Random Picture 61

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You know it's warming up when the "soft cream" trucks start rolling along the streets. This one was parked near Ueno park during the latter part of the cherry blossom viewing season. More Japanese people like soft serve ice cream than the real deal (hand scooped), and it's cheaper and easier to find. To be fair, I finally tried some "soft cream" in Japan for the first time and it was pretty good. The flavors on offer here are "sakura" (cherry blossom), green tea, sweet potato, melon, chocolate and vanilla mix, vanilla and mango. I wish I had bought some, but I wasn't really in the mood at the time. I'm thinking the sweet potato might have been pretty nifty.

Random Picture 54

There are parts of Tokyo which can be described as "Korean towns/districts" and my husband and I walked through one a few weeks back. We came across this food stand selling a type of pancake that it called "Jongno Hotoku" as well as something the Japanese call topoki (what the Koreans call "tteobokki", I believe). The topoki is a spicy  mix of rice tubes and what looks like a tomato-based sauce. The truth is that I've never had topoki, but I did once try a Korean salted snack based on it. The snack was slightly sweet and tasted like bell peppers.

The cheese pancake.

The jongno hotoku pancakes could be had in cheese, red bean or honey flavors. We tried the cheese and it had a somewhat chewy texture and tasted a bit like a conventional pancake. My feeling was that it was too bland, and needed some salt to bring out the flavors. It didn't help that the cheese that was used was processed and pretty flavorless. Still, it was only 200 yen ($2.40) and not a bad food stand snack. Next time, we'll probably try the honey version (my husband isn't a red bean fan).