Silliness

The market here for insanely cute and novel items is huge. We recently became proud owners of a toothbrush garden, and have a couple of blooms already! The harvest looks promising.

Melonpan

Melonpan is a dessert in Japan, named because its crust kind of resembles the outside of a rock melon. Normally they do not taste like melon, but I found one that was honeydew flavored! There wasn't any filling, it was just a nice sweet bread with fantastic flavor.

Sakuramochi

Yet another traditional Japanese treat! This one is a pink colored rice cake with red bean paste in the middle. The whole thing is wrapped in a pickled cherry blossom leaf. It's very sweet and good. The leaf is slightly salty and neutral. These are a popular snack during the spring.

Warabimochi Candy

This candy is a play on warabimochi. Traditional warabimochi is an old Japanese jello-like treat made from fern starch and dipped in toasted soybean flour. At grocery stores, you can find these packages of candy versions in different flavors such as peach, green tea, and cola. The one I have here is peach. The jiggly parts were a sweet peach flavor, and the dipping powder was peach also, but very tart. The package comes with a little fork so you can pick up the sticky bits and dip them in the powder. Pretty tasty!

A Spot of Heaven

Daifuku is a type of Japanese sweet. It is a small round ball of mochi filled with some kind of sweet filling. This filling can be anything from red bean paste, to strawberries, to ice cream. Our favorite, and probably the most sinful, daifuku is strawberry cheesecake. The mochi on the outside is so soft and velvety, and inside is a thick mound of cheesecake, and in the center of that is a dollop of smooth strawberry filling. I wish these weren't perishable, or else we would send them to everyone back home!!

Adorable Chocolates

A friend gave us some chocolates from Portland, Oregon, and they are precious! Two of the pieces in the box looked like a little dog and cat! We had never seen chocolates like that before. They were so cute and delicious!

Sakura

The cherry blossoms are nearing their peak for the year, and color is popping everywhere!