They usually appear at the convenience store cashier: small confections you may never have seen, often including a whole strawberry. But in reality, the Japanese convenience stores are full of traditional sweets. Read on for how to find them.
You do not have to be a very big fan of anime to recognize that Doraemon loves dorayaki. Looking at the anime, you see the blue cat robot from the future eating something that looks like small pancakes.
Dorayaki are not pancakes — the thin buns are actually a kind of sponge cake — and they can come with different fillings. The original, and still most popular, is mashed sweet red beans (anko). But you can also find marron dorayaki, custard dorayaki, and even pumpkin dorayaki. Of course, around Halloween.
Dorayaki are counted as traditional sweets, despite being invented (in their present form) as late as 1914. They join a wide selection of traditional sweets in the ubiquitous convenience stores. Many of them were invented even later than 1914.
Traditional Japanese sweets (in the sense of snack, rather than something sugary) are much less, well, sweet than their Western correspondents. Cakes so full of sugar that they put your teeth on edge are completely alien to traditional Japanese cooking, despite the country being self-sufficient in sugar production since the 18th century. Sugar in Japan is a spice, not an ingredient, and this is the case with other sweeteners — like honey and sweet sauces made from malted rice — used in the production of traditional Japanese sweets.
Every Japanese block used to have its specialized sweets store, producing and selling seasonal sweets for events such as the moon viewing in fall, or for the appreciation of the cherry flowers. The traditional sweets are of two kinds: Those intended to be eaten as dessert, or a snack; or the kind that was eaten during the tea ceremony, more intended as conversation starters than stomach fillers, exquisitely reproducing shapes from nature, like miniature vegetables, flowers, and sometimes even animals. These sweets are made from mashed beans and sugar, quite hard and not very tasty.
Gradually, grocery stores started selling traditional sweets, and their role has also steadily been usurped by convenience stores, which have taken over the market for groceries in small packages.
Japanese convenience stores have a wide selection of sweets, both traditional Japanese (和菓子, wagashi); and western-style (usually called ”sweets”).
The types merge and converge and sometimes it is hard to determine what kind of sweet a confection is. Especially when they are hybrids. Is a fish-shaped waffle bake filled with ice cream a kind of traditional sweet, or is it a Western sweet? And what about bean jam ice cream? Baked sweet potato crepes?
Even if you might have thought differently, traditional Japanese sweets are not particularly old and are often created as a reaction to Western sweets. Among the oldest traditional Japanese sweets are the castella, a sponge cake that was developed from cakes introduced by the Portuguese in the 18th century. Before then, sweets in Japan were either Chinese-style cakes (moon cakes are still very popular), or fruits, nuts, or beans, to be consumed during the tea ceremony. You will find them in the bread section, or in the sweets refrigerator if the sweet comes with a filling.
There is no other area of life where the Japanese are more intensely inventive, creating hybrids of traditional and modern foods. Ice cream embedded in a thin mochi shell is intensely popular, as are various custard puddings. At Halloween, you will find special Halloween puddings and konyakku jellies, neither of which constitutes a traditional Japanese sweet — although you will have a hard time finding them, and many other Halloween sweets, in stores anywhere else in the world.
There are some traditional sweets that are hard to mistake for the hybrids with Western cakes, however. Dango, balls of mochi (glutinous rice worked to a compact mass and shaped into a ball about a third the size of a golf ball) are incredibly popular as a snack, usually with a ”mitarashi” sauce, made from malted rice and starch. But you can also find it with anko, bean jam; and zunda, a sweet jam made from green soybeans (edamame).
Mochi is a standing ingredient in traditional Japanese sweets. The paste (hard when dried, chewy when fresh or re-heated) does not have very much taste in itself, but fruit juices or herbs — Japanese wormwood in the case of ”kusamochi”, a step deeper green than mochi with macha (Japanese tea) and a pleasant tangy blend of bitter and filling, like dark chocolate without chocolate, if you can imagine such a thing.
In the Tokyo area, there is a type of traditional sweet that traditionally was eaten around the spring and autumn equinoxes, and offered to the departed. It is ohagi, the outside is sweet.
Ohagi is often found in convenience stores around the equinoxes, but usually on the initiative of the store manager and not centrally mandated, so you can never be sure to find them. The religious association makes selling them a little bit sensitive — but clearly not in areas where people appreciate ohagi, so much that they would go elsewhere if they could not find ohagi in their local convenience store.
The ohagi sweets may look a bit off-putting to foreigners, with the thick brown sausage shape reminiscent of something else than the food, but they are quite tasty, the bean jam coating contrasting both in taste and texture to the rice inside.
You can also find them made with a sesame and sugar coating, kinako (roasted soybean flour), or zunda. In the Tokyo area, they are very popular all year round. There are cafes specializing in ohagi, often only frequented by locals.
Japanese sweets are also different from Western staples in that they are highly seasonal. Not only the shapes but also the ingredients. In season, there is another type of sweet you will find at the register in convenience stores: ichigo daifuku.
Daifuku (大福) is a mochi bun, often with beans worked in (mame daifuku, 豆大福). The tastiest version, and the one which is most seasonal, is the strawberry (いちご) daifuku, with a whole strawberry encapsulated in mochi.
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