Spirit yourself away to a Japanese Christmas.

In Japan, Christmas is celebrated differently to much of the Western world, with people setting up romantic dates on Christmas Eve and buying strawberry shortcakes instead of traditional fruit cakes, due to their festive red-and-white colours.

If you’re a Studio Ghibli fan in Japan, then Christmas is a whole other ball game, because you get to enjoy cakes adorned with characters from My Neighbour Totoro at a special bakery cafe in Tokyo called Shirohige’s Cream Puff Factory.

▼ The cafe is known as “白髭のシュークリーム工房” (“Shirohige no Shuu Kuriimu Koubou”) in Japanese.

Photo©SoraNews24 

The bakery has the official blessing from Studio Ghibli to produce Totoro-themed sweets, and this Christmas they’re giving us some of the best treats available.

First up, we have two shortcakes, priced at 6,500 yen (US$43.35) each. The Strawberry Shortcake (“Ichigo no Shoutokeeki“), which looks like a traditional Japanese Christmas cake, comes with an adorable cream puff Totoro sitting in the middle, as if surrounded by creamy white snow.

▼ This Totoro is filled with custard cream.

Chocolate lovers can opt for the Chocolate and Banana Shortcake (“Choco to Banana no Shoutokeeki“), which combines premium bananas with couverture chocolate to create an irresistible melt-in-your-mouth smoothness that makes it a favourite amongst staff at the store.

▼ This shortcake also features a custard cream Totoro.

Another melt-in-the-mouth offering is the Souffle Cheesecake (“Sufure Chiizukeeki”), priced at 5,500 yen, which is made with loads of Hokkaido cream cheese and steamed slowly at low temperatures to give it a moist texture and rich flavour.

▼ Another cake, another custard cream Totoro.

While the sweets above have been offered in previous years, this year we have a couple of brand new cakes that look absolutely adorable.

The Boh-and-Friends Mont Blanc (“Botachi no Mon Buran“) sees Spirited Away characters Boh and Yu-bird, in their altered mouse and fly forms, make an appearance at the factory for the very first time. They sit upon a Mont Blanc made with Japanese chestnuts from Kumamoto Prefecture.

▼ Priced at 2,500 yen, this 11-centimetre (4.3-inch) cake is a single-person serving.

The final cake in the series is Totoro’s Bûche de Noël (“Totoro no Busshu Do Noeru“), a 17-centimetre long Yule log cake filled with chocolate cream and delicious, nutty flavours, priced at 4,500 yen.

The bakery cafe is best known for its signature Totoro Cream Puffs (“Totoro no Shuu Kuriimu“), which it sells throughout the year, but for Christmas there are two special varieties that come with cute holly leaf decorations.

▼ The two Christmas flavours are: Custard Cream (“Kasutaado Kuriimu) and Strawberry Cream (“Ichigo Kuriimu“), priced at 640 yen and 680 yen respectively.

Finally, we have the Totoro and Tree (“Totoro ando Tsurii“), which consists of three cute cookies in a bag, for 800 yen.

The cookies will be available for pickup from 14-25 December, while the other items can be picked up from 21-25 December. Stocks are limited so although the bakery might have some treats in store on those dates, customers are being advised to reserve the products beforehand to avoid missing out, with reservations opening at 12:00 p.m. on 4 December and running through until 6:00 p.m. on 16 December.

Reservations are only being accepted by phone (details below), so if you need to speak a little Japanese to get a taste of these treats, you can start the conversation by saying “Kurisumasu Keeki wo yoyaku shitain desuga” (“I’d like to reserve a Christmas Cake”), followed by your selections, using the Japanese pronunciations we’ve provided above, along with your name and contact details.

Cafe information
Shirohige’s Cream Puff Factory / 白髭のシュークリーム工房
Address: Tokyo-to, Setagaya-ku, Daita 5-3-1
東京都世田谷区代田5-3-1
Open 10:30 a.m.-6:00 p.m., closed Tuesdays (or Wednesday if Tuesday is a holiday)
Telephone: 03-5787-6221
Website

Source, images: Shirohige’s Cream Puff Factory unless otherwise noted
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