You were handed it hot, through a window on a shopping street, and it was shaped like a fish. Palm-sized, browned, crisp at the fins, with something dark and thick inside that you took for chocolate until you tasted it.
The name is taiyaki (たい焼き), and the dark filling is anko, azuki beans boiled with sugar into a sweet paste. Below are photographs of every version you're likely to have met, including the Korean one that gets mistaken for it. And if you want one in your hand, where to find taiyaki in Australia is the section to jump to, though what you'll find here's a freezer, not a window.
Quick answer
- What it isA palm-sized cake baked in the shape of a sea bream, crisp at the fins, filled with anko, sweet red bean paste.
- Japanese, not KoreanTaiyaki is Japanese and was first sold in Tokyo in 1909. The Korean bungeoppang arrived in the 1930s and is a flatter carp.
- Getting one hereIt is built to be eaten minutes off the iron, so what crosses the world is the frozen version, and there is more of it here than most people expect. Where to buy
Find yours
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Taiyaki (たい焼き)
A browned fish the size of your palm, seam down the middle, something dark inside
red bean is the standard; custard, chocolate and cheese all look the same from outside
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Taiyaki ice cream (たい焼きアイス)
Soft-serve piped up out of an open fish, the swirl standing above its head
the fish is a waffle cone; the ice cream is the modern part
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Taiyaki monaka (たい焼き最中)
A dry, pale wafer fish around ice cream — it snaps instead of bending
monaka (最中) is the thin wafer shell — the freezer version, the one you'll find here
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Mini taiyaki (ミニたい焼き)
The same fish at a third the size, sold several to a bag
what the frozen packs in Australian grocers hold
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Croissant taiyaki (クロワッサンたい焼き)
Flaky and layered instead of smooth — the pastry shows from across the counter
a newer stall version, croissant dough in the fish iron
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Thin-skin taiyaki (薄皮たい焼き)
A pale, thin, glossy skin pulled tight over the filling, rather than thick batter
often the sweet potato one
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Tennen-mono (天然物)
Thin, crisp, blistered, and no two the same shape
one at a time in a hand-held iron — the two ways of cooking a taiyaki explains the name
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Bungeoppang (붕어빵)
A flatter, narrower fish, usually paler — and Korean, not Japanese
a crucian carp rather than a sea bream. See whether taiyaki is Japanese or Korean
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Imagawayaki (今川焼き)
A thick round disc off a hotplate, crisp at the rim, no fish about it
the round one it came from — why it has four names
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Dorayaki (どら焼き)
Two flat pancakes sandwiched around the filling, eaten cold out of a wrapper
no mould, no fish — the Japanese red bean pancake has its own guide
Is taiyaki Japanese or Korean?
Taiyaki is Japanese. The Korean one is a different thing with its own name: bungeoppang (붕어빵), which means crucian carp bread. That's a different fish from the sea bream a taiyaki is moulded as, and once you know it, the two are easy to tell apart.
Look at the outline. A taiyaki is stout: deep-bodied, big-headed, with a wide fanned tail. A bungeoppang is longer, flatter and plainer, and usually comes off a long hinged mould that cooks a row of them at once.
They're related, and the history isn't a mystery. Bungeoppang came to Korea in the 1930s, while Japan ruled the country, and the two have drifted apart since. Cheese is an ordinary filling in Korea now, and so is kimchi. In Japan the filling stayed sweet almost without exception.
Both are winter food. If you ate yours standing in the cold with your hands round it, that fits either country.
Why a fish, and why that fish?
The fish is a red sea bream, which in Japanese is tai. Those two syllables sit inside the word medetai, which means auspicious, the word you'd use about a wedding or a new year. So the name of the fish is already a pun on good fortune, and a shop naming a sweet after it was making a joke its customers would catch.
The second reason is money. A real sea bream was an expensive fish that ordinary people ate rarely, if at all. A shop couldn't sell them the fish. It could sell them its shape, for a few coins, and that's what it did.
That's the whole of it. The fish carries no ritual meaning and no charm: it's a pun and a price, chosen by a shopkeeper who wanted his stock to move.
