally coming back, and one of the first things I did upon returning was grab some chicken bites, known as Karaage-kun. “Karaage” is fried chicken, and “kun” means “cute little guy awwwwww.”

Karaage-kun is a staple of konbini culture, and the pride of Lawson. Although this may be sacrilege to those who swear by Family Mart’s Famichiki, I rank Karaage-kun as #1 and Lawson as my favorite konbini. Fight me.

These little guys celebrated their 35th anniversary this past week, which means Eriko and I had to suffer through nearly 18 months of life without them. Horrific. Don’t know how we managed. To celebrate, we tried three kinds: regular, spicy red, and lemon.

First up was regular. There’s nothing fancy about these, but they’re well-made. The chicken is properly juicy, the breading a little crunchy in spots and a little soft in others. What I appreciate about them is that they aren’t greasy like Famichiki (which is delicious, but tough on the old arteries). They’re fairly light so that I don’t feel weighed down after eating them.

I make them watch while I eat their insides.

Up next was red, the standard hot flavor. I love these. They’re every bit as good as I remember from all those years ago. They don’t have a fake-spicy taste to them, just a normal juicy chicken taste. But then, a moment later, you feeeeeel the spice in the back of your throat, just enough to make you sit up and take notice. Any words I could use would be inadequate; these things are delicious and I want one hundred buckets of them.

I was a little wary of lemon simply because I’d never had it before, but I needn’t have worried. Sometimes when lemon is mixed with chicken (which is very common in Japan), there can be too much lemon and it takes over. That wasn’t the case here - there was a good amount, ensuring a definite lemon flavor, but not so much that it tasted artificial. I would definitely eat these again.

Overall, my rankings are:

Red
Lemon
Regular

Eriko’s rankings were:

Lemon
Red
Regular

However, Eriko said that if she were to eat only one of them, she’d probably go with regular because without the varied tastes to balance one another out, if she were only having one flavor, she’d stick with the tried and true (not her exact words).

What’s nice about these, though, is you don’t have to choose just one flavor. There are only 5 or 6 bites in a pack depending on how lucky you are, so they aren’t too filling. That means I can get a standard red and also try one of the newfangled flavors that are always trotted out. They even sold a 10-pack for a while!

The small size also means I never feel too bad about eating them, which is also a plus. We had three of these between the two of us, but we didn’t feel sick afterward, which is something I can’t say about some of our konbini trips.

You’d think it’d be hard to eat with them staring at you, but no.

The final verdict: 15/10 delicious forever. Karaage-kun, you are my fun time party friend #1 yes yes. Get yourself to Japan and try these as soon as possible. Fly in, eat Karaage-kun, fly back. Solid vacation.