Kawagoe is a small town in Saitama Prefecture, north of Tokyo, easily reached in under an hour from Tokyo. Besides being famous for its old town known as Koedo, the Little Edo of Saitama, it is also famous for being a sweet potato town, which means Kawagoe has an incredible number of dessert shops. You could spend a whole week here and still not try them all — some areas are lined almost entirely with dessert shops.
Most desserts in Kawagoe are made from the town's sweet potatoes. They range from rare, traditional Japanese sweets to common modern treats that still stand out for their rich, fragrant sweet potato flavor.
On our latest trip, we tried to sample as many famous Kawagoe desserts as we could until we were nearly bursting, so now we want to show you just how delicious they were. If you already love sweet potatoes, you really have to come try these!
So let's take a look at 13 famous desserts in Kawagoe.
1. Sweet Potato Parfait Ice Cream at Monzouan
One of the desserts we loved most was this sweet potato parfait. It's piled high with sweet potato toppings and topped with sweet potato soft serve, perfectly sweet and fragrant. The mix of sweet potato toppings was great too, with plenty of variety to enjoy — sweet potato lovers like us were in heaven. At the bottom of the cup is a layer of Saitama black sugar jelly, and eating everything together made for a perfectly balanced, delicious combination. The cup was empty in no time.
Price: 750 yen
2. Sweet Potato Choux Cream at Monzouan
This is the same shop as #1, and it sells many kinds of desserts. Another one we tried and loved was the sweet potato choux cream. It was perfectly sweet and fragrant, with a rich flavor and a crisp, cookie-like pastry shell — a crunch we'd never had in choux cream before — paired with the cool sweetness of the sweet potato cream. It all came together perfectly, and we never got tired of eating it.
Price: 200 yen
3. Kawagoe Pudding
Kawagoe Pudding is another famous dessert right in the heart of Kawagoe's tourist district, with several flavors to choose from. We picked the 3 most popular flavors, sold as a set of 3 bottles for 1,230 yen, and each flavor was quite different — in color, aroma, texture, and even the layer at the bottom of the bottle — so different that you'd never guess they came from the same shop. For example, the original flavor on the left in the photo has a thick, smooth, very fine texture, more liquid than firm, with a fragrant, gently sweet taste. The bottle in the middle is green tea flavor, made with green tea grown in Saitama Prefecture, with a very intense flavor and a strong green tea aroma; at the bottom of the bottle is fragrant sweet red bean, which goes very well with the green tea pudding. And the last bottle on the right can only be sweet potato flavor — surprisingly intense in sweet potato aroma. It's fragrant, sweet, and rich, with well-bound chunks of sweet potato that are still smooth and fine, and at the bottom of the bottle are pieces of sweet potato to enjoy too. Ah… it makes your mouth water. This shop is next to Monzouan (#1 and #2).
Price: about 400 yen per bottle
4. Sweet Potato Choux Cream at Kameya
Kameya is the original shop behind Kashichi, the traditional confectionery in #11. This branch sells several kinds of sweets, but what we tried here was choux cream shaped like a sweet potato. We tried two flavors: sweet potato (cream-colored) and purple sweet potato (purple). Both were fragrant, sweet, and rich, and very refreshing after a tiring walk. Though we have to admit, we liked the sweet potato flavor better.
Price: not certain, but around 160 yen
5. Purple Sweet Potato Soft Serve
This is a famous soft serve shop in Kawagoe, with a smooth-textured soft serve and a very fragrant purple sweet potato aroma. The purple sweet potato chips that came with it were fun to munch on alongside the soft serve. We never expected purple sweet potato soft serve to be this fragrant — the purple sweet potato flavor comes through first, followed by other flavors. We've had purple sweet potato soft serve in Kamakura before, but it doesn't compare to this.
6. Manju at Imo-Koi
The manju at Imo-Koi looks quite plain, like a steamed bun sitting in a steamer basket, not the most appetizing sight. But since it's said to be a local specialty, we had to give it a try. Once we cut it in half, it looked much better — inside was a mix of two fillings, sweet potato and red bean, wrapped in a nice thin dough. On the first bite, we were surprised at how good it was. We'd expected a sticky dough with a bland filling, but the dough was so thin we barely noticed it, and the big chunks of red bean and sweet potato paired surprisingly well, with just the right amount of sweetness. We finished it in no time, and at only 180 yen, the price was great too.
7. Candied Sweet Potato at Kawagoe Iwata
This dessert is sweet potato candied in kuromitsu syrup and sprinkled with sesame, cut into pieces you can eat with a skewer stick without getting your hands sticky. It's fragrant and sweet — the sweet potato inside is very moist, though surprisingly, even with the sugar coating, it isn't overly sweet, and it pairs nicely with the fragrant sesame. If you like sweet potato and sesame, you'll probably really like this one.
8. Sweet Potato Ice Cream with Orange Jam at Cafe Torokko
This shop actually serves a sweet potato kaiseki set meal, which was unusual and delicious. If you like sweet potato, we highly recommend it — even on a weekday, we still had to wait in line. Besides the delicious set meal, the drinks served were also excellent, good enough that we wanted to buy some to take home — both the sweet potato sake and the sweet potato green tea were great. The dessert in this photo is the ice cream that closes out the kaiseki set: a fragrant sweet potato ice cream paired with a sweet-tart orange jam; the two go really well together.
