Curious about Russian culture, my little sister and I visited the Russian antenna shop Aka-no-Hiroba (Red Square) in Ginza, Tokyo yesterday! It was a small shop, but they sold so many cute things ranging from matryoshka, handmade sweets, chocolates, tea, pickles, honey and traditional Russian food. We were really excited upon entering the shop!
After a long time of looking around and squealing at how cute all the chocolates and package designs were, we ended up buying a whole mountain of things. (Can’t help it because we’re really huge fans of snacks and sweets!) Here’s what we got.
A lot of chocolates, tea, cheese, crackers, snacks, sunflower seeds, honey, pelmeni and doctor’s sausage. The chocolate packaging are really colourful and cute~
Doctor’s Sausage
We found the Doctor’s sausage particularly interesting. Wikipedia says that it’s a popular boiled sausage in Russia. The sausage was first produced in 1936. It was intended to be a dietary supplement for people exhibiting signs of prolonged starvation, such as the patients whose health were compromised as a result of the Russian Civil War, hence the name. An interesting sausage with a history now sitting in our fridge.
Reflection
Since my sister and I haven’t been out of the house for a long time due to the Tokyo coronavirus lockdown, just walking up and down the subway stairs to get to the shop and back home knocked both of us out (Pfft!). And the summer heat was so hot you could cook in it. But it was totally worth it!
Seeing another country’s food and culture was always a beautiful learning experience. I loved the trip and all the cute sweets we got. Looking forward to tasting all of them!
