Kyoto Arashiyama is a popular tourist spot that you must visit when you come to Kyoto. You can walk around many temples, shrines, and Buddhist temples, as well as natural spots such as Togetsukyo Bridge and bamboo grove paths. If you plan to spend a day sightseeing in Arashiyama, you should not miss the delicious sweets. Here are our picks for the BEST 8 Arashiyama sweets.

This Japanese tea stand mainly offers teas and matcha from Kyoto Prefecture. The owner is so particular about tea that he visits tea growers every year to harvest tea. The store has only a counter, and one of the store’s attractions is that matcha is prepared and served right in front of customers. Matcha latte, matcha ice cream, matcha pudding, and other popular menu items are available for matcha fans not to be missed.

This Japanese sweets shop is located at the entrance to the bamboo grove path. In Arashiyama, it is popular to eat a little bit of various sweets. Particularly popular at the store is the “Aburi Mitarashi” (roasted mochi dumpling). These dumplings are larger in size and have a chunky, stretchy texture compared to typical Mitarashi dumplings. It is irresistible to eat them intertwined with the mitarashi bean paste that is poured generously into the container.

Seasonal menus are also available, with gourmet sweet potato dishes recommended during the sweet potato season. These gourmet items include fried sweet potatoes with sweet honey, thin, crispy, and savory sweet potato chips, and other delicacies that allow you to taste the true flavor of sweet potatoes.

The Fukuda Art Museum opened in October 2019 in Arashiyama as a new center for Japanese culture. The architecture is based on a traditional Kyoto machiya, and the modern Japanese exterior design blends in with the surrounding nature without any sense of incongruity. The “Bread, Espresso & Fukuda Art Museum” is located within the museum. The café was created to provide the most beautiful view of the Wataratsuki Bridge, the symbol of Arashiyama. The museum café is open only to visitors of the Fukuda Art Museum, so you can spend a relaxing time without getting caught up in the crowds. After enjoying the art, enjoy a luxurious tea time while admiring the beautiful Arashiyama scenery.

As the name suggests, the restaurant is popular for its delicious paninis and coffee made with special bread, but the desserts are actually very authentic as well. Popular items include parfaits, coffee jelly sundaes, and cheesecakes that are made with a variety of seasonal ingredients.

We also recommend “Bread, Espresso & Arashiyama Garden,” located a 3-minute walk from Fukuda Art Museum. Here you can enjoy sweets, light meals, and aromatic coffee in a renovated old private house.
The popular fruit sandwiches feature milky cream and seasonally changing fruit. Enjoy seasonal ingredients such as strawberries in spring and two kinds of melons in summer.

Kyoto’s famous confectionery store “MALEBRANCHE” brings you western-style confections that resonate with the senses, utilizing Kyoto’s seasonal aesthetic sensibilities. If you visit the store, be sure to try the “Chachabo” matcha ice cream eclair, a takeout sweet available only at the Arashiyama store. The rich matcha soft serve, made with plenty of Uji matcha green tea, goes well with the savory cookie eclair.

For souvenirs, we recommend “Cha no Ka,” a confection using rich matcha green tea that is representative of MALEBRANCHE and can only be purchased in Kyoto. This confectionary consists of a melt-in-your-mouth dark tea langue de chat sandwiched between white chocolate with a rich milkiness. The packaging, exclusive to the Arashiyama store, is very cute.

Arashiyama Misora’s takeout sweets “Drinking Dessert Drink” are popular as a “new type of dessert” because of their colorful and cute appearance. Despite the name “drink,” the can is filled with a variety of textures, making it a great drink. You can enjoy a different menu each season.

In summer, “shaved ice to drink” is recommended. Yogurt soy milk, frozen fruit, and ice are mixed into a cool drink that cools you down from the inside out.

Mamemono & Taiyaki is located on the first floor of the Arashiyama Shoryuen complex across from Randen Arashiyama Station. Shoryuen is a complex where Kyoto’s representative long-established stores are gathered together to offer gourmet lunches, cafes, and traditional craft stores.

They insist on using local ingredients: red bean paste made from azuki beans, soy milk squeezed from soybeans, and coffee beans, all of which are purchased from a long-established shop in Kyoto. There are three types of taiyaki: tsubu-an, custard, and an-butter. We recommend the an-butter, which has a shelf life of only one minute before the butter melts. Enjoy the salty-sweet flavor of the butter in the sweet red bean paste.

This is the Arashiyama store of the popular Kyoto brand “Kumono-cha”. The interior of the store was thoughtfully designed to match Arashiyama, using bamboo native to Kyoto, with “green” as the theme color, white for clouds, and black for Arashiyama. In particular, the second floor uses bamboo to recreate the “Arashiyama Bamboo Forest Road”.

Recommended sweets are the Kumonobamboo Mousse Set and the Kumono Set. The Kumonobamboo Mousse Set includes Kumono-Bamboo Mousse, Dango, and Kumono-Matcha Latte. The matcha-flavored bamboo mousse cake is a whole food sweet with brown sugar jelly on the surface. The cake is smooth to the touch and has a smooth texture. The sticky sesame dumplings are topped with matcha cream, and the savory sesame flavor and bittersweet matcha go very well together.

The Kumono Set includes Kumono Mousse and Kumono Matcha Latte. The matcha latte is made from carefully selected Uji matcha and has a luxurious taste of mildly bitter matcha and rich special milk. The fluffy and cute cloud-shaped latte artwork (HOT only) is Insta-worthy. Kumonomousse is a cloud-shaped sweet that looks cute from any angle. Inside is mousse made with matcha green tea and azuki beans.

This is a “Kyo Waffle” store that not only looks cute, but is of course particular about the taste and volume when eaten, and each waffle is handmade one by one. We are particular about every single piece of tableware and interior design so that you can enjoy not only eating the sweets but also spending time there.

The chocolate-dipped waffles are also available for takeout, so it is wonderful to take out and take pictures with the Arashiyama scenery.

There are various kinds of stores from take-out sweets to cafes. Enjoying delicious sweets along with sightseeing spots will surely make your sightseeing in Arashiyama even more enjoyable. It is also fun to take pictures of the cute looking sweets and the scenery of Arashiyama. We hope you will visit the stores we have introduced.

We also have a video showing the stores we introduced!
Please take a look!