Walking over a bridge to one of our favorite coffee vendors, we always order coffee ice cream. Winter or summer the ice cream in Japan is as good as it gets. Understanding ice cream is elementary but many vendors get it wrong, at least from our perspective.

The ice cream machine makes a big difference to the texture but the mixture and balance of ingredients helps improve the end result. What counts is the texture and color, the “trueness of taste”, the depth of taste on the palate when you take your first taste.

I guess that soft ice cream in America just has too much water in it, and hence the texture gets small water crystals and it melts pretty quickly.

The quality of the milk fat, the addition of air, the freezing temperature (-4°C), the nozzle of the machine, density of the ice cream and the type of stabilizers used.

When you taste Japanese ice cream, you know it’s the way ice cream should taste. The top flavor is coffee and the bottom is green tea.