Hanegumo: Haneda Airport's Number One Souvenir Sweet

Airport sweets have a quiet problem. You meet them at the worst possible moment — walking to a gate, counting the minutes, with your hands already full. You buy something at random, or you buy nothing, and later you cannot remember which one it was.

Hanegumo (羽雲) is the one people go back for. It is made for Haneda Airport and sold nowhere else, and on the airport’s own online shop it has been the number one item overall, with a review score of 4.9 from more than four hundred buyers (at the time of writing).

What It Is

It is a dorayaki — two small pancakes with sweet bean paste between them — but made with a different texture from the usual. The batter is soft and faintly chewy at the same time, and it is wrapped around chunky red bean paste made from Hokkaido azuki, cooked slowly so the beans keep their shape.

The name is written with the character for feather (羽, as in Haneda) and the character for cloud (雲, kumo). A cloud pattern is branded onto the surface of each one. It is a quiet piece of design for an airport sweet — no aeroplanes, no cartoon mascots, just a cloud.

Who Makes It

Kanou Shoujuan (叶 匠壽庵), a traditional confectioner based in Ōtsu, Shiga Prefecture, near Lake Biwa. Their best-known sweet is Amo, a bar of azuki paste wrapped around soft mochi.

What I find likeable about them is where they begin. The company says that making sweets starts with farming, and they keep a 63,000-tsubo stretch of hill country called Jubusan no Sato, where they grow their own plums and yuzu for their sweets. A confectioner that grows its own fruit is not a common thing.

Hanegumo is made by that company for Haneda alone. It is not sold at their own shops in Shiga, and not in department stores.

Where You Can Actually Buy It — Please Read This Part

This is the part most articles skip, and it matters more than the taste.

Kanou Shoujuan has its own counter in Terminal 2, on the 2nd floor Marketplace, open from 06:30 to 20:00. The Marketplace is the public shopping floor, before the security check — you do not need a boarding pass, and you do not need to be flying that day. Hanegumo is also carried by souvenir shops in Terminal 1.

It is not sold in Terminal 3. Terminal 3 is Haneda’s international terminal, which is where almost all flights leaving Japan depart from. So if you are flying home, you cannot pick this up on your way to your gate. Please do not plan around it.

That leaves three realistic ways to get it:

1. You are taking a domestic flight from Terminal 1 or 2 — for Sapporo, Fukuoka, Okinawa and so on. Then it is simply there, on your way.
2. You go to Terminal 2 on purpose. The terminals are joined by a free shuttle bus and by the Monorail and Keikyu lines, so this is easy from Terminal 3 or from the city. Haneda is a genuinely pleasant place to spend an hour.
3. You order it online — either to collect at the airport, or to your hotel. Both are explained below.

→ Related: Haneda Airport to Tokyo: Every Way into the City, and When to Use Each

Reserve Online, Collect at the Airport

The airport’s official shop, HANEDA Shopping, has a click-and-collect service. You order online, choose the date, the shop and the time slot, and collect the parcel at a counter inside the terminal by showing your order ID.

• No delivery charge, because you are collecting it yourself
• 5% off with the coupon code hanedapu5
• You can reserve up to one hour before collection
• Nothing is sold out when you arrive, and you do not have to search the shop floor

The same limitation applies, honestly: the collection counters are in Terminals 1 and 2 — PIER 1 and PIER 4 in Terminal 1, and Tokyo Shokuhinkan and SMILE TOKYO in Terminal 2. There is no Terminal 3 counter.

The site is in Japanese only. There is no English version, so please use your browser’s translation feature, as you would for Rakuten. The checkout expects a Japanese address and a Japanese phone number.

How to Have It Delivered to Your Tokyo Hotel

If you would rather not go to the airport twice, HANEDA Shopping delivers within Japan, and a hotel is a perfectly ordinary Japanese address. Ordering a few days before your flight home works well — you can receive the box at the front desk. When you order, please set the delivery address to your hotel, and add the hotel name and your guest name as it appears on the reservation.

• Please check with your hotel in advance that they accept parcels for guests
• Remember the twelve-day shelf life below when you choose the delivery date
• Again, the site is Japanese only, so your browser’s translation feature is the way through

Price and Keeping Quality

Box of 5	¥1,296
Box of 10	¥2,592
Chestnut version	¥1,566 (box of 5)
Premium cheese version	¥1,728 (box of 5)
Shelf life	12 days from dispatch
Allergens	egg, milk, wheat, soy

Prices include tax and are from the time of writing; the online shop often runs a small discount.

Two honest notes. Twelve days is short for a travel souvenir — this is a soft, fresh sweet, not a tin of biscuits that will survive a month in a suitcase. If you are flying a long way and then giving these to someone, please check the date on the box. And each piece is individually wrapped, which makes them easy to hand out one by one at an office or to a family.

Who Is This For?

Anyone who likes a sweet that is not too sweet, and anyone who would rather bring back one considered thing than five random ones. The story travels well too: a confectioner who grows their own fruit in Shiga, making a cloud-stamped sweet for an airport, and for nowhere else in the world.

Make tea, look at the cloud pressed into the surface, then eat it. Haneda lasts a little longer that way.

Note: Prices, stock, opening hours and shop locations change. Please check the official sites before you travel.

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