This shop is inside one of Kawagoe's iconic historic buildings. The front of the building is a shop selling lots of ceramics, many of them quite beautiful. Cafe Torokko itself is further inside, past the ceramics area.
Price: Mini Kaiseki Sweet Potato set, 1,900 yen
9. Fried Sweet Potato Chips with Dipping Sauce at Koedo Osatsu An
Honestly, this one got hyped up on social media — everyone who visits has to buy some for photos. It's a large, thin fried sweet potato chip, and you can choose a dipping sauce; we went with shio butter (salted butter). To be honest, unless you really love sweet potato, you might want to skip this one — it's quite oily, and the salted butter dip we chose made it even richer. But if you do like it, it's crispy with a light sweet potato aroma. A chip fried this thin is a rare find, and it also makes for a stylish photo to post on Instagram.
10. Egg Tart with a Foot Onsen at Tsubaki no Kura
If you're tired from walking around and want to sit down and soak your feet in an onsen, this is the place to come. Besides a fragrant, sweet, delicious egg tart, they also serve fragrant green tea, along with foot-onsen seating and a Zen garden to admire. The set costs 1,500 yen. The atmosphere is lovely, making for a really relaxing break, with a beautiful, very Japanese-looking spot for photos too.
11. Traditional Japanese Namagashi at Kashichi
Wagashi is the general Japanese term for traditional sweets. The one in this photo is namagashi, from Kashichi, a branch of Kameya, a more than 240-year-old confectioner diagonally across the street (we also tried their choux cream, in #4 above).
This namagashi is made entirely by hand, day by day, so it's always fresh, and only a very limited amount is made each day, since it's shaped only by craftspeople who have trained for years. Different shapes are made depending on the season, and each piece is highly detailed and finely crafted, beautiful both outside and inside — when cut open, you can see several layers of beautiful color. The flavor is fragrant, sweet, soft, and fine, showing the real care of Japanese confectioners — it's like enjoying both flavor and art at the same time. It also tastes best if eaten on the same day it's made.
All this care makes it a rare treat, fitting for a traditional Japanese confection. And even though it looks so beautiful you almost don't want to eat it, the flavor was genuinely impressive.
Another interesting thing about this shop is that they hold a workshop where you can learn to make this sweet yourself. Each session takes nearly an hour, with English interpretation from the chef, available on Saturdays and Sundays only, for 2,000 yen per person. It's a great way to experience something new in Japan, and if you enjoy cooking or making sweets, you'll definitely love it.
12. Taiyaki (Fish-Shaped Cake)
We didn't actually plan to stop at this shop, but since we already love taiyaki, especially red bean flavor, we couldn't resist it, even though we were already stuffed. This shop is on Kawagoe's main pedestrian street, Crea Mall, in front of Kawagoe Station, which connects to Hon-Kawagoe Station. It was delicious and satisfying, and the price was friendly too.
Price: not certain, but probably around 130 yen
13. Gokabo Japanese Sweet at Hibiki-an
This is a local sweet you'll see sold all over Kawagoe. We tried it at a yakitori restaurant, and it turned out to be surprisingly delicious — good enough that we thought about buying more later, but ended up forgetting. It's a crispy, puffed rice cake, fragrant and sprinkled with kinako soybean powder (the powder the Japanese often sprinkle on various sweets — anyone who's been to Japan will probably recognize it). Eaten together, it's fragrant, sweet, delicious, and just crispy enough — we really liked it. We later learned that this sweet, called Gokabo, is a specialty of Saitama Prefecture that's hard to find elsewhere. If you visit, you should definitely try it. As you can see in the photo, it's sold at several shops, especially at Sweets Alley
That's a wrap on Kawagoe's most famous desserts. But besides these well-known sweets, there are also plenty of great drink and food shops here — let's add one drink shop here as a bonus.
Lemonade from Lemonade by Lemonica
This shop actually has several branches across Japan, but the colors looked so appetizing that on a hot, muggy day in Japan, we ended up stopping by every time we passed. The flavor is fragrant with lemon, as you'd expect, and it didn't disappoint at all. Too bad it wasn't quite sour enough, but at least it wasn't overly sweet either, making it a great way to quench your thirst while out sightseeing. The shop is located in Sweets Alley.
As a final bonus, don't miss the Kawagoe branch of Starbucks — this Starbucks in Kawagoe's old town has become a landmark that many visitors ask about. It's located right in the heart of the old town, the main tourist area of the city, close to the Toki no Kane bell tower, another landmark of Kawagoe. Housed in a Japanese-style building with a lovely back garden, it blends in beautifully with the town. If you visit, don't miss stopping by.
That wraps up our roundup of Kawagoe's sweet treats, sweet enough to satisfy any craving. But the delicious food this town has to offer doesn't end here — there's still plenty more to talk about, so stay tuned.