Kyoto – Bored Sensei…

Konnichiwa!

The weather is good, the sun is inviting, but it isn’t warm enough to eat ice cream. But I can share my matcha stories in Kyoto.

Matcha has been gaining popularity abroad for the past few years and different countries are making their own matcha flavored recipe like frappe, cake, ice cream, tea etc. And if you are going to try matcha while traveling in Japan, the best place to go is Kyoto. Kyoto is home to Uji, a small city famous for producing matcha.

December 03, 2017

As we finished visiting Fushimi-inari shrine and some shrine close to it, we passed by this restaurant and what caught my attention is their matcha ice cream burger. When I was a kid, once we hear the familiar sound of our favorite sorbetes vendor (ice cream vendor) we would ran fast and shout out “teka lang po! bibili po kami!” to stop him from walking. So I asked them if they wanted to eat but to my dismay they were all full (we just finished eating sushi and some street food) but then I looked at Claudia’s shining eyes while looking at the burger. I blink slowly twice at her, nod slowly and we went inside together. But WAIT. I remember we don’t have any money! Claudia and I left it in the car because we were too excited to walk around. We went out again and saw the boys smiling “naze? you don’t have money?” and we all laughed. They lend us enough money to buy some and waited for the burger.

The place was good and the matcha ice cream burger too. The bun has matcha flavor in it too. I could say that the ice cream tastes like the ordinary matcha ice cream you could buy at convenience store but what makes it unique is that they mixed it with red beans and whipped cream and the combination was really good. Thumbs up. I feel nostalgic while eating it because I miss eating ice cream in a bun when I was a kid with my sister and brother. I also miss eating ice cream with boyfriend, we usually go down our unit (condo) to buy some ice cream at Family Mart which is at the ground floor of the building. (sob)

Price: 550 JPN

We also tried Taiyaki or “baked sea bream”, a Japanese fish-shaped cake with red bean paste inside made from sweetened azuki beans. It has other common fillings you can choose from like custard, chocolate, cheese or sweet potato but if you like unique ones you can try taiyaki with okonomiyaki, gyoza or sausage inside (I haven’t tried yet tho). Since we were in Kyoto, I tried the matcha taiyaki and it was good. I would definitely try it again next time, I’ve tried looking for a matcha taiyaki in Hamamatsu but I couldn’t find one. It’s definitely a must try.

Price: 110 JPN

And last but not the least, the Starbucks’s Matcha Tea Latte. You can buy it even at convenience store tho. It was good (everything for me is good btw lol) and I paired it with an Onigirazu, it is onigiri kinda thing but with different fillings. If you love Hawaiian Spam, this is for you. It is a rice with spam and egg fillings and wrapped with nori sheet (seaweed). You could also try making one at home since it seems easy to make one. You don’t need to form a triangle like the normal onigiri lols. It was good and easy to eat. It is good for picnic or simply snack anytime of the day.