Neon lights reflecting on the rain-soaked streets of Maruyamachō, Shibuya — where Tokyo’s night glows in layers of color.

A Traditional Japanese Sweet Sparkling Like Tokyo Neon

Tokyo is not a city that can be described with only one face.

The quiet of morning, the noise of the stations, the glow left behind in side streets. From station to station, from neighborhood to neighborhood, even the color of the air seems to change.

In the middle of my Tokyo, Connected journey, I found myself in Shibuya.

A place where youthful energy never stops moving, where new expressions seem to be born every day.

And in that city, I found a sweet that somehow felt like it belonged there.

It was kohakuto—clear and jewel-like.

A traditional Japanese sweet, and yet somehow it felt like Tokyo now.

Standing in the Shibuya night, that was what I thought.

Place where I traveled: Shibuya, where colors and rhythms cross

Shibuya at night is not simply bright.

There is the glow of giant screens, the waves of people moving as the lights change, the music drifting out from somewhere nearby.

As you walk, it feels as if many different rhythms are layering over one another inside a single neighborhood.

This is a place where youth culture intersects.

Fashion, music, photography, language—things still in the process of becoming seem to belong here more naturally than things already complete. Shibuya has that kind of heat.

Moncha, too, is something still taking shape along the journey.

So when I stand in this city, that feeling of “something being born right now” does not feel distant at all.

Snacks I found in the journey: Kohakutō shining like neon

That night, what I picked up was a Japanese sweet that looked like a small transparent

fragment.

Kohakutō.

Pale blue, soft pink, amber touched by light.

As the angle shifts, its expression changes little by little. It looked almost like Shibuya neon.

Lively, yet delicate.Eye-catching, yet never noisy.

That balance felt perfectly suited to this city.

When you place one piece in your mouth, the outside breaks with a light crispness, and the inside gently softens away.

The first thing that arrives is a clean sweetness. Then comes a quiet aftertaste—subtle, but somehow unforgettable.

The light of Shibuya is not only dazzling.

Behind it, there is night air, the presence of people, even a small trace of loneliness.

Kohakutō seemed to hold those layers too.

Why Kohakutō belongs to “Tokyo, Connected”

Neon lights reflecting on the rain-soaked streets of Maruyamachō, Shibuya — where Tokyo’s night glows in layers of color.

Kohakutō is a traditional Japanese sweet. And yet in recent years, its transparent beauty and colorful appearance drew attention on social media, and at one point it even became hard to find because of its popularity.

That arc feels a little like Shibuya itself.

It is not about destroying the old to make way for the new.

It is about looking again at something that has always existed, through the eyes of the present. Kohakutō is not memorable only because it is photogenic. Its delicacy when you actually eat it is what gives it depth.

Something traditional, blending with new sensibilities, taking on a different expression in the present day.

That feels close to Tokyo too—a city always changing, yet never fully leaving its older layers behind.

Tradition and contemporary culture standing together in a single scene, naturally and without strain.

That, to me, is exactly why Kohakutō feels so right for Moncha’s theme: Tokyo, Connected.

Kohakutō as a memory of Tokyo

The sweets inside a Moncha box are not just sweets.

They carry the air of the neighborhood, the light of that hour, and the small surprise of that first bite.

When you open the box, a little of Shibuya’s neon returns.

That is what Kohakutō feels like to me—a small fragment of Tokyo.

Next station

With the afterglow of neon tucked quietly inside me, I head toward the next part of the city.

The journey of Tokyo, Connected is still continuing.