SAKURA - Sweets, Tea, and Facemask-

SAKURA (cherry blossoms), lovely flower blooms in the spring, is not only for Ohanami (cherry blossom viewing). There are many SAKURA items which we can enjoy, such as drink, food, and also beauty!!

We will introduce some of interesting SAKURA items here in Japan🌸

1. SAKURA MOCHI

Sakura-mochi, is a Japanese sweet consisting of sweet pink-colored rice cake (mochi) with a red bean paste (anko) center, and wrapped in a pickled cherry blossom (sakura) leaf. It is typically eaten during the spring season only, and is especially eaten on Girl's Day, March 3, and in hanami settings. Interesting thing is that different regions of Japan have different styles of sakura-mochi.

Kanto (Eastern Japan) style:

・Uses flour to make dough.

・Put red bean paste between folded dough and wrapped with a pickled sakura leaf.

Kansai (Western Japan) style:

・Uses glutinous rice to make dough.

・Put red bean paste inside of the dough and make it round.

The leaf may or may not be eaten, depending on individual preference!!

2. SAKURA CHA

SAKURA-cha is one of the kind of Japanese tea. The feature of this tea is that we add salted sakura flower in the tea. You can enjoy the nice smell and color of the sakura flower and bit salty but tasty tea. You can eat salted sakura flowers, but if you don’t want to eat, you do not have to eat it!

 
Salted Sakura become like this in the picture!

How to drink Sakura-cha

Step 1: Take out a sakura flower.

Step 2: Pour hot water and wait few minutes to freshen salted sakura flower. (Use hot water  in Step4!)

Step 3: Take out the sakura flower and pour boiled water.

Step 4: Add one spoon of the hot water you used in step 2.

Step 5: Ready to enjoy Sakura-cha!!

3. SAKURA Facemask

One of the most famous and popular facemask brand, “LuLuLun” has limited edition Sakura facemask!! It contains sakura (cherry blossom) flower extract, bamboo shoot extract, tea leaf extract and perilla leaf extract for skin moisturizing, firming, and conditioning performance.

This mask is very reasonable and great for your daily skin care! Who wanna have relax skin care time with pleasant sakura scent?

This LuLuLun face mask has regional versions too! It doesn’t related to Sakura, but I thought it is worth to know this when you get boring with normal Japanese souvenirs such as sweets to give it to your friends!

Photo: Lemon from Setouchi (left), Maiko from Kyoto (middle), and Lavender from Hokkaido (right)

Did you know that we use both leaf and flower of Sakura trees for foods? Well, both leaf and flower used for Sakura-mochi and Sakura-cha are pickled,so we can not know the taste of Sakura. However, smells, color and effects from Sakura trees are great for sweets and tea!! Moreover, sakura is very great for skincanre!!

Try these when you have chance;)