Do you like pastries " If you do and are in Japan, I highly recommend you to try some local sweets and snacks !
It is true that Japanese people are not used to eat very sweet food or what we call “desert” so much. However some purely Japanese food can be a little sweet because of the sauce, for example the sauce one that you put on okonomiyaki, yakisoba or tonkatsu. Actually, there are maybe more sweet dishes (even mildly) in Japanese cuisine than in let’s say European countries’ cuisine. However, since Japanese traditionally don’t have the habit of eating desert, it is hard or even almost impossible to find a restaurant serving Japanese food that will propose you a desert.

But Japanese sweets do exist ! In general, they are a lot less sweet than western pastries and their main ingredient is often rice. An other popular ingredient you can find a lot is… beans… Yes, it may surprise you but you will find sweets flavored with azuki beans in Japan and this is really good.  Azuki is a vine widely grown throughout East Asia and the Himalayas for its small (approximately 5 mm) bean.
First of all, the most simple Japanese dessert is mochi, which is a rice cake made of glutinous rice pounded into paste and molded into shape. It is a traditional food for the Japanese New Year and is commonly sold and eaten during that time. However, you will rarely eat it alone as you can see below.
Then you have Dango. This is a small, sticky sw...