Hankyu Umeda's anko sweets fair returns for a twelfth year, 130 brands strong

Hankyu Hanshin Department Stores, Inc. said it will run the twelfth edition of its anko (sweet bean-paste) fair, "Tokikakeru An," at Hankyu Umeda Main Store from October 28 to November 2, spanning about 130 brands and 210 products on the ninth floor, according to a release dated October 14.

More than half of this year's dorayaki from Japan's 47 prefectures are appearing at the fair for the first time, among roughly 50 regional dorayaki on offer in total, the department store said, alongside several other bean-paste items making their debut at the event. The fair runs across the ninth floor's Celebration Square and the event space beside the gallery, with some items also sold on the eighth floor; the final day closes at 5pm rather than the store's usual hours. A pre-event, "Anko to Ice to Coffee to," pairing Osaka sweets shops with a coffee roaster, runs October 21 to 26 in the same ninth-floor gallery space, and the World Tea Festival 2026 runs concurrently with the main fair. Hankyu Umeda is also taking pre-orders online for in-store pickup or home delivery.

A twelfth running with a shifting roster -- fresh dorayaki each year, cafe collaborations layered on top, a pre-event that gets shoppers into the building a week early -- is less a single event than a maintained annual fixture: the kind of granular, floor-level food programming that keeps traffic moving through Hankyu's Umeda flagship between its bigger seasonal fairs.

Pulling in around 130 brands for a six-day run, with more than half the dorayaki specific to this edition, is also a reminder of how much turnover a single floor in Japan's department-store calendar can carry without a flagship renovation or a new tenant line-up behind it.