Ice Cream Expo in Japan

Fro-yo girl here. I stumbled upon the Ice Cream Expo at the Ginza Mitsukoshi on my recent trip to Japan. The event was hosted by Japan Ice Cream Maniac Association. Over 100 kinds of ice cream from different regions in Japan were carefully selected by the association to be sold at the expo. 

The Ice Cream Expo was held from 4/25 – 5/7/2018. It’s not the froyo expo, but I thought that they might have frozen yogurt. I asked the information booth, but alas, there was no frozen yogurt. 

I’ll assume that the Ice Cream Expo represents what’s new in ice cream in Japan right now. Most of the signs were in Japanese, so I wasn’t sure what was being offered. The vendors, representing ice cream vendors throughout Japan, had booths on the 7th and 9th floor of Mitsukoshi. 

What’s new? 

• Manhattan Roll Ice Cream (@manhattanroll) has brought Thai ice cream rolls to Tokyo. You can find the shop near Harajuku Station. 
• Cold Stone Creamery brought decorated popsicles to the expo. 
• Tsujiri, the green tea specialist, was there with its retail café concept called Yuwa. The specialty is matcha green tea soft serve. 
• Aki Group Farm is known for its veggie ice cream flavors like grilled eggplant, roasted sweet potato, and pumpkin. The roasted eggplant ice cream has won various food awards. 
• The Warm Tech Spoon is a warm ice cream spoon that makes it easier and more pleasant to eat ice cream. It’s made not out of metal or wood but with a high tech material with very high thermal conductivity. 

I also spotted ice cream mochi, shave ice, and ice cream encased in a wafer shell. 

I wish I could have read the signs to understand more of what I saw! You can read more about some of the featured ice creams in this article in the Ginza Mitsukoshi News.

I didn't see Kanazawa Ice, the Japanese ice cream that doesn't melt for hours.

Also, I was able to try Milk Cream Craft in the Ginza Mitsukoshi food hall. Milk Craft Cream is the first shop in Japan to specialize in fresh cream products. The cream comes from Kushiro subprefecture in Hokkaido. I think this stall at Ginza Mitsukoshi was a pop-up, but they have shops elsewhere. The first one was in Shibuya in 2017. It’s been wildly popular, with 30,000 customers in the first month. 

* Milky soft serve (500 yen, or $4.53): The soft serve comes on a plain cake cone. The cone was fresh and crispy but otherwise standard. The swirl looked different than the typical soft cream swirl because they didn’t use the end caps that go on the soft serve machine nozzles. Swirls look better when end caps are used. The portion looked smaller than the other soft cream cones I had in Japan. It did taste different from the other milk soft creams I had – the texture was smooth, thick and creamy but the flavor had a milkier/cream quality. It wasn’t too sweet and it had a lot of flavor for plain milk and cream.

According to the Milk Craft Cream website, they created the “ultimate blend ratio” after more than 100 prototypes that blended different cream and milk fat content.

You know you love me. X0 X0, fro-yo girl.

Looking for more frozen yogurt news, discussion boards, and resources? Check out the International Frozen Yogurt Association website at http://internationalfrozenyogurt.com/. The IFYA is the independent voice of the frozen yogurt industry.