Japanese Confections. Ooooh! Pretty!

My husband is nice. Last Friday, he came home from the city with a lovely little surprise for me — a bag full of Japanese confections from a store on Market St. called Minamoto Kitchoan. I’m not sure if I’d ever even tasted a Japanese dessert before (not counting Pocky and Hello Panda!) so I’m no expert, but just by looking at them you can tell that these are some mighty fine treats. Even the way they were packaged was beautiful. Let’s have a look, shall we?

Oh wait! Before we begin, I should tell you that I’m not at all familiar with these foods. Most of these flavors were unfamiliar to me and the English translations on the labels are simplistic at best, so please forgive me if I’m completely inaccurate in my descriptions of these items. OK, let’s carry on!

The first package was a pillow box decorated to look like a blue fish. Nice, isn’t it?

The other side was the same fish, but it was red.

This is what was inside the box:

According to the English translations on the labels these were (clockwise from top left): bean cake, bean cake, bean cake, and chocolat mikasa.

The “bean cake” description was pretty frustrating as these were all very different in looks and taste and I would have liked a little more information about them. I thought this one was the prettiest:

It was a lovely pale green on the outside with a darker green center and it tasted like green tea. Zach and I thought it was tasty, but the boys both spit it out when they tried it, and Wyatt hilariously asked, “Why does it taste like that??”

The second package of treats was also prettily packaged:

This bag contained gorgeously packaged jellies. These look huge in the pictures, but each one was only about an inch and a half tall.

This one was citron flavored. I thought this one tasted the best and everyone else enjoyed it too. I wish I’d taken a picture of the jelly itself because it looked like a gorgeous, yellow jewel.