This was
Taiyaki - fish-shaped pancake filled with sweeten red bean paste, a traditional Japanese sweet.
I bought a special pan from Japan that can make two Taiyaki at once. It was a little bit tricky to figure out how much batter I should pour in the pan, how much sweeten beans I should fill, how long I should bake, etc. to make a good-looking Taiyaki, but after making a couple of fish, I was getting better at fishing.
The fish is supposed to represent seabream, or
Tai. That's why it is called "Tai-yaki," meaning baked seabream.
Tai is a happy symbol in Japan because
Tai is an ending sound of a Japanese word,
MedeTAI (happy). I think Japanese likes pun, and it's true that watching and eating the cute warm
Taiyaki makes me smile.
