Tanabata Matsuri 七夕

Tanabata special edition cake from Sadaharu Aoki

So if you read the previous entry about the link between the Narco dog and the Don Quijote shop, you probably thinking we are stretching things a bit. And now you see another entry with yet another mix bag of photos, and you are right!! We're going to show you how a dog dressed in Yukata（浴衣）can be linked to a piece of cake, albeit in beautiful wrapping, and a street carnival celebration in Tokyo.

Tanabatta 七夕, is a Japanese festival celebrating one of the greatest fairy tale love story across East Asia. Check out the linked wikipedia entry for more details. Though also well known in Chinese folk tales, it's not celebrated in China to any extent. (In fact, not sure what else is celebrated in China other than money$$$.) In Japan, people wear traditional garment, yukata to attend events like fireworks and street festivals. And as you can see, some of the beloved doggies (aka わんちゃん, wan chan, humanize them as kids) also wear yukata out.

But then what about the piece of cake, which looked more like a French dessert than Japanese. This is a Tanabata special edition cake from Sadaharu Aoki, an upscale French patisserie in Tokyo. See this link to see more about this special. The exquisitely presented cake has this transparent sugar decoration on top which is meant to be the Milky Way which separates Orihime (織り姫）and Kengyuu（牽牛）but in this case it's what separates our mouths from the delicious macaron at the end. There is one more link between Yukata and this cake. If you wear Yukata to go and buy desserts for takeaway from one of its shops spending over 2,000 yen during the speical period from 1 Jul to 7 Jul, you will get a free baked dessert.