I was once asked if the Japanese eat any flavors of ice cream other than Green Tea.

The answer, of course, is a resounding yes — they’re quite into various types of ice cream, from standard flavors that everyone knows to some unique varieties that may seem a little odd to you or me. Take a trip to a Japanese ice cream shop and you’ll see plenty of familiar flavors, like vanilla and chocolate and sakura (cherry), as well as some flavors that might be new to you, like ume (Japanese plum), sweet potato or traditional sweet azuki beans.

Often, ice cream makers base new flavors on food trends, like rose flavored ice cream to make your body smell nice from the inside out, healthy “black sesame” ice cream, or this year’s big boom, mango.

Every once in a while I run across articles about really rare flavors of ice cream in Japan, like crab, octopus, beer or wasabi. While these products do exist, they’re not generally eaten by the average Japanese person, and usually represent some region of the country’s efforts to define themselves as the “squid ink flavored ice cream capital of Japan” or something.

Since the Japanese like to pretend they’re culturally closer to Europe than to Asia, ice cream is often consumed in the form of gelato, although “soft cream” (what soft-serve ice cream is called here) is also popular. One of our family’s favorite treats is to take standard vanilla ice cream and sprinkle matcha powder over the top, which is great when it all starts to melt together.