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Happy Halloween! Now eat your eyeball mochi

Casey Baseel Sep 26, 2020
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It’s the gooey filling that really makes them delicious.

Japan likes its food to not only taste great but look good too, and that philosophy makes a lot of sense when you’re talking about sweets. Desserts are inherently indulgent, and since the only reason we eat them is for enjoyment, we really should enjoy every part of the experience.

In keeping with those ideals, we’ve seen Japanese confectioners produce breathtaking desserts like sakura jellies in the spring and hydrangea parfaits in early summer. And now here comes another seasonal dessert, and there’s no denying that a lot of effort went into the appearance…but there’s also now denying that the appearance is terrifying.

Nothing quite gets the appetite going like beady, bloodshot eyes, especially when they’re leaking a viscous, chunky liquid, right?

Surprisingly, obtaining these edible eyeballs doesn’t require a trip to your local mad scientist’s laboratory or necromancer’s lair. Instead, these edible eyeballs are being added to the menu at revolving sushi restaurant Kurasuzhi (a.k.a. Kura Sushi) as part of the chain’s Halloween celebration. Since Kurazushi is run by respectable businesspeople and culinary professionals with no connections to cannibal death cults, these morsels aren’t plucked from the skulls of unfortunate souls, but are instead made of mochi. Gruesome as they look, they’re still a kind of daifuku dumpling, made with chewy rice flour and a pulpy strawberry filling, so they should taste great.

And if knowing that those eyes are actually sweet rice cakes is making them look a little less scary, allow us to refill your terror tank with a peek at another item Kurazsuhi will be offering.

▼ “Kill/eat me.”

A single eye perched atop what at first glance appears to be a bloody pile of muscly monster tentacle (and also bearing a striking resemblance to Osaka’s bizarre world’s fair mascot), this is the Fluffy Snow Bulging Eye Monster, a towering pile of shaved ice with a generous dousing of strawberry sauce. Kurazushi boasts it has “outstanding visual impact,” which we have to admit is a nice euphemism for “will definitely appear in your nightmares for at least the first two nights after eating.”

Meanwhile, for those of you who are watching your dietary horror intake, Kurazushi is also offering a selection of cute nerikiri desserts, made with extra-soft gyuhi mochi and filled with anko (sweet bean paste). Five are based on yokai monsters from Japanese folklore, and one is a Western-style Jack-‘o-lantern.

▼ Top: Amabie, kappa, and umbrella monster (filled with strawberry anko)
Bottom: Jack-‘o-lantern, three-eyed goblin, and lantern monster (filled with regular anko)

The Halloween menu items will be available from October 29 to October 31, with the nerikiri priced at 220 yen (US$2.10) each and the Fluffy Snow Bulging Eye Monster at 308 yen. A four-eyeball set of eyeball mochi costs 220 yen, but seems to be available only as an additional topping option for the shaved ice, as apparently eating eyeballs by themselves would be too weird (almost as weird as Kurazushi’s anime character bukkake udon).

Related: Kurazushi location finder
Source: PR Wire via Entabe
Images: PR Wire
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Follow Casey on Twitter, where he can’t be the only person who’s reminded of Dark Souls 3’s Eyes of a Fire Keeper looking at those daifuku, can he?