In the Tohoku region of Japan, a common souvenir item you will see is their regional specialty, the Kamome no Tamago, which translates to “egg of seagull”. In English, they frequently refer to it as a “Seagull Egg”. Like most regional specialties, you will have to physically be in Tohoku (Iwate Prefecture is the safest bet), look online (https://saitoseika.co.jp/), or pass through international departures at the airport to find it. Like most of the other regional products, it has a short life; this one typically has 30 days from the date of manufacture. Although they claim that the motif is…

This tastes like a banana Twinkie, agreed all of my taste testers. I have not eaten Twinkies myself too often and cannot remember what it tastes like, but the Tokyo Banana certainly looks like a banana Twinkie. Tokyo Banana is basically banana filling on the inside and a very soft sponge cake on the outside. The banana filling is rather plain, but it works fine together. (According to a vegetarian friend, these were vegetarian at some point but no longer are. They currently have gelatin. She was very sad.) The packaging is rather nice. The inside box is not plain…

I very much enjoy the cookie called langue de chat, literally “tongue of cat”. It originated in France but has proven itself to be quite popular in Japan. We can observe this because many tourist attractions and towns have their own version of it. The Japanese versions are commonly not shaped like a cat’s tongue but are more like a square sandwich with filling. In 2023, I purchased these langue de chat from these places: The Famous Hokkaido-Exclusive Langue de Chat As far as I know, the famous Shiroi Koibito chocolat blanc et langue de chat from Ishiya (“ISHIYA GUARANTEED”,…

Rusk from Hakone Rusk is a popular souvenir from Hakone, which is known as a vacation destination for hot springs. I purchased my rusk from the gift shop of my hotel in Hakone and from the Grande Rivière Hakone Yumoto Store. The other Hakone Rusk store location is in Sengokuhara in Hakone. I think the Sengokuhara store is the main location, and it has a cafe on the second level. I also saw some Hakone Rusk at the Hakone Open Air Museum. Since I tried a lot of rusk from Grande Rivière in 2023, here are my comments on the…