It has been said of Japanese food that it is a cuisine to be looked at rather than eaten. I would go further and say that it is to be meditated upon. Take a look on the color of the confection yokan, is it not indeed a color to call forth meditation? The cloudy translucence, like that of jade, the faint, dreamlike glow that suffudes it, as if it had drunk into very depths the light of the sun, the complexity and profundity of the color; nothing of the sort is to be found in Western candies. How simple and insignificant cream-filled chocolates seem by comparison!
