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Nitori lets you cuddle up with taiyaki, dorayaki, and more.

Japan has a lot of wise attitudes about food, and perhaps one of the most sensical of all is that dessert aesthetics are important. Sweets are a discretionary part of the diet, something eaten for enjoyment rather than nutrition, so if you can enjoy both the way they taste and the way they look, that’s double the fun.

Now Japanese housewares chain Nitori has extended that line of thinking, since if Japanese sweets look nice as food, they should look nice as part of your home’s interior decorations too, right?

That’s the logical conclusion being applied to Nitori’s Mochimochi Cushion line, with designs that apply wagashi (Japanese sweets) styling to mochimochi (“squeezably soft”) cushions. For example, at the end of a long, hard day at work or school, you could come home, plop yourself down on the couch, and curl up with the Taiyaki Mochimochi Cushion. The taiyaki, a pancake-like cake baked on a special grill into the shape of a fish with sweet red beans or other sweet fillings, is one of Japan’s most beloved wagashi varieties, and Nitori’s designers have done an amazing job recreating it in cushion form.

▼ Nitori taiyaki cushion

▼ Actual taiyaki

But there’s much more to the world of wagashi than just taiyaki, and Nitori actually has three other Japanese sweets cushions to fill your home with too (well, maybe two and a half others, depending on how you want to count one of them).

First up we have a dorayaki cushion, which draws its inspiration from the sandwiched sweet of two circular cakes with sweet red beans between.

▼ Dorayaki

▼ Dorayaki cushion

Then there’s the kuri manju cushion, modeled after a manju (steamed cake) with a chestnut (kuri) filling. Kuri manju are often oblong in shape and have the kanji character for kuri (栗) seared into the dough, and Nitori follows both design cues for its cushion.

▼ There’s an actual kuri manju in the wrapper in front of the cushion in this photo.

And last, there’s the Waffle Mochimochi Cushion.

This is what that “maybe two and a half other wagashi cushions” part was about. Waffles themselves, obviously, aren’t an indigenous part of Japanese cuisine. However, rather than being large enough to eat with a knife and fork, cooked to a light crisp, and drizzled with maple syrup. “waffles” in Japan are often smaller, softer, and folded around some sort of creamy filling.

Because of that, you could argue either way about whether or not Nitori’s waffle cushion represents Japanese dessert culture, but there’s no debating its cuteness, and it, like all of the other cushions, promises an invitingly mochimochi softness.

Nitori’s dorayaki and kuri manju cushions have been around for a while, but the taiyaki and waffle versions have just been added to the Mochimochi Cushion lineup. The taiyaki cushion is priced at 1,490 yen (US$9.40), while the others are 1,990 yen, and they’re all available through the Nitori online shop here.

Source: Nitori via Japaaan
Top image: Nitori
Insert images: Nitori, SoraNews24, Nitori (2, 3, 4)
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Source: SORA NEWS24