A beloved monaka filled with the charm of the Seto Inland Sea

The monaka dough is made from slightly fragrant glutinous rice and is filled with refreshing bean paste. The adorable shape with a bulge in the middle and the wave pattern recreate the Seto Inland Sea and the islands floating there. This is the "Hakoniwa Monaka", the signature product of "Ichikawa Kashiho", which was founded in 1963.

First-generation owner Ichikawa Shigeo, who loves the Seto Inland Sea, named the shop after feeling that this beautiful scenery resembled a "miniature garden." The bean paste is prepared the day before and painstakingly cooked to the brim, amounting to 35kg, and in the end, an astonishing 500 are wrapped by hand each day. Currently, he works closely with his son Yoshitaka on making sweets, but Shigeo, looking at his own back, says, "I can't trust him with the finishing touches to the bean paste that retain the grainy texture yet." It's this serious attitude towards sweets that makes it easy to see why the shop has been loved for so long.