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kakigori

We try a Ninja Kakigori shaved ice dessert in Japan and wash it down with Cheese Tapioca Tea

Castle setting is the perfect home for this shadow warrior’s Japanese dessert. 

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We tried a colossal shaved iced dessert at Omotesando, got an equally massive brain freeze

Fancy an ice-cold dessert as big as a watermelon?

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Hot and cold — Shirtless muscle man shaved ice cafe now open in Tokyo

Heat up your heart as you cool your body.

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“Grilled corn” and “gyoza” flavored shaved ice sold at Saitama cafe

This certainly doesn’t help the stereotype that Japan will put corn on top of anything.

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We visit a Maths Cafe in Japan and discover an adorable icy polar bear dessert

Mathematics and cute desserts go hand-in-hand at this unusual cafe in Japan.

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New Japanese dish combines two summertime greats – soba noodles and kakigori shaved ice

Now you can enjoy your main dish and dessert together in one meal.

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Cool Sweets: Tokyo’s sweet-and-sour shaved ice is the perfect dessert after Tsukishima monjayaki

Tokyo is packed full of delightful little neighborhoods, each with their own specialties. One of our favorite little neighborhoods is Tsukishima, renowned for Monja Street, an area overflowing with monjayaki restaurants. Located not far from Tsukiji Fish Market, it’s a great place for lunch when spending the day around Tokyo Bay.

But after eating a meal of monjayaki, you may have a hankering for something sweet. Fortunately, Cool Sweets, one of the best kakigori (shaved ice) places we’ve found yet, is located right on Monja Street! We recently stopped by to grab some photos and video of their delightful treats and highly recommend that you do too!

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Chill out with a tasty shaved ice treat from Mercedes-Benz’s ICE MONSTER tie-in shop

We’re not even halfway through summer here in Japan yet, and already we’ve seen a number of strange collaboration combinations, including barley and eel soda and soft-serve sushi.

This time we’d like to introduce another curious combination, in the form of a new Mercedes-Benz x Ice Monster shop that recently popped up in Roppongi, Tokyo. But what do luxury car makers know about making the perfect frozen ice treat? Our ever-popular reporter Mr. Sato heads out to investigate.

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Taiwan’s Ice Monster brings monster shaved ice, monster lines, and monster brain freeze to Tokyo

Popular Taiwanese kakigori (shaved ice) chain Ice Monster opened on Omotesando, the main boulevard of Tokyo’s trendy Harajuku neighborhood, at the end of April to five-hour waits. Even now, waits regularly extend over an hour, but the scuttlebutt was that it was worth it for the mountains of delicious, delicious shaved ice.

We braved the lines and the brain freeze to find out the truth for you, dear readers.

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Okinawa restaurant’s amazing shaved ice belongs in a (sufficiently air-conditioned) museum

Of all the art-you-can-eat creations that seem to be trending in Japan these days, most use easily manipulated and relatively sturdy substances such as rice and grated daikon radish, plus obvious stuff like cake and marzipan. So if these trendy edible canvases rank an eight or a nine on a 1-to-10 food art skill rating, we’d have to wager that ice-based food art is cranking it up to 11. And with ice melting in a matter of minutes, you’d think somebody would have to be crazy to try and make an edible sculpture out of it.

We can picture it now: The poor, young shaved ice art prodigy ridiculed and shunned by the food art community, forced to take his craft to far-off Okinawa and a decrepit-looking shop on an unassuming corner to carry out his trade in relative anonymity.

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Chocolate kakigori may be delicious, but looks like flaming pile of poo

A restaurant in the trendy Shimokitazawa neighborhood of Tokyo thought they would get into the spirit of Valentine’s Day by offering a limited edition chocolate kakigori, a traditional Japanese snack that involves putting toppings on shaved ice. There was only one small problem…

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Beat the heat with cute and cool kakigori!

The best part of summer is, without question, all the delicious frozen foods!

Ice cream, frozen yogurt, sherbert, milkshakes, and, of course, shaved ice, or kakigori in Japanese, are some of the most delectable things to you can gobble down to help keep your cool this summer.

But, since this is Japan, simple kakigori with strawberry syrup just isn’t enough! Here’s some of the cutest shaved ice you’ll see this year!

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