EDAMAME FLAVORED SNACKS

Crunchy, not too salty snacks that taste like edamame (baby broad beans.) One of my favorite snacks in Japan. I try not to eat stuff like this too often (just because it's vegetable flavor doesn't mean it's healthy!)

ICE-CREAM

I went to Kintai Bridge in July 2009, and there was an ice-cream shop with 100 different flavors! Unfortunately I had just finished a delicious blueberry-yogurt ice-cream from a shop with a much smaller selection, and I had no appetite left. Maybe I should say fortunately... how do you choose from 100 flavors?! In Nagano at a hot spring resort I once sampled wasabi ice-cream, but I didn't enjoy it.

But the ice-creams that really get me excited are the ones you can buy at the convenience stores. They bring out seasonal flavors (and not just in ice-cream) which you can only buy for a couple of months and then they're gone. Sometimes they re-appear next time the season comes around, and sometimes they're gone forever. Like the divine chocolate fudge brownie - frozen fudge brownie on a stick - briefly available in Winter 2007. It still haunts my taste buds!

Actually, winter is my ice-cream season. I know that's weird, but in summer I'd usually rather have iced tea. But when the weather is freezing and I'm bundled up in coat, hat, and scarf, I crave ice-cream. The object of my ice-cream desires during the winter of 2009-2010 was the wonderful kinako-mochi monaka. Kinako is a nutty flavored powder made from roasted and ground soy beans, and mochi is a soft, doughy, slightly sweet rice-flour cake. I think this one is a standard because I saw it first in 2008-2009 winter. Lucky me!

Another frozen treat I'm particularly fond of is the frozen fruit ice lollies. The first one I tried was mandarin flavor - frozen juice packed full of mandarin segments. That was good, but was subsequently eclipsed by the mango version. Recently I saw grape and peach versions at the convenience store, but I haven't tried them yet.... it's summer in Japan, you see.

CRACKERS IN JAPAN

Japanese crackers are so good. There are many different kinds. I especially love the little thin white crackers with tiny pink shrimps and flecks of green seaweed, and the thicker crackers with small black beans. Yum! But the best senbei I've had are the big ones you can buy warm from the oven (grill?) at senbei stands. Yesterday I ate a yuzu flavored senbei from a shop near Ginkakuji. It was covered with large sugar crystals, very crunchy, not too sweet, and not too salty, with just a delicate hint of yuzu citrus flavor. Absolutely wonderful.