It has had one enormous moment since. A 1975 children's song about a taiyaki that escapes its griddle and swims out to sea sold more than four and a half million copies, and it remains the best-selling single Japan has ever pressed. Shops had queues down the street.
Does the tail have anything in it?
Sometimes, and it's a real argument in Japan rather than a settled rule. It even has a name, the taiyaki debate, and it was started by a novelist, Andō Tsuruo, who wrote in the Yomiuri newspaper that a taiyaki tastes better with the filling carried right to the tail.
Four positions have been held since. The tail is where you hold it, so paste there's bad manners. An empty tail is a rest from the sweetness. An empty tail is short measure and you were robbed. A filled tail is how a careful shop shows off.
Nobody won. If your taiyaki had a plain crisp tail, it wasn't a mistake, and if it was filled to the fin, that wasn't standard either.
The other half of that question, head first or tail first, has a shorter answer. Naniwaya, the Tokyo shop that made the first one, says it's an everyday snack and you should start at whichever end you like.
Taiyaki is not a sweet. It is a shape.
Taiyaki is a kind of imagawayaki, the thick round disc in the list above, baked in the shape of a sea bream. The batter is the same, the filling is the same, and the difference between the two is the mould.
That also explains the two different ages this cake carries. The round imagawayaki has been sold in Tokyo since the 1770s. The fish shape is much younger, and dates from 1909. Both numbers are right, because each belongs to a different part of it: one to the batter and the filling, the other to the mould.
What happened in 1909 is that a shop called Naniwaya was selling the round ones and wanted something that moved better. Its founder, Kanbe Seijirō, tried a turtle first. The turtle didn't sell. The sea bream sold so fast that the shape outlived every other part of the idea.
One more correction worth carrying: Naniwaya is famous today for its shop in Azabu-Jūban, and the first taiyaki wasn't made there. The business started in Kōjimachi, in central Tokyo, and moved across the city in 1948.
The two ways of cooking one
If it's a shape, then how the shape is made is the thing that changes the eating, and there are two methods. An itchō-yaki (一丁焼き) iron holds a single fish and is held over the flame by hand, one at a time. A plate mould stamps six or eight together.
You can see which you were given. Hand-ironed ones come out thin, crisp and a little blistered, and no two are the same shape. Plate-moulded ones are thicker, softer and identical.
Enthusiasts call the hand-ironed kind wild-caught and the rest farmed, and that joke has an author. A writer named Miyajima Yasuhiko coined it in a 2002 book of photographs of the last hand-ironing shops. Naniwaya's own owner puts it another way: one is line-fishing, the other is a dragnet.
Where to find taiyaki in Australia
Here's the freezer promised at the top. Taiyaki is built to be eaten within minutes of leaving the iron, so unlike its flatter cousin it doesn't sit happily on a shelf. What crosses the world is the frozen version, and there's more of it here than most people expect.
Checked in September 2026 on each retailer's own online store. A name is where to look, not a promise it's on the shelf today, and the prices below are a rough guide rather than a quote.
In the freezer
JFC Online carries the widest range: mochi taiyaki, mini taiyaki in two pack sizes, a matcha one, and imagawayaki with red bean if you want the round original. Ichiba Junction in Melbourne lists frozen taiyaki and Showa's mini ones for collection in store. A frozen pack of five to twelve usually runs around $4 to $12, which comes out near a dollar a fish.
The big supermarkets aren't the place to try. Coles and Woolworths both return nothing for the word; this is a Japanese and Asian grocery item here.
Taiyaki ice cream: the fish with ice cream in it
Oddly, this is the easiest version of all to track down here. Imuraya's taiyaki monaka comes as a box of five, roughly $8 to $11, from JFC's Melbourne store; Ichiba Junction sells them one at a time for about $4. Umall lists a red bean version when stock allows.
The soft-serve cone is the exception. It's piped to order and eaten on the spot, so it never arrives in a box.
Made in front of you
This is the hard part. Across Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, the Gold Coast, Perth, Adelaide and Canberra, exactly one place stands up against both its own word and the food press, and it's a market stall.
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Perth
Batter Up Taiyaki
A husband-and-wife stall that makes nothing else: vanilla custard cream, matcha custard cream, red bean, and a feature flavour every second Saturday.
