A trend I've noticed in Harajuku over the last couple of years
Is there've been more & more cute snacks
Like really colourful or rainbow things
Or animal-shaped kawaii snacks
That you can take pictures of for Instagram
They are elsewhere in Tokyo as well
But I've noticed a lot of them in Harajuku
Because it's the home of kawaii
So today I'm going to show you some of them.
Now I have a theory about why there are so many rainbow snacks now
And what it tells us about how Harajuku's changing
That's going to be at the end of the video if you want to hear it
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Now, on to the cute snacks!
This shop, Eiswelt Gelato
Sounds like a German name: Eiswelt
Has cute ice creams in the shape of animals
They look like the ones I saw last time at Zoo Icecream Harajuku
Where they had the fake vending machine
With the animal characters in
Maybe they're copying them
I'm pretty sure that was just a person behind a curtain
And not an actual vending machine
But it is a fun idea
OK, back to Eiswelt
Eiswelt Gelato actually started in California in LA
This is the second branch.
The ice creams are made of quality gelato
So they taste good as well as looking super kawaii
Bt really, have you ever had an ice cream that was bad?!
At this shop: Long Longer Longest
You can get really long ice creams
Churros, and tornado potatoes
They're the spiral potatoes on a stick
They also do rainbow cheese toasties!
And rainbow roll ice cream.
I've seen how they make this.
They put the ice cream on a freezing plate
Then they scrape it up
So it goes into rolls.
Look how excited the people are on the poster.
I'm here at the end of the day
In winter, the off-season
That's why it's so quiet
But how do you decide which to get?!
Long, longer or longest?
Well as we're here,
It seems like a waste not to go for longest.
We're going to go for the tornado potato
Longer's sold out.
But they've still got long and longest.
So we're going to go for the longest.
52 cm.
Half a metre of tornado potato!
You can choose a flavour for the tornado potato.
From BBQ, soy sauce & butter or consomme,
Which I think is like chicken broth.
We went for soy sauce & butter.
Arigatou gozaimasu!
It's probably better not to look at this bit!
Not sure how healthy this is going to be!
I don't think I could eat as much sugar as in one of the longest ice creams though!
It's probably pretty bad for you!
It's safety first at Long, Longer, Longest!
They give you a cap to cover the pointy end of the stick.
A half-metre-long tornado potato can be a dangerous weapon.
There we go.
It's so you don't hurt anyone.
Protected!
As long as I don't swallow it...
Is that tricky to eat?!
Where do you start?!
Oh man!
That butter-
Is it strong?
Yeah.
Can you make your way through 52cm of it?
It's really strong.
The rainbow cheese toastie looked so colourful
That I had to get one
To see if it's really that bright
Here's my rainbow cheese toastie!
It said wait for a minute for it to cool down.
Then pull it apart slowly
To get the proper rainbow effect.
Right, am I going to screw this up?!
One chance...
Oooh!!
Look at that!
Wow, it's really bright!
It looks like a monster toastie!
It's definitely rainbow.
That's really fluorescent!
But does cheese taste better when it's rainbow?
Give it a try!
Tastes like a normal toastie.
So: delicious!
Even if my rainbow toastie Instagram skills are weak,
It was still fun!
And I was impressed by how bright the colours were.
Part impressed, part horrified.
That must be a lot of food colouring.
It looks like plastic!
Did you enjoy that Phil?
It was long...
I think that was my salt intake for about a year on that!
It was very salty,
Very strong flavouring!
It wasn't that it tasted bad
But it was... an assault.
An assault on the senses!
It wasn't delicate flavour or anything.
Still, it was fun.
Yeah.
Sweets Paradise is a restaurant with a buffet
It's mainly a buffet of desserts
They say they have food but it's all about the desserts.
This shop behind me,
Le Shiner
Was actually the original place where you could get the rainbow cheese toastie, I believe,
And they said the food colourings were all natural
Which I find kind of hard to believe
Because they're so bright.
I saw a video where someone came here
And they queued for about 40 minutes
To get a rainbow toastie
There's actually nobody here now!
It's late afternoon on a Monday
But Harajuku's been really busy today
There've been so many people here
I forgot what that's called
Is it a corn dog?
