Mitsuwa's Bounty of Japanese Sweets: Wagashi Alert!

I stopped in for lunch today at Mitsuwa and was delighted to see the seasonal offering table COVERED in wagashi from Japan. The official start date of the sweets weekend sale is tomorrow, but I bought a few boxes of different treats - Aki no Otabe filled with Chestnut or sweet potato (Kyoto), Habutae Mochi (Fukui), and Karukan Manjyu (Kagoshima). They have an excellent selection with lots of different regional specialties from all over Japan. I was feeling super natsukashii, so it was great to walk in and select some of my favorites.

For those not familar with wagashi, or Japanese-style Japanese sweets: every city, particularly those with a tourist attraction of note, have a special sweet (meibutsu, or specialty) that reflects history, local ingredients, and/or seasons. When one travels in Japan, it is customary to buy boxes of these sweets to bring back to colleagues at work, family, or friends (or everyone). The boxes themselves are quite attractive and wrapped in paper. Of course, buying the airfreighted sweets from Mitsuwa is no comparison to buying them freshly-made in Japan, but for those of us not living near a traditional wagashi-ya (NYC, LA) it is the closest we can come to tasting a bit of nostalgia. Here's a pretty great article on a westerner trying to learn to make wagashi.

The sale officially runs October 7-10th.

I received one of their flyers this week promoting this event. I will bring it into work tomorrow and scan it.

Wagashi are really a work of art. I will probably be buying a box of those rabbit shaped ones... =)

Mmmm, bunnies from Tottori! During the summer sale I got the chick-shaped ones - the chidori manjyu from Shizuoka. Filled with shiro-an.

One non-recommendation - don't buy the sasadango from Niigata. I've had a lot of sasadango in my day and it just doesn't even come close to the fresh, warm sasadango served in Niigata. Nothing tastes right about it.

Great idea to scan the flyer in.

Here are scans of the flyer. I only scanned one side, since the other is general groceries and stuff...



Large version

Original version

Obachan's Kitchen and Balcony Garden has an interesting post on wagashi. She is planning on introducing a wagashi a month...

Sweet Seasons/October 2005 - Cosmos