Yukimi, Mochi Ice Cream and Yukimi Daifuku

Yukimi is a seasonal activity in Japan, similar to hanami (cherry blossom viewng), consisting of watching snow falling.

Mochi ice cream is a Japanese confection made from mochi (pounded sticky rice) with an ice cream filling. Mochi ice cream is now an internationally recognized food, popular in the United States.^[2]

Mochi ice cream is a small, round dessert ball consisting of a soft, pounded sticky rice cake (mochi) on the outside and an ice cream filling on the inside. It is then dusted with corn starch.^[3] There are many flavors to choose from, but the most popular are green tea (matcha), vanilla, chocolate, strawberry, and red bean (azuki).^{[citation needed]}

Yukimi Daifuku (Japanese: 雪見だいふく "snow-viewing daifuku") is a brand of mochi ice cream manufactured by Lotte. It consists of a ball of vanilla ice cream wrapped in a thin layer of mochi, or rice cake. Lotte originally created Wataboshi (Japanese: わたぼうし "cotton hat or capped with snow"), a bite-size ice cream wrapped in a thin layer of marshmallow in 1980. Marshmallow was quickly replaced by mochi because it is more popular in Japan and the company perfected a technology to keep mochi soft at freezing temperature in 1981.

The name is a play upon tsukimi daifuku (月見大福, "moon-viewing daifuku"), the sweets traditionally eaten while viewing the moon.