Dagashi

Dagashi (駄 菓子?) Is a sweet and cheap snack food in Japan that can be purchased with school pocket money. Traditional shop seller of dagashi is called dagashi-ya (dagashi shop).

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In Japanese, kashi (菓子?) Means any kind of confectionary, cake, or sweet food; aka kanji da (駄?) is added to explain low-quality or unworthy goods. The term dagashi (bad food) began to be worn around 1711-1715 [1] to refer to the cheap and low-quality cookies and higashi (干 菓子?) Snacks.

Sugar used for dagashi at that time was brown sugar cane or crude sugar. Instead, the daimyo, samurai, and entrepreneur's snacks are called jōgashi (上 菓子 ?, jō means top), made with sugar.

Unlike large companies that are constantly issuing new flavored snacks, dagashi is generally produced by small medium-sized industries that continue to produce dagashi past without changing the content, flavor, or packaging. Confectionery that includes dagashi is very varied, ranging from cotton candy, cheap candies and chocolates, biscuits, juice powder, fugashi, umaibō, big katsu, su konbu, to baby star ramen and dried squid.