Food: Common Japanese Ice Cream Flavors

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Common Japanese Ice Cream Flavors
Thursday, November 24, 2005

I don't know about you, but when I think of ice cream, I immediately think of the more traditional flavors, such as chocolate, vanilla, and strawberry.  After a moment, other flavors, including rocky road, mint chocolate chip, and butter pecan make their way into my consciousness.  I don't think that anyone would argue with the opinion that these are very common and conventional ice cream flavors -- at least here in the United States.  But other countries, such as Japan, of course have their ideas of what constitutes "regular" flavors.  Let's take a look at some of the ice cream varieties that our Japanese brethren consider  refreshing on a hot summer day.

Green Tea
Green tea ice cream is one of the most popular flavors in Japan.  It is readily available at convenience stores, ice cream shops, and as dessert in restaurants.  As you might expect, this ice cream is typically made with natural green tea powder and tastes very much like the real thing.  So, if you are a fan of Japanese green tea, you will almost certainly love this ice cream.  If you don't like green tea, then you'll obviously want to steer clear of this concoction.

Wasabi
Yes, we're talking about the green horseradish paste that is frequently used when preparing sushi rolls.  As far as I know, you can't just go to any grocery store in Japan and purchase wasabi ice cream.  Instead, you'll most likely be able to find it in famous wasabi-producing regions in that country.  Again, I think you would have to be a real fan of wasabi in order to even consider trying this flavor!

Crab
This ice cream flavor is popular on the northern Japanese island of Hokkaido.  The Hokkaido region is famous for its seafood -- particularly for its crab legs.  So I guess someone thought that making crab ice cream would be a natural extension of this fame.

Tempura
This ice cream may actually be more of a serving style than an actual flavor, but I'm including it anyway.  The word tempura refers to the fried batter of deep-fried foods such as shrimp.  So tempura ice cream actually consists of a scoop of vanilla (or another flavor) ice cream served in a warm tempura shell.  It sounds like it wouldn't be very appetizing, but I think it tastes quite good and is not as greasy as you might expect.  For obvious reasons, this kind of ice cream is mostly available in restaurants rather than in stores.

Corn
Corn is a very popular flavor in Japan.  You can get corn-flavored chips and snacks, and if you go to a restaurant and order a dinner set, it will most likely come with corn soup.  It's really no wonder, then, that there is corn-flavored ice cream seasonally available in grocery stores.

Ox Tongue
Well, I don't know much about this ice cream flavor -- except that it really does exist.  Oh, and I also know that I would never try it because I simply can't get past the name!

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