Souvenirs from Japan

Wednesday was the first day in...oh, I don't know, a year, possibly 2 that I actually bothered to pack a Mr. Bento lunch and I forgot to take a photo. Nuts! Also, we discovered during a lunchtime walk that there is such a thing as a cupcake truck. It's a brilliant idea, and I'm only annoyed I didn't think of it myself. I would show you a photo of the teeny red velvet cupcake I got (minis are a buck) but...no camera. But you can check out Cupcake Stop for yourself and see when they'll be near you!

In the meantime, my mom went to Japan recently and brought back all kinds of delicious snackies:


I love the packaging on this. Most of the snacks were variations on mochi, a chewy, sticky confection made out of glutinous rice flour. This box contained a whole lot of mini mochis.




They are wee and cute (a driving force in my life, if you haven't noticed already). The box came with four flavors, black sesame, green tea dusted with soy powder, strawberry (I think), and I can't remember the last flavor.


There was also an assortment of what I'm calling mochi dumplings; I've never seen anything like these before, and they were actually a little bit weird to me in texture. Not my favorite, although the black sesame was pretty tasty.


This is my favorite of the snacks--White Melody sandwich cookies. Again, beautifully packaged (and per the package wording "splendid in taste".)


It's two tuiles sandwiched with white chocolate, which I'm normally not a fan of, but together with the cookies...let's just say I wish I had a few more boxes.


Tea and tea snacks. Quite a haul, huh?


Not to forget though, this awesome amulet (I believe they are called omamori) from Kinkaku-ji in Kyoto. There's a little tablet inside it with a Buddhist prayer for good luck/protection. I have it hanging at my desk at work and so far, I've resisted the urge to open it up to see the tablet.

And that's that! We are off on a camping trip shortly (my first one); I am greatly looking forward to setting marshmallows on fire.