Japanese traditional sweets and desserts are called ‘wagashi’. With distinctly Japanese ingredients and flavours such as matcha, adzuki beans and kinako, they are completely different from their counterparts found on other continents. Wagashi are the perfect accompaniment for a cup of green tea if you want a sublime Japanese teatime, but apart from just tasting exquisite, they often also boast beautiful presentation.

Wagashi’s masterful confectioners take inspiration from various aspects of Japanese culture, including great reverence for the distinct four seasons, which is why you will often find sweets specifically for different times of the year.

When you think of the ideal summer treat, the word that comes to mind is surely ‘refreshing’, so Japanese sweets maker Kasho Seikanin went about portraying the perfect cooling scene in wagashi form, with beautifully crafted goldfish swimming in crisp water.

They chose to use a jelly-esque sweet called yokan, which is usually made from red bean paste, sugar and agar and comes in various flavours. The ingredients are hardened into a block and served in slices. The texture is similar to a paste and it can often be seen as part of tea ceremony.

For this special summer treat, the lower part of the yokan is a cloudy green-blue to give the impression of a lake or pond, while the top is translucent to show the fish swimming around. This two-tone design of the sweet makes the scene look even more three-dimensional and real.

Although these sweets are far too aesthetically pleasing to simply consume, luckily just looking at the refreshing colours is enough to cool us down during the hot summer months. But if you do want to bag some, they will be available on Kasho Seikanin's online shop from mid-August, along with many other wonderful wagashi creations showcased on their Instagram.