From manga to a Netflix TV series, the story of a Japanese salaryman who chases down sweet treats across Japan while playing hooky from his work is brought to life. Any sweets maniac will crave the sweets featured in this program, because of the vivid descriptions and photography. One can perfectly imagine the flavor of the featured hotcake or Bavarian cream despite never having tasted the treats in person.

If you are wondering if the sweet treats and restaurants are actually available, good news! You can find these treats in the stores featured in the store. Some fans on Reddit have complied a list of all the restaurants that were featured and their locations on google maps so you can find them the next time you are in Tokyo. The link to the Reddit page is listed at the end.

Now if you haven’t watched any Japanese television before, be prepared for some interesting humor and storytelling. Japanese television, I often find love to embellish on weird or interesting facets to help keep the audience intrigued and guessing what will happen next. For example in Kantaro, the dessert are sometimes impersonated by the characters of the story to help exaggerate the qualities that Kantaro revels in while consuming the dessert.

I really like the style of this show when they introduce the variety of sweets, because it takes on a more whimsical tone and isn’t so factually. For example the Japanese Style Originator, another TV series featured on Netflix, takes on a more formal tone. However, Japanese Style Originator shows many aspects of Japanese culture where as Kantaro only focuses on sweets, which would make it hard to binge through more than one season at a time. You can learn more about Japanese Style Originator in my post here (link) if you would like to see these differences for yourself.

I still really enjoy Kantaro with the focus on just sweets (but that could be my major sweet tooth talking) and hope that Netflix creates a season 2, but only sweet heavens know! If you have visited any of the shops featured or watch the show, please let me know what you think!

List of restaurants from the show: https://www.reddit.com/r/netflix/comments/7h0i66/kantaro_the_sweet_tooth_salaryman_netflix_original/dqqrq48/

Photo credit: https://medium.com/@eggfordinner/kantaro-the-sweet-tooth-salaryman-738bbe6b6be0