Japanese Food Gifts
The Japanese, they take their gift-giving seriously, a fact that I was reminded of while in Tokyo yesterday. I was passing through Ueno Station, one of my favorite parts of the city, and I saw an interesting shop selling omiyage (oh-mee-YAH-gay, souvenirs) of Tokyo, with the interesting name of Gift Island. They offered all manner of exotic sweets for sale, from the famous Tokyo Banana (banana-shaped cakes) to Goma Tamago (a traditional manju cake shaped like an egg and made with black sesame seeds, supposedly very healthy) to the fabulous castella, a cake rich in eggs that was introduced by the Dutch in the 16th century. One of my favorite traditional treats is called dora-yaki, which looks to the Western eye to be two pancakes with sweet Japanese beans inside; this is the favorite food of Doraemon the time-traveling robot cat, by the way. Of course, J-List has recently started carrying some interesting gift boxes of souvenir snacks you normally can only buy in places like Akihabara or Asakusa, with packages that are specially designed to be suitable for giving to others as gifts, or you can munch them yourself. Check them out on the site!
It looks like a Twinkie, but it's Tokyo Banana, so it's much cooler ^_^
posted by Peter in Japan at 8:18 PM
8 Comments:
To be honest, I did not like the taste of the Tokyo Bananas when I bought some. But I brought three boxes home and they were by FAR the most popular food item brought home.
It was weird because I thought the "Milk Almonds" I grabbed at the very top station on the Tateyama Alpine Route were the best thing I bought. I ended up keeping the boxes for myself because I loved them so much. Is there some sort of history behind these or are they just a really good omiyage? (imho).
11:03 PM
Haven't had those but I'll try in the future. One of my own favorites is the Yatsu-Hashi stuff you get in Kyoto, it is heavenly but I can never get any to give to anyone, I just eat it myself.
11:57 PM
OMG! The answer to this ancient Chipmunks song:
Japanese Banana
3:12 AM
Being a cloggie and not knowing what Castella cake is, I used the power of the internets to find out. Wikipedia claims it was brought in by Portuguese and that actually makes more sense to me.
Regardless, gotta try some next time! Or if you sell it, order some :)
6:37 AM
I just wanted to write to say thank you for taking the time to write these blogs. I've found them very informative and it gives me another reason to come visit the j-list site.
8:01 AM
Tudza, that's cool!
Ooranjin, are you from Holland with that name? I gather it was brought in back when the Portuguese and Spain carved up the world into halves and controlled most of it. The name like comes from the name for Spain during the time. Tempura, by the way, also came through Portuguese, and may come from the word tempora, time? Not sure.
Evan, glad you like the blog. We love helping people learn a little more about Japan, since it's such an interesting place. ^_^
12:25 PM
I'd always heard the derivation of tempura was from tempero, for seasoning. I see the time derivation, as in "holy times when we eat fish fried this way" in Wikipedia though. That might explain what I've always wondered about, why the use of "ten", heaven, for it in Japanese.
Oh man, I've been craving tanuki udon for days now and here we are talking tenpura.
4:25 PM
If you're in Tokyo, you're not getting any 人形焼?
12:07 AM
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