Japanese Pepper Soft Ice-cream!?

Ask yourself this question: what wouldn't you put on ice-cream? You probably have a long list of food and ingredients that you wouldn't add to the summer dessert for good reasons. Japan tends to disagree. You may have heard of wasabi icecream and natto icecream being things available in Japan, but when I was walking around Nishiki Ichiba in Kyoto, I ran into the latest surprise of my adventures: sansho icecream!

For those who don't know, sansho is often called Japanese pepper, and it is a relative of kasho, the type of Chinese chili pepper that will straight up paralyze your tongue, lips, or whatever else comes in contact.

Imagine my surprise when I saw the rare combination available at this pepper shop. The shop sells different blends of grind peppers like ichimi, shichimi, sansho... so in a shopping and tourist-heavy distract that many people enjoy walking and eating, naturally sansho ice-cream is their to-go food, right...?

I thought to myself: well, I have never seen this before, and I like ice-cream, plus I love sansho, so I HAVE to try it. I spoke and paid the obaachan 330 yen, and she asked: "how much sansho do you want?"

"What do you mean 'how much'?" I was confused. Apparently, the sansho icecream is basically a soft vanilla icecream that she then sprinkles their signature freshly grind sansho onto, so I could choose from little, standard, or extra, all for the same price.

Being the frugal person, of course I went with extra. She turned the white icecream cone green with the powdery pepper. I took a bite and... "oh this is delici.... oh my lips are paralyzed." My girlfriend gave it a try too, and gone were her senses as well.

Personally, I LOVED it. That paralyzing sensation from kasho and sansho is great, and to have it available as a dessert is awesome, but I understand if most people aren't fans. The next time I go back, I'm trying their shichimi icecream.