@AsliOmur - thanks.
Actually I just got back from Honolulu. The cookies are at Don Quiote, which despite the name is an Asian specialty store in Honolulu. I bought a bunch, but I was limited by airline baggage charges as to how much I could bring home, so I will definitely head over to J-town. My father still says they're a specialty item available in Honolulu only during the holidays.

It being Christmastime, my parents sent me another box. The product code is 4934675001542. The only US online supplier has a minimum order of $1000. Anyone actually seen these in the Bay Area?

We're huge fans of Henri Le Roux's caramel and have placed several orders at his website http://www.chocolatleroux.eu. But when we tried a few days ago, we got an error message saying that because of the weight, our order could not be delivered. Reducing the weight didn't help. We've tried using the e-mail contact form w/o success. Has anyone else had difficulty ordering from Henri Le Roux or heard that they're no longer shipping internationally?

Three members of my family did a blind taste test of several East Bay bakeries (Whole Foods Walnut Creek, Acme Berkeley, La Farine Solano Ave, La Boulange Lafayette). Croissants were rushed home and warmed in oven. We just got back from Paris and our "gold standard" for plain croissants is our recollection of the plain croissants at Eric Kayser bakeries. Nothing here is quite like Eric Kayser, but everything was cheaper than a plane ticket to Paris! And on the bright side, we are lucky to live in the SF Bay area b/c there are a lot of good restaurants, chocolatiers and and bakeries that can hold their own (even if in a different way) against Parisian food vendors.

FWIW, here are the results:

Plain croissants:
Winner - Walnut Creek Whole Foods (will update post when I find out who their current supplier is - info wasn't posted). Second choices, all very good - mixed opinions between La Farine (baked at their College Ave store and shipped to Solano), La Boulange and Acme. We all agreed that the La Farine croissant was not as flaky (just look at a cross section), but one family member liked it because it was different.

Pain au chocolat
Winner: Acme. We all agreed that both LaFarine's and La Boulange's offerings were pretty good, but we liked Acme better. Whole Foods didn't have pain au chocolat - at least not today.

Almond croissant
Tie between Acme and LaFarine, altho I personally thought Acme had a slight edge b/c of the almond-flavored glaze. None of us liked La Boulange's (too much almond paste, which gave the croissant a heavy, greasy sensation). Whole Foods listed their almond croissant supplier as LaBoulange, so we didn't buy.

My parents, who live in Hawaii, sent me a package of this for the holidays:

http://www.tivon.co.jp/ajishino.html

I read somewhere on the net that even in Japan, you have to get these from specialty stores and the internet rather than from grocery stores. I've identified an online source of something similar from the same company, but has anyone seen these in the SF Bay area?