It’s the season for sakura-mochi!

Sakura means cherry blossom. Cherries will bloom in about a month in Japan (^-^) Now, it is the season for my favorite sweet, sakura-mochi! Some Japanese sweets have their season. My best sweet for spring is sakura-mochi and for fall is kurikinton (chestnuts confection). Sakura-moch is wrapped in salted cherry leaf. You can eat the leaf as well. Sakura-mochi has sweet bean paste inside of the rice dumpling. I love the rice part which is a little sweet. I could have a bucket of it ψ(｀∇´)ψ

Our master usually buys five pieces of confection for our lesson. We consume only three pieces in the lesson, which are for the master, my wife, Hiro and me. Usually two pieces remain. Our master is so generous that she gives us the remaining ones sometimes. This is what we had from this week’s tea lesson.　I had it with matcha yesterday’s tea time at home, and I was so happyヾ(＠⌒ー⌒＠)ノ Have a good weekend!

Sweets from a confectionary shop and supermarket

I went to Azumaken, my favorite confectionary shop in my town on the New Year’s Eve. There are several confectionary shops in the town, and I think Azumaken is the best. They might be a little expensive but their sweets look beautiful.

These are the sweets we bought at Azumaken. They were around 200yen each.



I also found some confectionary at a supermarket. They were about 100yen each. I don’t usually find this type of confections at the supermarket, but I guess it’s New Year so there are some demands. I bought them to compare how different from sweets at Azumaken.


The sweets from Azumaken were about double in the price, and looked sophisticated. The sweets from the supermarket were harsh in the color and crude in the design. Supermarket ones were not bad. I love these reasonable sweets, but they pale when compared to expensive sweets, as a matter of course.

There was a same design of sweets at both Azumaken and the supermarket. It was a plum-blossom-shaped confection. Do you see the difference?

They are made of sweet bean paste, and nothing taste like plum, though.


These are confectionary from Azumaken. They are images of crane and tortoise. Crane and tortoise are lucky animals in Japan.




These are also confectionary from Azumaken. The pink one on the left is an image of the rising sun with a design of big wave on it. I like the pretty color of hte sun and the great composition of the wave. I think the wave looks like The Great Wave off Kanagawa by Hokusai (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Great_Wave_off_Kanagawa2.jpg).




We had osechi, a special meal in the morning of New Year Day. After osechi we enjoyed the confections with matcha.

Sweet dumplings

Last night, I went to a supermarket for shipping for Christmas dinner. It was pretty crowded with customers. I got some cheese and vestibules for cheese fondue, and a whole chicken. I also find reasonable sweets there. They were 98yen per package, which had 5 little pieces of sweet dumplings. I got two different packages. I already had two of each, so in the picture only three pieces left (^_^;)








These dumplings were the sweets to go with my today’s tea. The darker one has a white chewy dumpling covered with sweet bean paste. The white one is made of the white chewy stuff, and has sweet bean paste in it. Even though they are very reasonable, they give me a great pleasure for my tea time. I love those reasonable sweets (^-^) Wish you a Marry Christmas!

Sweet pick at tea ceremony

It is a little cold cloudy day, but the sun comes and goes from breaks through a cloud sometimes. By getting the comfortable sunlight, my dining room is not so cold. I enjoyed my peaceful tea time with a confectionary and matcha in the room. The confectionary I had today were the leftover sweets from yesterday’s tea lesson. Our master is very generous and sometimes gives us the leftover sweets.


Yesterday’s confection was a little unique. It was made of a dried persimmon and has a white chewy sweetened dumpling in it. I love dried persimmons so I liked this confection. We usually use a sweet pick to have a confection at a tea ceremony. This is what I personally use.

But the dried persimmon is a little chewy as well and it was too difficult to eat it with the pick. You can bite it directly in this case. The sweets served at many tea ceremonies are usually easy to have it with the pick. This persimmon confection is not so suitable for tea ceremonies, our master said. But she also told us if you ever had a confection that is difficult to consume with the use of a pick, you may have it with your hands for too fragile ones or for biting it directly with very chewy ones.

Last night we had the last tea lesson of this year. For next year’s first event, we are planning to join a tea ceremony which will be held in a neighborhood city. I’m so much looking forward to it!

Matcha cake

It was raining in the morning, but now it’s getting sunny. I’ve just had a Japanese confectionery and bowl of matcha. I feel that it’s gonna be a good day(*^。^*)



The other day, I got some cakes from a neighborhood pastry shop. There was a matcha flavored cake in them. I loved it. It was layered with some matcha sponge cake, mousse, cream and chocolate. It was very smooth and had rich flavor like high quality chocolate. Nowadays matcha flavored sweets are very popular. It is not only for Japanese confectioneries. I even see a lot of combinations of western sweets and the matcha flavor in Japan. I guess most of the chocolate flavored sweets can be substituted by matcha flavor for the bitterness. That’s why matcha flavor goes really well with western sweets as well. Are green tea flavored sweets popular in your country?

