A Tribute to Melon Pan

What's your favourite Japanese food? Mine's not sushi. It's not tempura. Not even okonomiyaki. My favourite Japanese food is a bread roll that is shaped to look like a rock melon. It's called melon pan.

So beautiful. So delicious. So cheap.

Melon pan surrounded by other baked goods, none of which are as good as melon pan.

Someone told me that melon pan was created because rock melons are so expensive in Japan (we saw some for sale at a supermarket for 3150 Yen each... that's nearly 50 New Zealand dollars). So people would just give these bread rolls as omiyage, or gifts, instead of shelling out the cash for a real melon.

Piles of melon pan at a bakery.

It's the perfect texture; soft, fluffy bready goodness topped with a light crust of cookie dough and sugar. You can get different flavours and colours, too. I've had melon pan filled with strawberry milk custard, chocolate chips, and one topped with mochi (sticky rice) instead of cookie dough. Some cheeky fellow also came up with the idea to have a melon flavoured melon pan. I totally see what they did there.

Enjoying a melon pan approximately the size of my head.

I was talking to Mum about Japanese food the other day, and she goes 'you're probably really healthy, the food is so good for you.' And I laughed. Because the problem with my melon-pan-a-day addiction is that, by the time I leave Japan, I'm probably gonna look like a melon pan.

This is the extent of my Photoshopping skills.