Awhile back there was talk about the differences between Western Brand Ramen and traditional Ramen, so I thought I would briefly show the differences with some pictures.
This would be considered Western Brand:
Mr. Noodles Is a common brand of Instant Noodle "Ramen" you can find in Canada.
and comes packaged in either the plastic wrap you see here with a block of dry noodles inside and a small packet of dryed vegetables consisting generally of corn and challotes. There isn't any sort of flavour packet and it mostly consists of empty calories.
These Would Be Considered Traditional Eastern Snacks:
I was at the Doremi Store in the city I lived today and thought I ought to pick up some Ramen and snacks for myself and for this very reason. I took a picture as a sample.
Bottom Left we have of course Honey & Milk flavoured Pocky. Pocky as we know is one of Kagami's favourite snack foods. I'm sure most are aware of what it looks like without me having to open the box, but I will upon request. To the right is just some chewing gum I picked up called Hi Chew! which is basically a grape flavoured piece of gum that is a lot like Taffy. Up top is Nong Shim Korean Kimchi soup. The bottom ones are plain Kimchi, the top ones that are pinkish are shrimp flavoured and the one to the left is Udon Flavour. What you get in those are a block of noodles, a packet of extra vegetables to add to the variety of the ones already in place, and the quality and variety of the vegetables are much greater than the Mr. Noodles brand (if it's a specialized flavour, the normal ones don't have any vegetables outside of the packet if I recall) and the kicker is a flavour packet that adds a delicious (my words) spicy flavour to the soup that you don't get with western brands period. The English and French writing are only on there since it's required by law in Canada to honor the two official languages.
]
Here's the reverse side of the Pockey with the added label that makes it legal to sell in Canada. The back of the Hi Chew! is just a boring inredients list in Japanese.
So hopefully this has given people a bit of a better understanding of two of the major brands of food favoured by Konata and Kagami and why they are different from what we have here. They aren't too hard to find here in Canada, but I don't know about elsewhere. If anyone is interested I suggest trying to find a store that sells Asian foods in your city and you should find these types of food in sold within.