Must-have summer sweets
Monday, August 1, 2016
When you want to eat something cold and sweet on a sweltering summer day in Japan, just look for the flag in front of restaurants, sweet parlors and stalls. The red kanji character is "ice" in English.
You can have "Kakigori" or shaved ice there.
A bowl of shaved ice is served with variety of flavored syrups such as strawberry, lemon, melon, condensed milk and sometimes assorted toppings such as red bean paste, rice dumplings and ice cream.
Especially green tea flavor is very Japanese.
This type of Kakigori is called "Uji-Kintoki" which uses green tea syrup and topping red bean paste. Uji is a famous green tea production area and Kintoki is a kind of red bean.
Recently, popular Kakigori shops create their own unique flavors and toppings in order to attract many customers. For example, the one in this picture depicts the sunrise on the top of Mount Fuji with red bean paste, strawberry syrup and condensed milk.
And this flavor is Houji-cha (roasted tea) syrup with some rice dumplings, tea jellies, ice cream, red bean paste and a wafer cake filled with red bean paste.
Why don't you try it after our tour ?
by KM