Japan is full of wonderful things, many food-related — among them, okonomiyaki pancakes, conveyor belt sushi and convenience-store food of the highest order. But nothing screamed out to be written about here until last night, when we discovered Kyoto’s truly weird “Sweets Paradise.”
We were trolling the streets of Kyoto in search of something sweet when Dan, my travel companion, spotted a sign for the restaurant. The name was innocuous and our demands were minimal, so we headed up to the top of a department store to check it out. When we reached the sixth floor, we were confronted by the machine at right, which resembles nothing so much as a Japanese subway ticket vending machine. Although we were momentarily fazed by the Japanese-only buttons, we eventually pieced together the fact that Sweets Paradise was no ordinary dessert restaurant. Your 1,480 yen, paid directly into the machine, would buy you the right to stuff yourself silly with desserts for 80 minutes. The exorbitant cost was clearly going to be far outweighed by the chance to see exactly what a Japanese-style dessert buffet would entail.
Happily, it did not only mean mochi (though a few varieties lurked on one of the trays). Virtually all of the desserts were Western-style cakes and puddings, cut into bite-sized pieces perfect for sampling. After six months of inedible Chinese baked goods, Sweets Paradise’s offerings were a refreshing change of pace. There were no red beans masquerading as chocolate, and the pastries even contained butter! But there were a few cultural miscommunications, nonetheless — I only narrowly avoided topping my ice cream with beef curry, which bears an unnerving resemblance to fudge sauce.
After a plate (or two), we could sit back and contemplate our strange surroundings. Sweets Paradise is perhaps not a top-notch culinary experience. But it is orderly, Western-influenced (though not Western-dominated) and unnecessarily automated — much like Japan itself.
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