This seems to be the year that the 7 lucky gods are hitting center stage in Japanese marketing ploys. While walking home from a local shrine on New Year's Eve, I saw a poster featuring them. Each individual god is not unusual to see, especially Ebisu, who has his own beer in addition to being placed in front of various establishments. Unless you are on a pilgrimage to the groups of shrines that are all over Japan and house them, you don't tend to see them displayed all together. One of my Facebook friends posted a picture of bean cakes that showed their faces and I found a different variety of said cakes on sale at our local green grocer. These are filled with coarsely mashed sweet red beans. Last year, Ryoma Sakamoto's visage was plastered all over snacks. This year looks like it'll be the 7 lucky gods turn. I guess that all that matters is that the images are royalty free and no one has to pay the descendants any royalties. On that front, a septet of mythical people is a much better deal.
2 comments:
I think this 7 lucky gods picture is not patent-free. Maybe the design is protected, because we can see variety of 7 lucky gods image in Japan. Each differs on each items. Anyway, how do you feel about the sweets itself? Sometimes this types of sweets' contain something odd to me. Smashed sweet beans, cream, chocolate, and custard cream, and so on, we can see variety of this type of sweets we can see sometimes on the store, (some of them are not popular, though. )What kind of ningyo-yaki(this sweets) do you like best? It is similar to the hot cake, isn't it. Do you have something similar sweets in USA?
I took the picture, but I didn't buy them. I have had these types of things, and I agree that they are like a filled pancake. I've had some imagawayaki/taiyaki which are very similar to this. I tend to like them, but I prefer custard to beans (though I like both!).
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