Ribon Nama Ume Ame Japanese Ume Plum Candy

Ume — the Japanese plum — occupies a particular place in the country’s food culture that has no real equivalent elsewhere: sour, salty, deeply savory, and simultaneously considered both a flavor and a health food.

The Japanese relationship with ume is a long one, and it shows up across everything from rice balls to drinking snacks to candy.

Ribon’s Nama Ume Ame has been one of the most enduring expressions of that relationship for over 36 years, and the construction is the reason it has stayed around.

The candy is built in two distinct parts.

The outer shell is a clear, lightly sweet hard candy with a gentle ume fragrance — subtle enough to eat on its own, understated enough to make the moment the center arrives feel like a genuine surprise.

The center is a plum paste — 50% ume flesh, made with Nanko-ume plums from Kishu in Wakayama Prefecture, Japan’s most celebrated plum-producing region — soft and yielding when bitten, with the concentrated tartness and savory depth of real plum rather than the simplified sourness of most plum-flavored candy.

The eating experience offers two paths: hold the candy and let it dissolve slowly, moving from the mild sweetness of the shell into the gradual emergence of the plum paste as the outer layer thins; or bite through immediately and let the sweet and sour meet all at once.

Both work. The second is faster, but the first is the one that rewards patience.

Low in calories at 23 kcal per piece, and the kind of candy that ends up as a bag fixture — the sort you reach for without planning to, and find empty before you intended.

About this item
Item Name : Nama Ume Ame
Brand : Ribon
Item Form : Candy
Number of Items : 90g (Pack of 1)