tokyo fruits

no, no, not that tokyo fruits! i mean the fruit flavored sweets that we bought while in tokyo! 

i'm talking about miyagegashi or sweets that are made with the purpose of selling as a souvenir. chief among these, actually, i will go out on a limb and say THE miyagegashi from tokyo is tokyo banana. any place we visited that had a gift shop (and that was pretty much everywhere in tokyo, heh) there were boxes of tokyo banana. people were buying ARMFULS of these boxes for friends, family, coworkers, etc! 

we only got the one but WOW isn't this a beautiful wrapper?

here is the box after the outer wrapper has been removed. packaging in japan is an art form.

ah! here are the bananas!

the closest description that i have read of tokyo banana is that it is the japanese equivalent of a twinkie. well, um, kind of in that it is a sponge cake with filling. all comparisons to hostess crap stops there because this is STUPID FRESH.

the cake is so soft you don't really bite it per se. it kind of yields and then you taste this wonderful banana puree (which is pretty much just banana, milk, sugar and bit of vanilla. no weird stabilizers in sight!) and you wonder why you ever bother to eat anything produced by an american bakery.

ok, maybe that's just me. (kinda' doubt it though.)

tokyo banana comes in many styles and flavors including a chocolate leopard print version which is the REAL reason why i was calling things "coco bananas" on this trip.

another fruit sweet (toot sweet? haaa, thankfully, no.) that we purchased is a hokkaido specialty. yubari king melon half cut chocolates!

we got these at the hokkaido antenna store during our yamanote line adventure. i love this package almost as much as i love the candy!

i mean, ALMOST because, hot damn, these are DELICIOUS and WOW do they follow through on concept!

these adorable chocolates smell like melon the second you open one of the packets. how do they taste? well, EXACTLY LIKE MELON!! this chocolate is just so incredible on so many levels. (and it is probably as close as i am ever going to get to tasting a real yubari king melon.)

tomorrow i'll finally get around to posting about the eight varieties of kit kats that we bought. hahahaHAHAH I KNOW. this is the trip that won't stop! :D