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Ice-cream in Japan

Inspired by                            , I actively sought out the ice-cream in Japan to sample them. 

Kanazawa is hailed as the ice-cream capital of Japan. Just at the Higashi Chaya district alone, we sampled three ice-creams. The most famous is Hakuichi’s legendary Golden Ice-cream. However, I don’t like it, but my hubby does. It was a very milky ice-cream covered with a whole square sheet of gold leaf. It was far too milky for my liking! The gold leaf was an extravagance that contributes nothing to taste.

The second ice-cream was the Sake Ice-cream at the Fukumitsuya Sake Brewery. I love this ice-cream, but my hubby found the sake taste too strong for him. I couldn’t taste any sake. I only tasted a very fragrant caramel. It was my best ice-cream out of the three at Higashi Chaya district. Hakuichi’s legendary Golden Ice-cream is his number one out of the three.

The third ice-cream for the day was the Castella Ice-cream. This store is located near the entrance to the Higashi Chaya district. We were amazed that it really tasted like the Castella Cake! I had topped up 200 yen for the gold flakes but some flew off when I made my way from the counter to the seat. There was no taste to the gold flakes. Its purpose was to enhance the colour of the Castella Ice-cream. The pale golden ice-cream with its gold flakes was really too pretty to eat! Taste wise, for both of us, it took second place out of the 3 ice-creams we had that afternoon!

At Murodo, the highest point of the Tateyama Kurobe Alpine Route, we had lunch at a café at Hotel Tateyama. The menu was rather limited. It was either Alpine Curry with rice or Strawberry Mont Blanc with tea. We ordered both to share. Surprisingly, both sets were yummy. There was a gift shop where we bought some salty peanuts coated in chocolate. The chocolate-coated peanuts looked like easter eggs. In the photo, they are the 2 white and 2 green ones that my hubby had added to the Strawberry Mont Blanc. 

 

At Kurobedaira, we got to sample the Tateyama Black. It isn’t your typical chocolaty soft-serve ice-cream. Although it didn’t look appetising, we enjoyed the ice-cream very much.  It tasted like McDonalds chocolate fudge. It looked unique and generated quite a bit of attention and talk among our friends when we shared on the group whatsapp chats.

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Osaka’s Dotonbori is an interesting food street. Besides the numerous Takoyaki shops, there are also quite a few dessert shops. There was this Melonpan with ice-cream. It was actually the Chinese baked bun. I like the melon bun as it was freshly baked, buttery and was still warm and crispy, contrasting with the cold, smooth ice-cream. We tried both the strawberry and sakura ice-creams. Both my hubby and I prefer the strawberry. The sakura ice-cream was too bland with a salty tinge. The strawberry ice-cream had the strawberry fragrance and tangy taste.

My most beautiful tea experience was at the Byodoin Temple Tea Room that’s located inside Byōdō-in Temple in Uji, Kyoto. There were pictorial instructions on how best to enjoy their tea. I really love the tiny 2 pieces of sweets. The pink piece with the phoenix design reminded me of my late mum’s Lek Tao Ko that she used to make for Chinese New Year during our kampong days. She stopped making them when we moved to a HDB flat. It’s hard to get homemade Lek Tao Ko these days because you need to sun it properly before baking. This set cost 600 yen but to enjoy it, you need to pay an entrance fee of 600 yen to enter Byōdō-in Temple first.

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We had lunch at this restaurant after our trip to Byōdō-in Temple in Uji to catch the wisterias. We joined the queue and waited for our table. Lunch was good and hubby ordered this dessert. It was a classic Japanese red bean soup with a piece of white rice cake and a sweetened chestnut. I found the red bean soup on its own too sweet. I suspect the purpose of the bland rice cake is to reduce the sweetness when eaten together. The dried plum peel (I assume it is) was salty but not too salty. The cup of hot hojicha washed down the sweet dessert well.

