Iwakuni is a city located in the eastern part of Yamaguchi prefecture. If you cross the famous Kintai Bridge, nearby you’ll find Musashi. The major attraction of the shop is its soft serve ice cream, abundant in variety! Making it famous, to date they have created 140 different flavors. Indeed, it has been featured on Japanese TV several times.

Eighteen years ago, when the shop first began selling soft serve ice cream, they only offered 3 basic flavors: vanilla, chocolate and matcha (green tea) and mixes, making a total of 6 flavors. And from that they have reached the current amount…! I interviewed Mr. Junzo Yamamoto, the manager.

He talks about the process with a lovely smile on his face.
“The reason we can offer such a large variety is because we use an American blender. With this machine we can make as many flavors as we want. Because I like baseball, our first goal was to reach Ichiro’s player number, so we made 51 different flavors.”
At that moment, a member of staff brought out a surprising soft serve ice cream cone!

S…so black! Actually, the “Devil Soft” is a prototype that isn’t yet included in the shop’s selection!
I get to try it before anyone else-! The general image of soft serve ice cream is white, and the true identity of this jet-black piece that completely overthrows that image is…”bamboo charcoal”. From its appearance you’d imagine that it would be bitter, but it isn’t at all, it’s delicious. However, people may be startled if they see you eating it!

Among the myriad of other ice cream flavors the shop offers, the luxurious gold leafed “Cleopatra” caught my eye! The milk used is from cows fed with organic vegetables. As it’s not something you see every day, I gave it a try!
It was very rich and milky, with a mild, sweet aftertaste. It really does taste completely different to regular vanilla ice cream! Apparently, it’s the shop’s most popular flavor.

Mr. Yamamoto pays particular attention to using genuine ingredients. Iwakuni is famous for its lotus root, but turning it into an ice cream flavor apparently took for a whole year.
“Lotus root doesn’t really taste of anything, right? It’s a vegetable you enjoy for its texture. So, through extensive trial and error, I worked on expressing that in soft serve ice cream.”

The product of all his hard work has now become popular as Iwakuni’s local soft serve ice cream flavor.

Near Musashi you’ll find the Iwakuni Castle town, and if you go towards the mountains you’ll find Kikko Park with its numerous fountains as well as the river. Walking around with some soft serve ice cream might be a nice idea!

ーーーーーーーーーーーーーー ーーーーーーー

Oidemase! Come to Yamaguchi!
Oshokujidokoro Take no Sato Musashi
During cherry blossom viewing season this popular soft serve ice cream shop by Kintai Bridge sells up to 2000 servings per day!

Location: 2-1-23 Yokoyama, Iwakuni city, Yamaguchi prefecture
Open: 9:00-18:00 (10:00-18:00 during winter)
Closed: Open every day (may be temporarily closed due to inclement weather)
Inquiries:

TEL：0827-43-6340

FAX：0827-43-6351
http://www.sky.icn-tv.ne.jp/~soft-100/ (Japanese)

By,
The Setouchi Finder Editors