JAPANESE SWEETS AND DRINKS

                       Ichigo Daifuku (Strawberry Daifuku)

                              
                               

Daifuku is a japanese sweet made of glutinous rice flour on the outside, and sweet red bean paste on the inside. Ichigo Daifuku is a variant of daifuku with a whole strawberry inside. The whole strawberry is wrapped around the sweet red bean paste. This mix of flavors is amazingly delicious!

Mitarashi dango

Mitarashi dango are a sweet made of many small sweet balls on a wooden stick with soy-caramel sauce on it. 

Hanami dango :

Dango can be various, there is sweet red bean dango, Mitarashi dango (soy-caramel sauce) and finally HANAMI DANGO. The hanami dango is generally consumed during the cherry blossoms era. In Spring. Hanami means "cherry blossom viewing"  (hana = flower /  mi = viewing ) 

The hanami dango is made of three sweet balls on a wooden stick, the balls being of different colors and flavors. The white ball is no-flavors (just plain ),  The green ball is green tea flavor, and the pink ball is strawberry flavor.

Dorayaki : 

Dorayaki is made of pancake on the outside and sweet red bean paste on the inside. There's generally two parts of pancakes, one above, and one below, and red bean paste being in the center/middle and inside.

Ice cream mochi

Ice cream mochi has glutinous rice flour on the outside, and ice cream on the inside. Different flavors are available :  Green tea flavor, Cherry blossom flavor, Mango flavor and Black sesame flavor.

There is also non-iced mochi , the ice cream inside is replaced with sweet red bean paste. The ice cream version doesn't have red bean paste but just ice cream inside.

Melon pan

Pan means "bread" in Japanese. Then "melon pan" is a melon-flavored bread. Never tasted it before, but I plan to try it when i'll go to Japan. I love to discover new foods and exotic desserts. 

Green tea flavored Ice cream with boiled sweet red beans on top of the ice cream.

Japan has creative and unique ice cream flavors, from green tea flavor to sweet red bean flavor, to yuzu (japanese fruit) flavor, and also WASABI flavor!  Yes, you read it right. Wasabi ice cream is a thing in Japan. 

Yokan

Yokan is a kind of jelly, generally with sweet red bean paste flavor (lol the Japanese ppl add sweet red bean paste on every sweet and cakes they make!) Yokan is generally consumed with a cup of hot green tea. 

Drinks : 

Ramune (Japanese lemonade)

Ramune is a kind of lemonade with bubbly/fizzy taste, ramune can have any flavors :  most popular ones are melon flavor, strawberry flavor, blueberry flavor, litchi flavor, mango flavor and some ramune are flavor-free.

Opening a ramune bottle can be difficult the first time. There is a small ball on the hole of the bottle. (surely to not let the bubbles go away) You have to remove the paper on top of the bottle, take off the bottle cap (there's two parts on it) Take apart the two parts and keep the one circular one, use it to press the the top of the bottle where there is the small ball, press pretty hard, and you'll see the ball dropping at the floor of the bottle. You can now drink! 

 

Note: Don't remove your hands too early, press the hole of the bottle with your hands a little bit for few secs, otherwise the drink might "overflow" out of the bottle, kinda like when you open a can of coca cola. 

Aloe vera juice (drink)

Aloe vera is popular for moisturizing creams, shower gels and shampoo. But there's also a drink made of aloe vera! The aloe juice is very sweet and contains small aloe pulps. It's not typically Japanese, as other asian countries also drink that aloe juice. Very popular all over Asia.

Bubble tea

Bubble tea is cold tea of many flavors :  Passion fruit ,  lychee, black tea etc...  The drink contains some small little round balls (called "bubble" but they aren't bubbles) that are used to give a better taste on the tea. 

Those little round balls are edible and the most popular ones are Tapioca balls. Bubble tea is very refreshing during summer.

This is now the end of my post. I hope you learned new things, and be free to post comments if I forgot some japanese sweets or drinks in this post.