Taiyaki & Festival Snacks Audio Guide

Sweets · Tokyo

Baked in a sea-bream-shaped iron mould and filled with plenty of sweet bean paste, taiyaki is a beloved snack. Alongside imagawa-yaki, cotton candy, candied apples and the other treats that colour a Japanese fair, we cov…

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Welcome to the World of Taiyaki & Festival Snacks

Welcome to the world of taiyaki and festival snacks. Strolling through an old-town shopping street, you may suddenly stop, caught by a sweet, toasty aroma. Follow it and you find rows of fish-shaped iron molds, a craftsman deftly pouring in batter and flipping the molds with a practiced turn — this is taiyaki. Wheat batter is wrapped around a generous filling of sweet red bean and baked until golden. Take a fresh one in hand: crisp on the outside, and from within spills a gently warm sweetness. Taiyaki, along with the stalls of festivals and shrine fairs, has kept company with the happy memories of the Japanese people. Cotton candy, candied apples, fried noodles — those flavors lined up beneath the red lanterns were something special that set the hearts of children and adults alike racing. For a traveler, it is a treat that lets you hold the giddy air of a Japanese festival right in your palm. Over the next hour or so, let's trace the story hidden behind this fish-shaped snack. Stop wherever a stall catches your eye, and listen at your own pace. To begin, let me tell you how this treat came to be — with the history of taiyaki.

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