Daijoubu

I apologize to those who have been eagerly anticipating this post for the delays in getting it done, but I think you will agree that this is a momentous topic and well worth waiting for! Dangos have frequently been featured on this blog, but it was not until last weekend that I finally had the opportunity to actually try eating dango. I can say they are certainly very filling! Anyway, two issues have arisen that must be addressed. First, which of the Japanese confections that I ate were actually the dangos and secondly, is it wrong to eat dangos at all?

After the Mitsuwa Matsuri on Satrurday, Hinano and JP took me and Greguto to Kaiten Sushi East, which is a conveyor belt sushi restaurant. In addition to the sushi, deserts also go by on the conveyor belt. I was excited to see the three multi-colored treats pictured in the first image above go by, so I grabbed them. They seemed to have the coloring of three-color dango, although they were much larger. They also had filling. Hinano told me that they were actually not dango but mochi. On further investigation, the proper term to use is Daifuku. Indeed, they are very similar to the one pictured at Wikipedia, except that a white one is joined by a pink and green one, as some dango are.

Hinano said that there were dango as well on the conveyor belt, and indeed, the sweets that appear in the second picture above seem to fit the description of dango quite well. They are on skewers, but not three colors, although that is only one type one out of many kinds of dango. Perhaps some day I will encounter (or make at home) three color dango, which are featured in the Manga Cookbook!

Playing Pangya later that night with Taiyaki, I proudly mentioned I had eaten dango. She was horrified! As a fan of Clannad’s Dango Daikazoku, she thought I was a dango-killer and declared, “Dango are not food, they’re friends!” I thought, since the dango were on a skewer and not hopping around, that they were already dead. But still, is it wrong to eat dango??? These ones did not have eyes painted on them!