Majority in Japan prefer shaved ice over ice cream once temperature hits 34C: survey – The Mainichi

11 comments

1. Ice cream is for winter

2. I wonder how much of this is a correlation rather than a causation. What if it’s purely a seasonal thing, where summer days are more likely to be hot, but whether or not they’re hot are also more likely to get people in that special kakigori mood?

3. Kakigori has nothing on ice cream though

4. Makes sense. Ice cream is too heavy.

5. Well Japanese ice cream is often not actually ice cream. It is often ice with milk flavoring so, it isn’t really much of a surprise to me. There are laws to separate the difference between ice cream like foods and actual ice cream. I believe by law ice cream must contain at least 3% milk solids. I ran down a rabbit hole one day when I saw something I thought was ice cream at a FamilyMart, but it turned out not to be real ice cream.

6. This [gourmet kakigoori place](https://yatsugatake-hyoukaten.com/) opened near me last summer. Around 800 yen for a small, 1400 for a large. The wife and I scoffed and wondered who would pay such outrageous prices for ice with flavorings.

   Well, I guess we were the idiots, since the place is constantly packed during the day, and has a wait of an hour or so on weekends. We finally decided to bite the bullet and see what all the fuss was about, and to be honest, it was pretty amazing. The shaved ice was super fine and delicate, the toppings were all fresh ingredients (real fruits and juices, including some rare/unique options) and they weren’t too light or heavy handed with them, and there were some creamy options to choose from that complemented each topping option (mascarpone cream, etc.), and a hidden treasure in the bottom of each that suited the topping somehow (wife’s had mochi in the bottom, mine had some kind of condensed milk or similar).

   I’m not sure it’s quite worth the money, but I suspect we’ll go back soon.

7. I dunno, those Choc Mint ス-パ-カップ go down quite easy…

8. Why not both?

9. On TV they explained how the drinking ice cream like “Coolish” changes their formula to match the seasons. During the summer they use large size ice (in line with preference for shaved ice) and winter small size ice and in between during spring/fall. When I first saw it, it was a head scratcher but this survey makes sense of it all (at least for me)!

10. I’ll never forget where I was when I heard this news…

11. I will forever prefer ice cream. I miss American flavors, but I’ll take things like the cheesecake sticks to the cheap jumbo chocolate monaka, or even the classic vanilla ice cream sandwiches any day to shaved ice.