Kakigori comes in summer

A shaved ice “kakigori”, is a typical summer delicacy. It is a sweet of fluffily shaved ice with a variety of fruit syrup like strawberry, melon, lemon, mango or green-tea with red beans. Its optimal season is from June to September, the season in Japan is hot and humid. 

If you come to Japan during this season, you should try to eat it absolutely. You can do it anywhere in Japan, particularly it is served by many sweet taste shops around popular sight-seeing places. Of course you can find a shop with kakigori in your guide-book, or you may know it by asking a Japanese person around you. Moreover, as a little bit of adventure may make your traveling more exciting, I recommend that you seek and find a kakigori flag (the picture above) on your own.

Japanese people love ice creams and Gelato, but on hot and humid days the popularity of kakigori ascends steeply. The appearance of a kakigori in front of you shall limit your sweat. A spoon of fluffy kakigori entering your mouth melts and goes out in an instance and the sweet flavor of fruit spreads in your mouth. Repeating it reduces your temperature and ….

Suddenly a very sharp impact to your nerves takes place in your bronchial tube or your stomach, and rising to your inner head it ends up jolting your head. Japanese people explain that this condition of “brain freeze” is “keen to Kita!” This jolt shrinks your body for a moment, but your appetite for the kakigori grows larger and you involve yourself eating it more.

From the Meiji Period

Children love kakigori in particular. Their bodies have high temperature to be chilled in summer. And children love a direct sweetness like sugar. So many families with children have kakigori makers to serve kakigori every day.

Kakigori started in the early Meiji period (approximately a century and a half ago). To begin with an ice supplier in Tokyo set about kakigori selling in a shop by shaving ice which was transferred from Hokkaido (the northern island of Japan). Before the introduction of kakigori, limited rich people gained coolness from sipping sweet water with ice. Kakigori spread in Japan in a flash. There was no electric fan nor air conditioner in the Meiji period, Japanese people jumped at kakigori. It was the phenomena that even conservatively inflexible people loved kakigori.

A renowned poet in the Meiji period, Takuboku Ishikawa, said about kakigori. “Ice belongs to winter. It is outrageous that people eat ice in summer. It is a resistance against nature that humans eat ice which never exists in the hot nature. Moreover, it is the reckless action that people eat shaved ice adding sugar and fruit juice in order to satisfy their sense of taste.” However he sometimes ate kakigori.

Obsessions with kakigori

Japanese people, who are obsessed by many foods, are particular about kakigori naturally. When it comes to telling about kakigori, a lot of distinctive people tell their own theories. They shift their attention of kakigori to ice itself. They desire the fluffiest, the cleanest and the tastiest shaved ice. The fluffier the shaved ice is, the more delicious the kakigori becomes (because fluffily saved ice involves some air, so the taste of kakigori becomes soft and good). So suppliers of kakigori try their hand at making supreme ice. They use pure water that has no impurities from good natural water and make ice for two days slowly (impurities worsen the taste of ice and rapidly frozen ice isn’t suitable for fluffily shaved ice). A favorite kakigori in popularity is served through the aforementioned trials. The syrup of fruit has been improved as well. The addition of convinced milk or addition of fresh fruit juices, or coffee tasting syrup, and so on.

Each shop serves an individual kakigori based on the mood of its shop’s style. For example, eating a kakigori with curry and rice at a curry shop, a kakigori with cocktail flavor at a cocktail bar. Then when I drop into a shop after finding a kakigori flag, I like to choose a kakigori from the menu with no picture because I am intrigued to see how the kakigori will be served.

The kakigori flag

Kakigori flag was made in the Meiji period as well. Its main designs have never changed. Blue waves and little birds (these show summer traditionally) and a “big red” character of ice (this kanji character means ice) and a white background.

For Japanese people and me the flag makes the image of kakigori to us directly, yes, it is imprinted completely in our minds.

In the summers of the Meiji period there were a lot of flattering flags of kakigori. A foreign linguist who was invited to Japan so as to educate promising young Japanese students, William Clark Eastlake, asked his Japanese friend when he looked at the flag. “The flags which are written “;k”(semicolon and k) stand here and there in summer, what do these shops sell?” I imagine that so as to respond to his question his friend dropped into a shop right away with him and ordered two cups of kakigori, he ate the kakigori at the suggestion of his friend and he was surprised by the refreshment of kakigori, finally he might have been taught that the “semicolon and k “ was shaved ice.