The specail sweets for Gion festival in Kyoto

We had the second highlight called “Ato-matsuri” of Gion festival in Kyoto yesterday.

It was the parade of floats (yama & hoko) to wish our sound health, which has been held over 1000 years ago.

O-fune hoko is the new float re-built 2 years ago (2014) which had been disappeared for 150 years because of the fire. Everybody looking forward to seeing the new float shaped a big ship in Ato-matsuri parade.

Seeing the parade, tourists go back home bringing the souvenirs.

How about this famous mochi (rice cake) sweets for Gion festival made by Sanjo- Wakasaya?

The special sweets for Gion festival in Kyoto

“Gion chigo mochi” is the sweets made from white sweet miso, rice cake, and dried rice powders.

Don’t you think it’s unique package? It’s called “Chimaki” we often buy from some hoko & yama or shrines to display on the gate of our houses. It’s thought that the god protect us from evil and we can keep our health.

Not only the package, but also the taste is nice. There is the legend that a “chigo”, a child in a festival procession was serving this rice cake with white miso in front of Yasaka shrine long time ago. Eating them, people could keep their health whole in the year.

Gion chigo mochi is the revival sweets of a child of the shrine god had made.

The sweets for summer & the art confectionery

Many other kinds of Japanese sweets are sold in Sanjo-Wakasaya.

Their drid sweets (Japanese cookie made of sugar and rice powder) looked so beautiful.

These are also made of confectionary. How pretty it is!

Japanese confectionary shop along Horikawa street; Sanjo-wakasaya

Sanjo-Wakasaya is the sweet shop since 1893.

We can find them on the easy location. It’s just on the corner of Horikawa-Sanjo. There is a sign of “chigo-mochi” in Japanese we can find even from the city bus.

Since they have a little café space, we can have the set of chigo-mochi and coffee, or fresh sweets with matcha seeing the Horikawa street in Kyoto.