Box of Kurikinton (Japanese chestnuts confectionery) from Ena

Ena in Gifu prefecture has many Japanese confectionery shops. Kurikinton is a kind of Japanese confectionery made of chestnuts and sugar. Krikinton from Ena confectionery shops are pretty popular. The other day, I got a box of kurikinton from my parents as a present from their trip to Gifu. The box contains 8 kurikintons from 8 confectionery shops of Ena. Actually, kurikinton is my favorite confection, so the box is like a jewelry case for me ヽ(^。^)ノ





I shared them with Hiro. Kurikinton is my favorite, so I of course loved all of them. But each shop has their own taste on kurikinton. You will find slight difference among them. It was fun to talk about different kinds of kurikinton: How each of them is like, and which one we like the best. Some have smooth texture, and some have crushed chestnuts in them. Some are a little dryer and some are a little moist. Some are sweet, while some are not so much. You can tell that different kinds of chestnuts used as ingredients can affect the flavor of the kurinkinton. I liked the kurikinton from Kawakamiya confectionary shop the best (*^。^*) It has a nice natural chestnut flavor and a mild sweetness. Hiro liked the one from Suya which is a little sweeter and has some crushed chestnuts. Natural flavor of kurikinton goes really well with Japanese green tea!!

Confectionery shop with café place, Isuzu-chaya at Okage-yokocho

At Okage-yokocho, we found another sweets shop, Isuzu-chaya. It was a nice old building.

They also have café place. I wanted to have some matcha and sweets, but we had just had akafuku-mochi, and were kind of full. So we didn’t have anything here. I just took some pictures and left. Maybe, the next time when we visit Okage-yokocho, we would like to stop by and have tea time here.



Isuzu-chaya web page >>> http://www.isuzuchaya.com/index.htm

Akafuku at Okage-yokocho

There are many shops at Okage-yokocho in Ise as I told you on the last post. Ise is a coastal city, so they are abundant in seafood. There are some shops grilling or deep fring some seafood with nice smell at the front of the store. We had some grilled oysters and sea urchin. I don’t like oysters much but Hiro loves them.




At Okage-yokocho, there are some Akafuku stores. Akafuku is a popular confectionery store originally from Ise. I have introduced about Matsuzakaya-Nagoya branch before on my blog. >>> http://everyonestea.blogspot.com/2010/04/akafuku-cafe.html We stopped by the main store of Akafuku for tea. We had Akafuku-mochi at the cafe and the tea served with it was hojicha. Hojicha is roasted tea.


They are actually roasting the tea with their own tea roaster at the store. Hojicha is usually roasted at tea stores. This is very unique for a café to have its own tea roaster. You can smell the nice roasted aroma at the store and I think the aroma stimulates your appetite.



You will find a small room at the store which Akafuku-mochi is made. Two ladies were actually making it in the room when we visited.

Reasonable sweets at supermarket

Usually a piece of sweets costs about 120-300yen at Japanese confectionery stores. I found reasonable sweets at supermarket today. They were on sale. A package for four pieces was sold at 98yen. How cheap! They are not as good as the sweets sold at confectionary stores, but it’s better than nothing. I often have this kind of reasonable sweets to enhance my casual tea time at home. They make me happy!!

Matcha shave ice at Komeda

We stopped by a café, Komeda coffee on the way home from the ceramic festival. Komeda is local coffee shop chain. It was so hot on the day, and I had a shaved ice with condensed milk and matcha syrup. I don’t remember the price, but it was probably around 600-700yen. It was not a reasonable shaved ice, but it was very good. We all loved it. The ice was very fine saved, and light. The amount of the syrup was just right, not too much or less. It was my favorite kinds　(^-^)

About Japanese confectionery I tried the other day

Some people asked me what the tastes of the sweets are like, which I introduce on the last post. These jelly-type sweets are popular in the summer. I don’t know exactly how they are made, but I think they are made of agar and sweated bean past. Brown one had brown sugar flavor and it had white sweated been past inside. White one had a comfortable natural sweetness.





It is difficult to explain the taste of sweated bean past. The bean past is called “An” or “Anko”, and used in many Japanese sweets, and very important. If you want to know how Japanese sweets tastes are like, you will need to know the sweated bean past, I think. I know some western people don’t like it, and some love it. Most of traditional Japanese confectioneries do not contain fatty stuff, like whip cream or batter. So the tastes are simple than western sweets. I hope someday you have a chance to try sweated been past, I mean Japanese confectionery, hopefully not cheap one, try nice one. Nice confectioneries will be smooth and has natural sweetness. They will really go with Japanese tea!!

Japanese sweets café, Kaya in Nakatsugawa Gifu prefecture

We visited a Japanese confectionary shop, Suya in Nakatsugawa on the way back from the previous trip from Nagiso. On the trip we bought some sweets there, but didn’t stop by the café next door. So, this time I wanted to visit the café. The café is called Kaya, and had the nice atmosphere with trees around. In front of the entrance, some sweets were cooled with water in a basin, which created the air of coolness. I thought you could have matcha and some sweets from the confectionary shop next door, actually you could not. Kaya offers traditional Japanese sweets, such as anmitsu, zenzai, oshiruko and so on. I loved their sweets. They were really good. I want to come visit here again!












Anmitsu, this is what I ordered.
The translucent stuff is agar,
and it has sweet been past and white rice stuff on it.
It comes with syrup. I loved it






Iced shiratama, Hiro had this.
It’s sweet bean drink with white rice stuff.
Hot one is poplar, but this is served in cold.







Sobagaki
It is soba past. Soba is the ingredient of Soba noodle.








Matcha azuki (seasonal menu)
Matcha mousse and sweet been past








Kaya webpage (Japanese) >>> http://www.suya-honke.co.jp/kaya.html

Sweets of June

This weekend we went to our favorite confection store, Azumaken. We love them for their beautiful looking confections, which I think the best in our town. This sweetfish is confectionary. Doesn’t it look real?













What we bought were these four. (from left ,hydrangea, swallow, firefly, hydrangea)
Can you see the light yellow dots in the third confectionary from the left? They are image of fireflies fling in the dark.