Japan: Land of Donuts

You may think Japan is the land of sushi and ramen and lychees, but actually, the Japanese love donuts.  And the love doing fabulously interesting things to donuts.

No visit to Japan is complete for me without a trip to Mister Donut. Mister Donut was a fixture of my childhood, until they got bought out by Dunkin’ Donuts and became… not as good. I had thought Mister Donut had vanished from the face of the planet, but in fact, no — they just all picked up and moved to asia, apparently! But as Japan is never going to be satisfied with mere honey glaze and powdered sugar, we got chocolate with… I think pistachio crunchies? and a musically-themed holiday-oriented green donut of indeterminate flavor. But wow, adding whip cream to a donut is a good idea!

Oh look, another trip to Mister Donut. I was kicking myself for not getting the black sesame. Black sesames are kind of awesome — same flavor as white sesames, but sweet! Also, a strawberry donut that tasted like it had actual strawberry bits in it.

Not exotic enough for you?

This is a beef stew donut. It seems weird at first, but actually, savory filled donuts are a fantastic idea! A wonderfully satisfying and portable meal combining meat and donuts — what’s not to like? This actually came in a little bag from a combini.

On a vaguely related note, I actually saw a bagel shop in Kyoto too… They seemed to have fruity bagels? Oddly enough, even though I’m a donut adventuress, I’m a bagel purist, so I didn’t try these.

And lastly, a totally inedible donut. Or donuts, I guess. I don’t even know if “Donuts” is the name of the band or the album, but I spotted this in a record store.

This entry was posted on Saturday, January 9th, 2010 at 9:52 am and is filed under food, japan. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.