Babahera Ice

From March to November, on roadsides and at events across Akita, women sit under pink and yellow parasols beside metal drums and sell ice cream. The product is two flavours — strawberry pink and banana yellow — served with a flat metal spatula, and the seller shapes it onto the cone in overlapping petals so that it arrives as a rose. The name is blunt: baba, an old woman, and hera, the spatula.

It started around 1950 with a maker in Oga selling from a bicycle, and it has stayed a roadside trade rather than moving into shops. The parasols match the ice. The sellers are largely elderly, they work alone, and where they set up is local knowledge rather than published information. Finding one is part of the thing; you see the parasol from the car and stop. It costs a few hundred yen.