During our stay in Japan, we visited the home of best green teas, Shizuoka. Along the way, we discovered many wonderful food, drinks, and yes, sweets. We bought so many delicious gifts there for our family and friends, and of course, for ourselves! We visited Kakegawa Castle, and right by the castle was a little shopping center that also offered some lunch and desserts.
The shopping center is called Kodawarippa, and it was a pretty nice size. The exterior is constructed to match the exterior of the castle, so that it does not look out of the place. It was really cool that many of the buildings around the castle in the city followed this method when they were designing them.
They had very enticing advertisement in front of the shopping center. It was big, colorful, and very inviting with huge photo of soft serve. It was a crazy hot day in Shizuoka, we went right in to get some ice cold soft serves!
The inside was pretty big, with lots of gifts for sale. They of course had lots of teas, but they also offered cookies, accessories, drinks, etc… This particular cookies I found was so cute! I heard that the Kakegawa Castle was used for a TV series based on true story, featuring the female head of the clan back around 1580s. The cookies have the characters from the TV show.
They had a little sample of their cold green teas, and when the staff saw that I was burning up in the heat, she offered me some of these cold green teas. They soothed my dried up throat and yes, they were excellent! Deep, strong, and refreshing flavors…just what my body needed to calm down.
We looked around the store a bit before we bought their soft serves. One interesting snack I found was Unagi Imo (eel potato) related snacks. No, it is not made with eel, but the potato that they grow there is called Unagi (eel) potato, since they are rather thin and long. I bought Unagi Imo pie, and it was really great. Kind of like sweet potato pie, but less orange.
The weirdest thing I found was the soda drinks. They had some really tasty sounding one like Shizuoka Strawberry Soda, Shizuoka Melon Soda, and Shizuoka Orange Soda. BUT, here is the weird one: Unagi Cola! It said that it contains eel extra in it… No, I was not brave enough to try it. They also had Shizuoka Green Tea Cola, that one sounded pretty good too.
One last interesting item I am going to show you is the Eel Bone snacks. It said that it is a great source of calcium, or makes a great accompaniment to beer and sake.
Now, back to the shopping center itself. They have a second floor dining area, where you can order lunch and/or desserts and eat in. We went to take a look, but since there was no one there (and we just wanted a little snack anyways), we decided not to dine in.
On the first floor by the staircase is a small seating area, where you can relax a bit with some snacks and drinks. It had a really nice wall mural, showing the distance of everything around the area from Kodawarippa and the Kakegawa Castle.
After browsing the store and finding a good spot to eat our soft serve, we went back the soft serve counter to order some ice-cold sweets. At any other places in Tokyo or New York or anywhere else, they might only have one kind of Matcha or Green Tea soft serve. But, when you are in a land of green teas, you get to have selection of them!
The first one of our choice was Kakegawa Matcha soft serve in a cone (350 yen). It had really nice flavor, sweet with just a bit of bitterness from the matcha, creamy and velvety. It showed that this one was their second most popular ice cream.
The second choice was Kakegawa Matcha & Condensed Milk Mix (350 yen). This one was the most popular kind, and we could see the reason why. It was really awesome and delicious! The mix of sweetness from the condensed milk and bitterness from the matcha created a perfect blend of harmony and flavor.
The last one we bought was Kakegawa New Tea (newly-picked tea) soft serve (350 yen). This was less sweet, with more bitterness to it. It had powdered matcha from the new tea on top, emphasizing its bitter freshness. It was certainly refreshing and a perfect snack on a hot day.
The ladies who worked here were all very nice and kind, and the soft serves were all very tasty. And the price is awesome too, for 350 yen each, that is little over $3 each! The quality and flavor, you can’t get anywhere else. I am so glad we got to taste them!
Kodawarippa – 6-12 Shiroshita, Kakegawa 436-0091, Shizuoka Japan
こだわりっぱ – 静岡県 掛川市 城下 6-12