Melbourne and Sydney have both had dedicated taiyaki counters, and neither could be stood behind today. If there's one near you turning them out fresh, tell us where it's and we'll go and check.
Common questions
Is taiyaki Japanese or Korean?
Taiyaki is Japanese, first sold in Tokyo in 1909. The Korean equivalent is bungeoppang, which arrived in Korea in the 1930s and has developed its own fillings since. The quickest tell is the fish: taiyaki is a stout sea bream, bungeoppang a flatter crucian carp.
What is inside taiyaki?
Usually anko, azuki red beans simmered with sugar into a thick, dark, sweet paste. Custard, chocolate, cheese and sweet potato are all common now, and none of them change how the outside looks, so the only way to know is to ask or read the label.
What does taiyaki taste like?
The outside tastes like a plain, faintly sweet pancake or waffle, crisp at the thin edges and softer through the body. The filling does the sweetening. Red bean is earthy and mild rather than sugary, which surprises people expecting chocolate.
Do you eat taiyaki from the head or the tail?
Either. Naniwaya, the Tokyo shop that invented it in 1909, says it's an everyday snack and you should start wherever you like. The head is usually the fullest part and the tail the crispest, so the choice is about which you'd rather finish on.
What is the Japanese fish ice cream called?
It's taiyaki, with ice cream instead of bean paste. Two versions exist: a fresh waffle fish with soft-serve piped into it, made to order at a counter, and a frozen one called taiyaki monaka, where a crisp wafer fish is filled with ice cream and sold in a box.
Where this leaves you
The word to use in a shop is taiyaki, and the filling to ask about is anko. If the fish you remember was flatter and had cheese in it, the word is bungeoppang, and the shop to look for is Korean rather than Japanese.
Taiyaki is made to be eaten hot, minutes from the iron, which is a sweet no online shop can post you, ours included. What we carry is the far end of the same family: yokan, three Kinjo Seika bars of firm red bean jelly that keep at room temperature. One sweet is built for the minutes after it leaves the iron and the other to sit on a shelf, and they're made from the same beans. If the fish was one of several shapes you could not put a name to, our guide to naming Japanese sweets lines the rest of them up by sight. If the whole category is new to you, start here.
Sources
- Japanese Wikipedia, たい焼き — the two cooking methods, the tail debate and its four positions, and the origin of the wild-caught joke.
- National Diet Library Reference Co-operative, case 1000189942 — librarians citing Okada Satoshi's Tabemono kigen jiten (2003) and Tōkyō taiyaki meguri (2007) for the 1909 date, the founder, the turtle, and why a sea bream.
- National Diet Library Reference Co-operative, case 1000353379 — taiyaki defined as a kind of imagawayaki in the shape of a sea bream, the difference being the shape alone.
- National Diet Library Reference Co-operative, case 20140107155102 — imagawayaki sold near Kanda Imagawabashi from the 1770s, with no inventor recorded.
- Nippon.com, on Naniwaya Sōhonten — the fourth-generation owner on eating it from either end, and on line-fishing against the dragnet.
- English Wikipedia, Bungeo-ppang, and Tasting Table, on how the two differ — the crucian carp, the 1930s arrival, and the divergence in fillings.
- SBS, on Batter Up Taiyaki in Perth. Australian availability checked September 2026 on the retailers' own online stores — JFC Online, Ichiba Junction and Umall.
Photographs — all from Wikimedia Commons, used under the licences shown: Top photograph and Taiyaki by Ocdp (CC0); Taiyaki ice cream by Cliomd1 (CC BY-SA 4.0); Taiyaki monaka by Kyu3a (CC BY-SA 4.0); Mini taiyaki by chidorian (CC BY-SA 2.0); Croissant taiyaki by KKPCW (CC BY-SA 4.0); Thin-skin taiyaki by KKPCW (CC BY-SA 4.0); Tennen-mono by ぽんきち (CC BY-SA 4.0); Bungeoppang by Siqbal (public domain); Imagawayaki by Ocdp (CC0); Dorayaki by Ocdp (CC BY-SA 3.0).
