At the base of the Skytree there’s a dessert rooted in enmusubi traditions.
I think we can all agree that at any moment when you’re eating ice cream, you’re enjoying one of life’s great blessings. It’s when your dessert is finished that your mind will once again start to wonder about what your future fate will be, and to help answer that question, there’s Negawakuba.
Negaqakuba is a store in Solamachi, the entertainment complex at the base of the Skytree in Tokyo’s Oshiage neighborhood. It specializes in good-luck charms that draw on Shinto traditions and folklore, and that theme carries over to the attached cafe, which is offering Japanese-style ice cream parfaits with a side of fortune telling.
The Enmusubi no Goen Ice Manpuku no Imo is a special for-fall dessert with its most striking feature being the cookie styled like a bright red torii gate, of the kind that marks the entrance to Shinto shrine grounds. Forming a swirly cloud-like backdrop for the gate is a dollop of espuma cream, and providing the autumnal element are sweet potato chips, smooth sweet potato paste, and blocks of daigaku imo, glazed sweet potato sprinkled with black sesame. All of these sit atop a cup of salty vanilla ice cream.
The dessert is as packed with playful puns as it is mouthwatering ingredients. Enmusubi is a kind of good luck charm that’s said to help form good relationships, usually of the romantic kind, but also possibly for good business or general interpersonal connections. These happy relationships are called goen, but when written with different kanji characters, goen can also mean “honorable salt.” Likewise, the manpuku part of the Enmusubi no Goen Ice Manpuku no Imo’s name is written with the kanji for “10,000 blessings,” but in the context of food manpuku, if written differently, means “full/satisfied stomach.” With imo meaning either potato or sweet potato, you could translate Enmusubi no Goen Ice Manpuku no Imo as either “Filling Salty Ice Cream Sweet Potato Enmusubi” or “Blessed Good Relationship Seet Potato Enmusubi.”
By the way, if you’re wondering about that cute little bunny pictured next to the parfait in the above photo, that’s an usagi mikuji, a figurine shaped like a rabit (usagi) with a paper telling you your fortune (mikuji) inside. Usagi mikuji are sold at some Shinto shrines, and Negawakuba offers a set that bundles one with the Enmusubi no Goen Ice Manpuku no Imo for 1,275 yen (US$8). Alternatively, the dessert can be ordered a la carte for 750 yen, or with a cup of black tea grown in the town of Izumo, Shimane Prefecture, whose enmusubi are said to be especially effective.
Ah, but if you don’t order the set with the usagi mikuji, you won’t know you future, right? Not necessarily, because customers who order the parfait without the figurine are invited to draw their fortune from a traditional mikuji box…
…and also to ring a set of kagura suzu bells, used by shrine maidens during ceremonial dances, with a wish in their heart.
The parfait can be ordered as either an eat-in or to-go item. It’s on sale now, and will be offered while supplies last.
Cafe information
Negawakuba / 願
Address: Tokyo-to, Sumida-ku, Oshiage 1-1-2, Tokyo Skytree Solamachi East Yard 4th floor
東京都墨田区押上1-1-2 東京スカイツリータウン・ソラマチ イーストヤード4階
Open 10 a.m.-9 p.m.
Website
Source, images: PR Times
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