What is your favorite ice cream? Is it the one that you always pick up at the supermarket or convenience store? Is it the soft serve you find when taking a trip to somewhere new? Or is it the one you eat under the blue skies on a clear day at the beach? Regardless of the place or brand, there are times when just eating ice cream is enough to soothe you and bring happiness! For anyone visiting Nagano Prefecture, we highly recommend stopping by MDI (Mount Desert Island) Ice Cream. It may well change the ranking of your favorites. MDI ICE CREAM (MDI) was established in Maine, U.S.A. in 2005, and now has three stores in the U.S. and two in Japan. With the motto “making the ice cream we ourselves want to eat,” this brand creates unique ice cream flavors made from scratch with only real ingredients. The first shop in Japan opened in the fall of 2019 on Nawate-dori in Matsumoto City, Nagano, and since then it has been wooing customers every day with their unique artisanal ice cream. In April 2022, they opened their second shop and enlarged production facility in the Azumino area of Nagano,