Rainbow doggu...
Rainbow dog.
A corn dog?
Does a corn dog normally have cheese in it?
I don't know!
If you're from America,
Tell us in the comments!
This stand also has tornado potatoes
Although the one we had was 2cm longer
The longest in Japan!
And there's yoghurt juice served in lightbulbs
That light up
You get a little lightbulb keychain with them.
There's also "Bag Soda"
Drinks in semi-medical style bags
I guess it's a bit like a Capri Sun
And they come with heart-shaped bendy straws
Of course crepes are the original snack of Harajuku
They've been here for years
And they'll always be the best one for me.
There's so many different types.
Every combination you can think of, of ice cream, cream
Chocolate, fruit, strawberries
All the good things!
"Good grief!"
Here you can get soda in baby bottles
That's kind of weird to me
You can choose the colour of the soda
It doesn't say what the flavours are
They're doing rainbow candyfloss as well
And poop ice cream
Not so sure about this one...
Totti Candy Factory's the main shop for giant rainbow candyfloss.
Lots of people think this is the classic Harajuku snack
But actually it wasn't there when I first went to Harajuku
It's the crepes that are the original
And the best
Please be careful the cotton candy doesn't hit other people!
In order to spend fun,
let's manners up with everyone.
Manners up, everyone!
Here's where you get the giant rainbow cotton candy
This tells you all the different flavours
You can go for three colours
Or the whole rainbow
Only 160 calories
I think it'd be more than that!
This shop's doing character candyfloss
The rabibt's cute.
It looks so big & fluffy.
You can get lightbulb soda here as well.
Underneath, there's another branch of Rainbow Sweets Harajuku.
I'm not sure if both are still open.
But honestly, these shops seem to be copying each other so much
That I'm sure you can get the same items elsewhere.
They have a rainbow crepe here as well.
It looks liek the actual crepe is reainbow coloured
They must swirl all the batter on to make it.
There's this Rainbow Road
For posing with your rainbow stuff
Now in the years I've been coming to Harajuku
It's definitely changed
I've definitely seen a lot more of these cute, Instagram-style snacks coming in
We've seen a lot of shops doing the same things
They all seem to be copying each other
And trying to do what's popular
My theory on this, which could be wrong,
But it's what I think!
Is that, as tourism to Japan has really increased by a huge amount
Over the last 9 or 10 years
All the guidebooks are telling tourists to come to Harajuku
And see the "crazy" Japanese fashion
So people are coming here who aren't necessarily interested in cute or alternative fashion
Just to have a look around
And see what there is
And they're not going to buy any of the clothes from the shops
But maybe they will buy a rainbow candy floss
Or a rainbow cheese toastie
So that's the sort of thing that's flourishing now
Rather than the fashion
And I've noticed some of the original, indie fashion shops
Have been moving out of Harajuku
Or closing down
And I think maybe that's why
So I think my message is:
If you come to Harajuku
And you are into the fashion,
Don't just have a rainbow candyfloss
Have one if you want
But at least buy a few accessories or things from the shops as well
To keep the original spirit of Harajuku going
They say it's part of being a responsible tourist
To spend your holiday dollars, pounds or yen
Helping the local economy
And supporting the place you've come to see.
Or maybe that's just my way of justifying my Harajuku shopping spree...!
Let me know what you think in the comments!
So that's it for my round-up of cute & Instagram snacks in Harajuku
There are some others that I didn't show you
There's a place called Eddy's Ice Cream
That does ice creams with really big accessories & chocolate shapes on top of them
There's Cafe RonRon
That you might have heard of
That's like a conveyor belt sushi restaurant
But instead of sushi
It has desserts!
There's several others as well
I didn't try them all
Because I think I'd die from an overdose of sugar if I did!
I think Phil almost died from a salt overdose on that tornado potato!
I've had a lot to drink to try & compensate for that!
But it was a lot of fun
And I hope you've enjoyed seeing them.
So if you come to Harajuku
And try any of them
Remember to tag me in your pictures
I'm Cakes with Faces on pretty much everything!
There's new videos about Japan every Thursday
If you want to subscribe
See you soon! Bye bye!!