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Japanese convenience store ice cream wins gold for reporter at the Tokyo Olympics

Oona McGee Aug 8, 2021
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“Best convenience store ice cream” unites people of all nationalities.

As the 2020 Olympics draws to a close in Tokyo, some of the most surprising highlights and memories have turned out to be the off-duty activities of the overseas athletes and reporters covering the Games.

Now, Matthew Mohan (@MatthewMohanCNA), a senior journalist for Singapore-based English news channel Channel News Asia, is making news for a discovery he made outside of reporting on the Games, and it involves Japanese convenience store ice cream.

▼ As soon as Mohan shared this tweet about his ice cream find online, Twitter lit up with delight.

https://twitter.com/MatthewMohanCNA/status/1421999159771467776

Like many journalists covering the Olympics, Mohan has been relying on the humble convenience store, or “konbini” as they’re commonly known in Japanese, for snacks and meals after long days of reporting. And on one particular night, Mohan found what he says is “the best convenience store ice cream“, and as the image shows, that award goes to… Morinaga’s Choco Monaka Jumbo.

The Choco Monaka Jumbo, which first debuted on the market in 1972 as the “Choco Monaka”, often ranks as Japan’s top-selling ice cream bar in marketing surveys, with one reportedly sold every 0.17 seconds.

Image ©SoraNews24

What makes the ice cream so good is its “golden ratio” of ice cream, chocolate, and crisp monaka wafer made from mochi (rice cake made with glutionus rice). This so-called golden ratio, carefully formulated by the company, aims to emulate the perfect balance found in traditional Japanese monaka sweets, which usually consist of adzuki red bean paste sandwiched between two thin crisp wafers.

▼ A traditional monaka sweet.

Wikipedia/nyanya

The Choco Monaka Jumbo is like a fusion ice cream that combines the best of Japanese and Western sweets together for a cool treat with a great flavour and satisfying texture. And given its popularity in Japan, people around the nation were pleased to find it appealed to foreign tastes as well.

“It was just a matter of time before the world found out about this!”
“The Choco Monaka Jumbo is truly delicious!”
“Another state secret leaked!”
“The reason why I got fat… It’s delicious… I understand.”
“It’s great that overseas reporters are enjoying convenience store food. I totally get it — convenience stores are fun and Japanese snacks are delicious.”

Japanese snacks like the Choco Monaka Jumbo really are delicious, and the fun of convenience store shopping in Japan is one that people from all sorts of backgrounds can relate to.

Like the Olympics, it looks like Japanese convenience stores have been breaking down barriers and uniting people of all nationalities during the Games — just ask this Canadian reporter, who became an overnight celebrity for his love of convenience store foods!

Source: Morinaga, Twitter/@MatthewMohanCNA via Hachima Kiko
Top image: Twitter/@MatthewMohanCNA
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