Japanese Ice Cream

Well lately I have been thinking to myself that I wanted to post more to the blog but I did not want to just post “crap.” So the other day I was talking to my younger brother and he asked me about some rice covered ice cream here in Japan.

Tonight I was looking at what I think he was talking about with the rice covered ice cream and it hit me (not the ice cream[I sometimes need to correct Japanese students on English grammar {scary thought} so this is to be clear what the it refers to]). If Josh is curious about rice covered ice cream everyone will be so that would make a good post for the blog (and it gives me an excuse to buy some more ice cream[insert sound effects of Homer Simpson for donuts] mmm ice cream[/effects]).

So I went to the local Seiyou (actually owned by Wal-Mart) and picked up a couple of “Japanese” style ice creams. The first is a green tea ice cream and the second was the “rice” covered ice cream, which are shown below before and after taking them out of their packaging.




I only put out a few of the the green tea variety.

For reference I have also added shots of the ice cream after cutting them in half. Sadly things begain to melt because of the time it took me walk back to the apartment.


What you can see for the green tea ice cream is that it has a kind of outer and inner shell. For the rice covered ice cream there is an outer coating around the ice cream middle.

I sampled both varieties and came to this conclusion. The green tea variety was not really an ice cream but rather more of a frozen green tea with sweeteners. The rice covered variety the ice cream in the middle was a good basic vanilla and the outer covering added a nice texture to the whole affair.

The green tea variety I sadly really did not care for. I to drink green tea either hot or cold but this does not do green tea justice. I really think the sweeteners take away from the overall taste.

For the rice covered variety, it was quite good, the vanilla was good and the covering was also nice. I am not sure if the covering is actually rice or made of rice. Maybe during the next week or two I will try to ask someone.

Finally in conclusion there were some more Japanese ice creams that I did not try for a couple of reasons. One very simply was that I was afraid of the flavors. I could not read the boxes and the pictures did not fill me with confidence. The second reason was these were not sold in individual packs so I would need to buy a big box. I do not have a freezer nor the appetite to eat that much ice cream at once (besides, mothers around the world probably frown on that). Below is a picture that I took of the display in the store.