The age of pumpkin is upon us.

Japan in general is very big on seasonal items. Every season has a flavor or two that becomes ubiquitous during a few week to month period before it is in turn gobbled up by the next seasonal item on the list. You'll show up in the store to find everything is strawberry flavored or has something to do with strawberries only to come back a while later to find that strawberries have been wiped from the world and replaced by chestnuts.

In this constant Brahma, Visnu, Shiva type situation for food products the variety of things to purchase in are simultaneously expanded and shrunk in interesting ways. You'll no longer be able to find those delightful mango tea drinks at the convenience store but they will be replaced by an inevitable round of mango or grape in good time.

This comes up because, in the current state, pumpkin, or more correctly kabocha is everywhere. There is pumpkin pudding late at the convenience store and pumpkin cream pastries at the bakery near my job. Last night I ate at a restaurant and a large portion of their special menu involved something with kabocha.

Here is the menu that I was looking at:



On this menu, four of the 7 items involve some type of kabocha use not to mention the normal pumpkin variants that appeared as well.

The first item is a mashed kabocha salad with cheese sauce,the second a kabocha gnocchi, the third was some kind of kabocha dessert and the fourth is represented in the mixed dessert at the end. Not on the list but also special was a pizza with kabocha slices on it. Needless to say, it's pumpkin mania here in Tokyo.