Odakyu Electric Railway and Odakyu Hakone Holdings will hold “Hakone Sweets Collection 2024” in cooperation with hotels, museums, and restaurants in the Hakone area. The event will run from March 1 to April 22.
This event allows visitors to enjoy limited-edition sweets created by chefs and patissiers at each store while sightseeing in Hakone. This year will be the 25th event after four years since the Corona Disaster, and a total of 31 stores, including seven participating for the first time, will offer original sweets.
In keeping with the theme for 2024, “Let’s Celebrate Spring! Party Sweets,” the lineup will include a wide variety of visually appealing and delicious items such as gorgeously arranged cakes and parfaits, Japanese confectionaries that make use of local ingredients, and beverages.
For example, Fujiya Hotel, a classic hotel established in 1878, offers “Strawberry Marble Cake Marquetry Style (with coffee or tea)” (3,300 yen), which is inspired by the traditional craft of marquetry.
The café “cu-mo Hakone,” which is located inside the Hakone Tozan Cable Car’s Hayakumoyama Station and offers an excellent view, will participate in the event for the first time and will serve “HOSHI-OBORO” (750 yen), a milk tea topped with a fluffy cloud-like poipu and kompeito sugar.
Sengokuhara Tea House” sells “Spring Ohagi Matsuri (with hojicha tea)” (1,500 yen) made from locally harvested homemade sticky rice. The set includes seven varieties of rice cakes, including Sengokuhara Spring (cherry bean paste/mitarashi), Meadow (green tea), Susuki (soybean flour/sweet potato), Mountain (sweet red bean paste), and Wild Rice (black sesame), which represent the beautiful scenery of Sengokuhara.
In addition, each store will offer one original sweet item for the event.
In addition, a new feature was introduced this year: a “Web reservation function for sweets. Although it is possible to go to the store you want on the day of the event and purchase the sweets, most stores limit the quantity of sweets to a limited number each day.
The Web reservation function is in response to such requests from customers who want to secure limited-edition sweets in advance and enjoy sightseeing in Hakone without worrying about running out of stock.
In addition to securing sweets, it is now possible to make reservations for any combination of transportation and hotels, such as “sweets reservation + Romance Car express ticket + train ticket” for a one-day trip, or “sweets reservation + hotel + Romance Car express ticket + Hakone free pass + train ticket” for an overnight trip. The set price is said to be more economical than the regular price for individual reservations.
On February 20, a press tasting was held at one of the participating restaurants, Yumoto Fujiya Hotel. Mr. Hidehiro Mizukami, President of Odakyu Hakone Holdings, greeted the guests on behalf of the organizers. Also in attendance were Hiroyuki Katsumata, mayor of Hakone-cho, which sponsors the event; Teisuke Suzuki, chairman of the Odawara Hakone Chamber of Commerce and Industry; Shigeo Suzuki, chairman of the Hakone Onsen Ryokan Hotel Cooperative Association; Mamoru Sato, executive director of the Hakone DMO (Hakone Tourism Association); and Jun Nakajima, representative director of Hakone Promotion Forum.
Mayor Katsumata said, “The Sweets Collection is a popular event in Hakone. Many people have been eagerly awaiting its revival,” he said in his congratulatory address, appealing to visitors to Hakone to “enjoy the beauty, taste, and fun of Hakone sweets.
Details of each store’s sweets can be found on the “Hakone Sweets Collection 2024” special page.
© Source travel watch
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