Shiro-Hige Cream Puff Factory Totoro Cream Puff: Shiro-Hige Cream Puff Factory is a small, quaint shop / cafe about a 10 minute walk from the Odakyu Line in Tokyo. I'm not positive of its official affiliation with Studio Ghibli, but it has so much tasteful Ghibli decor, including original watercolors and sketches, that I would imagine it has been sanctioned by the studio. Their speciality is Totoro cream puffs ranging in flavor from strawberry, chocolate, banana, and regular, each with their own adorable decoration; for example, the strawberry cream puff has a sakura flower, the chocolate one has a straw hat with a blue ribbon, and the banana one has a straw hat with a yellow ribbon. I chose to eat at the cafe upstairs and ordered the regular cream puff, which had a green leaf on its forehead. Each puff is about 400¥, or about $3.80, which is very reasonable given the quality - it's also very sizable, about 2x the size of a Beard Papa cream puff, for example. The pastry itself is thin and crisp, with a fairly neutral flavor, and the cream inside tastes quite simply of good quality egg, sugar, and cream. If I had to be picky, I'd say that the pastry could be improved, as it didn't have the plush, leavened interior that you get in a really good cream puff, but for what it is (a really reasonably priced dessert that's almost too cute to eat), it's great and worth seeking out, even though it's a bit far from downtown! 4.0/5.0

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