Today is “Boy’s Festival Day” and we eat kashiwa-mochi, a rice cake wrapped in an oak leaf on this day.
These oak leaves can’t be eaten.
In Japan various kinds of leaves are used to wrap foods or as a partition in a box lunch, since they have anti-bacterial effects.
Other than the kashiwa-mochi, we often see green colored sweets on the stores and cafes these days when trees get thick fresh leaves.
Matcha, as known to the world nowadays, is green tea powder and have bitter taste.
It used to be used for tea ceremonies, although now it has become an essential flavor to make sweets or for cooking, and matcha -flavored sweets gain popularity not only in Japan but over the world.
Matcha an-mitsu.
