Beef tongue flavour favourite in Yokohama Ice Cream Expo

London, Aug 11 : Bizarre as it may sound, but an ice cream called the beef tongue turned out to be the most popular flavours at an exposition in Japan.

The Yokohama Ice Cream Expo celebrated the 130th anniversary of the arrival of ice cream in Japan, and the flavours on show were exotic regional varieties, including eel, raw horse, curry, crab, and potato. Manabu Matsumoto, the organiser of the festival that attracted thousands of fans before it closed on Sunday, identified beef tongue ice cream from Miyagi Prefecture as the most popular variety.

"We have ice cream from all over Japan - from Hokkaido in the north to Okinawa in the south - but beef tongue has been the one that people keep coming back for," the Telegraph quoted him as saying.

The two-week festival offered more than 125 varieties of ice cream, including cheese, octopus, prawn and a garlic variety called Dracula Premium Ice.

Another much-loved ice cream was flavoured with very finely sliced pieces of pearl from the traditional pearl-growing region of Japan's inland sea.

Most of the ice creams were available for between Y300 (1.42 pounds) and Y800 (3.78 pounds) for a small tub.

ANI