Summer is the season for kakigori shaved ice desserts in Japan, and if you’re looking for one of the best places to try them, you’ll want to head to a store called Nanashino in Tokyo’s Nakameguro neighborhood. This sweets specialty store actually changes its products depending on the season — in autumn, it sells baked sweet potatoes, in winter it sells chocolate, in spring it sells cherry blossom sweets, and in summer, it transforms into a shaved ice shop. The store is so popular in summer that reservations tend to fill up quickly, making it one of the hardest places to get into in Tokyo.
Those who do manage to get a reservation are in for a treat, though, because the crowning star on the menu is a dessert you won’t find anywhere else: shaved ice that looks and tastes like an onigiri rice ball. The “rice” section of the dessert contains ice and milk syrup, while the seaweed part is made with a homemade seaweed sauce. Inside, you’ll find sweet layers consisting of caramelized plum milk syrup, made with high-quality Nanko plums from Kishu, along with walnuts, homemade caramel sauce, and Nanko plum jelly.
▼ The plum-heavy flavors will make you feel like you’re eating an umeboshi (pickled plum) rice ball, complete with the seaweed accent. While the onigiri kakigori has been on the summer menu since the store first opened in 2020, it boomed in popularity last year after going viral on social media, selling seven times more than the opening year. Nanashino says .