Moomin Stand: A Part of the Newest Bubble Tea Trend

I finally got to a tapioca tea stand in the midst of this strongly going trend. It was a good rest after a long day of Christmas shopping.

When I first came to Japan and tried the bubble tea here, I thought it wasn’t very good, the bubbles were like Japanese jello or kanten that just breaks up in the mouth when you bite into them, or similar to another comparable Japanese food, konnyaku.

Hojicha milk tea

So let me tell you what I think of the new bubble tea trend. I tried the hojicha milk tea, which is still a Japanese flavoured drink. Had there been purple taro milk tea, I would have jumped at that, but perhaps that's a flavour seen more with the Taiwanese shops. The drink itself was sweet but not too sweet; I think a lot of the sweetness came naturally from the milk itself. It was a bit powdery but that may be because they use a fine powder of tea leaves much like matcha. There were no clumps of powder or anything though, it was pretty uniform. But then again, I remember the taro to be kind of powdery too...maybe that’s just how some bubble tea is supposed to be. The tapioca was more like the real Taiwanese bubble tea texture, soft but chewy. One of the newest trends of bubble tea now seems to be tapioca flavoured with kurozato (a dark brown sugar). They were mildy sweet with a hint of the dark sugar flavour coming through in the end, a good flavour changer that went well with hojicha. I’m thinking it goes well in this instance but sometimes the unflavoured pearls would be good in other variations. It’s a combination of sweet and sweet so sometimes I would want plain tapioca to mellow out the sweet, and be more of a just a textural addition. They also had a berry flavoured tapioca but the recommended flavour was the caramel kurozato.

Mozo Wondercity Mall Christmas Decor

Area: Kami Otai station (Tsurumai subway line) 上小田井駅, Mozo Wondercity Mall 1F
Shop: Moomin Stand ムーミンスタンド
Website: https://www.mozo-wondercity.com/shop/detail.php?shop_id=4687
Hours: 10am-10pm (LO 9:45pm)