What to do in Kagoshima - eat a polar bear!

Before you freak out and call the SPCA on me, hear me out.

We're not actually eating a real polar bear!

In Kagoshima, there is a very famous dessert called shirokuma, which literally translates to “white bear” or “polarbear”.

Kagoshima is the birthplace of the shirokuma dessert and one simply does not come to Kagoshima and leave without eating a polar bear ;) You can find several variations of shirokuma at the popular restaurant called Mujyaki (天文館むじゃき) which we learned about through our Kyushu guidebook.

The unmistakable shopfront of Mujyaki has a life-sized polarbear mascot sitting out front

Mujyaki is a large concept restaurant comprising of four floors. The first floor (the Shirokuma Cafe) where the desserts are served while the basement serves okonomiya, second floor sells Italian and the 4th floor is an izakaya.

Photo credit: http://mujyaki.co.jp/

The Shirokuma Cafe has a policy that requires all patrons to order an item each in order to dine-in. So we ordered a baby-sized Shirokuma and a dango set to share. After a few minutes, this arrived on our table.

Verdict? The Shirokuma is very much like an Japanese version of an ice-kachang. It is a shaved ice dessert that is doused with condensed milk, mochi, local fruits, and Azuki beans. It should be really refreshing to eat this during the summer time or when the weather is hot.

Where to find this?

Mujyaki is located at the Tenmonkan shopping arcade in the downtown area (the restaurant is a 3 minute walk from the tram stop Tenmonkandori). Tenmonkan is touted to be “the number one shopping area in the southern Kyushu region” and is completely sheltered with a roof cover to provide shade from the sun and also volcanic ash from Mount Sakurajima.

There are retail stores, boutiques, restaurants selling traditional Kagoshima food, cafés, karaoke joints etc lining the arcade. As we visited during a weekday evening, the crowd was visibly thin and there were barely any shoppers there. The most happening thing was the sales people who were trying to cajole the crowds to enter the KTVs!

If you did not manage to make it to Tenmonkan, you can find a small Mujyaki counter at the omiyage shop in Kagoshima Chuo station (next to tourist information desk). There, they sell frozen shirokuma in small convenient cups that you can take away.