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Matcha soft-serve ice-cream is easily available everywhere, even outside Kyoto. What is different is at this tea store, they sprinkle matcha powder on their soft serve matcha ice-cream. Like all other soft-serve ice-cream, this is smooth and creamy. Somehow, the matcha powder must have added to the bitterness, so this ice-cream is delightfully bitter with the intense matcha fragrance! This ice-cream cost 400 yen.

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This is a pack of 3 freshly made mochi that I bought on the way from Nara Station to Nark Park. There was a queue on the way there, so I queued and bought only on the way back. At first, I bought one to try. After that, I went back to buy a box of 3 pieces. The matcha mochi was really soft and was still warm when I ate it on the spot. The red bean filling wasn’t that sweet. When I ate them the following morning for breakfast, the mochi was firmer but still soft and not hard and chewy like others.

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The Ice-cream Factory is located at Sapporo Factory, a mega shopping mall with seven buildings. The way they made their ice-cream reminded me of the street vendor in Bangkok. They “chop chop” the ice-cream to mix in the other ingredients. We enjoyed their ice-creams but they’re definitely more expensive than the Thai street vendor ice-creams. The Chocolate Berry Pie cost 540 yen.

When in Otaru, you can’t possibly not walk into any of the Letao stores. There is at least one at every turn! I didn’t like their mango shake. Personally, I think the dessert cafes in Hong Kong do more justice to the mangoes!

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My hubby had seen a video on a Letao café and he was consciously looking for it. This café is located on the second floor of a building in the middle of the street. On the Internet, there’re many videos of their Fluffy Fromage Souffle with strawberries. Detailed instructions were provided on how to pour the different sauces over the cake etc. Almost every table ordered this same cake, and everyone was performing and filming this ritual. We were no exception. The verdict: the souffle was indeed super light. It was like eating air! The sauces and strawberries were delightful! However, I still prefer the chocolate cake. 

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There was this obscure shop that we chanced upon. It was selling melon ice-cream. Unfortunately, when we were there, they offered honey dew instead of melon. In the end, we ordered just the melon ice-cream in a cup. The melon ice-cream was smooth and fragrant and cost only 400 yen.

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In Sendai, Zunda Saryo is everywhere. However, it is hard to find them outside Sendai. There is an outlet in Daimaru at Tokyo Station but they sell the Zunda Shake only in the afternoon. As such, my hubby was very disappointed he couldn’t drink the shake as we were out early in the morning and back only late at night!

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While he prefers the shake, I prefer the ice-cream. The edamame ice-cream is not that smooth as you can still taste bits of the edamame. I know it’s hard to imagine edamame shake or ice-cream, but the taste is rather addictive. Once you’ve tried it, you become a loyal fan! They serve edamame mochi too but I find them too sweet.

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While we were at Sendai Station, there was a food fair. I was able to buy freshly made mochi. Mochi has to be freshly made so that they aren’t overly sweet. Sugar is a preservative, so mochi with a long shelf life is too sweet for me.

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A trip to Ashikaga Flower Park for the wisterias can’t be complete without trying their wisteria-themed dessert. The ice-cream was silky and thick. It was a lovely purple but I doubt it is natural colouring from the wisteria flowers. To produce that deep purple on such a large scale, you’ll probably need an entire field of fresh wisteria flowers! I have no idea what wisteria tastes like, but I’d smelled fresh wisterias up close. The heady aroma of wisterias was definitely missing in the ice-cream. In other words, the wisteria ice-cream tasted like any other neutral flavoured soft-serve ice-cream. For 450 yen, the ice-cream was big and heavy. Anyway, it was nice eating ice-cream in a beautiful garden on a Friday instead of working.

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The Yuzu Fuji Cider with wisteria-flavoured jelly was refreshing. The jelly is the typical konnyaku jelly. My hubby gave me the idea to recreate this drink a home. Instead of Yuzu Fuji Cider, just use any fizzy drink. Make the konnyaku jelly using the butterfly pea in my garden as natural colouring. To achieve that purple, I’ll have to add lemon juice to turn the blue to purple.  To improve on the presentation, I’ll top my drink with mint leaves!

