Oita Ice Wonderland

It's ending after this weekend so better get this out quick: In front of Oita Station, there's an ice cream festival. Great timing with the crazy hot summer made this event really popular the Sunday we were in town.

There are booths selling ice creams represented by local shops from about half of the prefectures. Not a ton of Kyushu prefectures were represented, but Blue Seal from Okinawa had a booth. 

The longest lines seemed to be for the Hokkaido ice cream - which was sold out in the afternoon.

We went with the booth selling ice cream from Aomori Prefecture. The most unique flavor was the garlic ice cream.

Dracula is a hilarious name for garlic ice cream. It's something I had never seen or tried so I was happy my husband chose that one. Unfortunately it was disappointing - it tasted like a normal vanilla ice cream. 

I went with their "Aomori's Witch" fresh cheese ice with cinnamon and apple. Normally that would be way too many flavors for me, but I'm into cinnamon and apples. That was also disappointing as the best part was just a tiny bit of jam inside this sort of sandwich with cheesecake-like ice cream. The 'bread' part of this was so unnecessary and I would have preferred more of the ice cream with apple jam part. 

Ice creams were pricey at around 3-400 yen each. It's still a nice opportunity to try out some local foods without traveling. I'm not sure if this is a traveling event or if it has taken place in other areas. Have you seen this somewhere else?

If you're around Oita and like ice cream, it's worth checking out.