If eating Pocky is the closest you feel you'll ever get to going to Japan...man, I have no words.
Pocky is just candy. There is NOTHING about it that is particularly Japanese in either its taste or its origins. Is it popular in Japan? Yeah, but so are Kit Kats, Snickers, and about a half-dozen other brands of chocolate! Hell, Pocky isn't even the best Japanese chocolate! And it sure as hell isn't the best candy out there! For chrissakes, eating Pocky is about the same as eating Twix or Three Musketeers, except that the anime geeks feel that by eating it they're making some sort of statement.
Well, y'know what statement you're making, right? That you're willing to pay extra cash just to eat little stick of bread with chocolate covering just because there's Japanese text on the box!
The Abominable Snowman said:
I thought the japanese ate pocky because it's a dispensably cheap yet kinda good treat, like we do peppermint.
Pocky's not particularly cheaper than anything else, so that theory's out the window. Hell, in my year here, I've yet to see someone other than a foreigner actually buying and eating Pocky. I'm sure it sells, but it's not this super-popular mega-unique Japanese candy that all the anime geeks make it out to be.
I mean, the equivalent would be people who like American movies importing 3 Musketeers.
It's moronic.