yuuco's tekuteku diary

Can you see two little gold fish are floating in the jelly? This is not a candle nor a soap, this is Japanese traditional sweets for summer. The name is "Kingyo" means gold fish in Japanese. I couldn't take my eyes off when I found this because it's SO pretty! We have many kinds of seasonal traditional sweets. Kanten jelly which is made of sea weed is a very popular one for summer. This kind of detailed sweets are used at tea ceremony mainly so they express the seasons in the sweets. (Of course we eat it at usual tea time, too :)) I do love to see the colour, design, and the beautiful details. Yet it tastes really good! It's absolutely an art, I think! But as these are seasonal sweets, it's available for only short time. ;(



It's interesting to know what is each part made of. The water part is made of Kanten which is sea weed. The colourful red and light green stones are both beans and white ones are rice cake. Pebbles around those are sesames. Too cute to eat, really!



This is another cute sweets which caught my eyes. This sweets expresses fireflies on the grass.



I was really impressed by the idea. They put a black sesame on a tiny ball of yellow bean jam to express the light of firefly. Really poetic and it's just like a small garden in my hand! :)
There are so many others at the shops and choosing sweets is a lot of fun. They always let me notice transition from one season to the next. :)

I found these at this sweets shop. This shop is famous for "Ichigo daifuku", a rice cake a strawberry covered with bean jam inside. The strawberry is very big as much as kid's fist! Ichigo daifuku is limited time sweets during spring and winter though they have "Budo daifuku"(grape inside) and "Sumomo daifuku"(Japanese plum inside) instead in this season. Those are very juicy and pretty yummy as well, special recommended!