Zaku Zaku (ザクザク) is a store that specialises in their unique cream puffs using fresh ingredients from Hokkaido. We taste-tested the famous croquant chou (クロッカンシュー) and soft serve from the Zaku Zaku store in Harajuku.
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Namco Namja Town is one of two indoor theme parks run by Namco in Ikebukuro’s Sunshine City mall. We visited Namja Town where we ate at the Gyoza Stadium, sampled a few unusual ice-cream flavours (from a selection of 50!) and wandered through a haunted house.
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Themed cafes and restaurants are great for when you want to sit down for a full meal, and when it comes to eating themed snacks on the go, Japan has this covered too. Diver City shopping centre on Tokyo’s island of Odaiba has an official Hello Kitty store which sells mini Hello Kitty pancakes. We recently tried all four flavours.
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A couple of years ago I read about a ramen museum in Yokohama and added it to my 2013 Japan itinerary. We ran out of time, so put it on our itinerary again in 2014. This time we actually made it! Officially it is called Shin-Yokohama Raumen Museum, but is also referred to as the Yokohama Ramen Museum. I loved the idea that a country could be so fond of one of its dishes that it would dedicate a whole museum to it. I’d heard that it was really great, and I had images in my mind of a big museum all about ramen, with some food tasting at the end. This sounded like something a little different, I was pretty excited.
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