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The wisteria smoothie was too rich for me, and my hubby refused to share it with me! He claimed there was a weird taste. I suspected the weird taste came from the honey and there was a tinge of saltiness. I didn’t find the taste that weird, but it was too much to finish the rich smoothie on my own. It was diminishing marginal return with every sip! The baked buns with sugary miso sauce didn’t appeal to me, so I didn’t buy it to try.

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Strawberry Kingdom was located within Ashikaga Flower Park, near the main entrance. Both of us enjoyed the strawberry ice-cream. In fact, it was nicer than the wisteria ice-cream. At least, there was the strawberry aroma and we could taste the tangy strawberry. At 420 yen, it was just as big and heavy as the wisteria ice-cream but definitely nicer! This is also the nicest strawberry ice-cream, out of the three we tried. The second was the melon bun sandwich with strawberry ice-cream at Osaka Dotonbori and the third was at the Hitachi Seaside Park at Ibaraki. Do try this ice-cream when you visit Ashikaga Flower Park.

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The Ashikaga Flower Park is open throughout the year. It is Gardens by the Bay on a much larger scale, and you get to see different flowers when you visit at different months. It is also voted one of three finest illuminations in the whole of Japan and their Christmas Fantasy may be worth a viewing. However, entrance fee to the park is not cheap by Japan standard. I paid 1700 yen per person. To get my money worth, I stayed to see the illumination which was really impressive. The illumination helped to hide the dried purple and pink wisterias. We were too late for the purple and pink wisterias, but we caught the white and yellow wisterias. Due to the hot weather, we were blessed to catch the roses which had bloomed a week earlier!

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The Hitachi Seaside Park at Ibaraki was another highlight of our trip in April/May 2023. I was there to catch the Baby Blue Eyes (nemophila). When I reached there around noon, I was rather disappointed. The hill slopes were not covered in the bright Baby Blue Eyes that I had seen in the posters! What I saw was dull blue hill slopes. To cheer me up, my hubby bought me a lovely pastel blue ice-cream. It wasn’t the typical soft-serve ice-cream; it tasted more like the 7-11 slurpee. There were white bites that tasted sourish. It was definitely a refreshing ice-cream that lifted my mood.

Then, I asked for lunch and he bought me this simple noodle soup. He had warned me not to expect much as he had limited choices. The noodle turned out to be the best I had tasted in Japan! It reminded me of the yellow noodle I usually eat for Prawn Noodle Soup or Fish Ball Noodle Soup! As I had fallen ill from the gruelling hours of travelling from Fukuoka to Tokyo to catch the wisterias, that noodle was the most appetising and reminded me of home. I was craving chicken congee and was missing my helper’s cooking.  It was the first time in a week that I was able to eat and finish solid food.

After lunch, we decided to take a walk on the hill slopes before going back. It should be past 1 pm by then. I noticed that the Baby Blue Eyes were getting brighter under the scorching sun. In the end, true to my research, I was able to witness the ‘blue sea of nemophila’ that ‘mimics the colour of the sky’. After the hike up to the highest point of the hill, we rewarded ourselves with more ice-cream. This Nemophila Ramune Soda is really good. It isn’t as creamy or heavy as the typical soft serve. This is a good blend of the white sourish bits of the earlier ice-cream. The white bits were not visible, but the taste was definitely there. The biscuit was freshly baked and buttery. For 450 yen, it is really one of the nicest ice-creams I’ve tasted in Japan so far.

My hubby bought another Strawberry ice-cream while at the Hitachi Seaside Park at Ibaraki. This was our third Strawberry ice-cream. We voted the Strawberry ice-cream by Strawberry Kingdom at Ashikaga Flower Park to be the best Strawberry ice-cream out of the three!

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