Other stories date the confection to an earlier time

The object on the right is made from a confection of different substances, from silicon and metal and plastic and so on.

And more than that, it's a confection of different ideas, the idea of plastic, the idea of a laser, the idea of transistors.

Here's a photo of some momoyama (a confection made with rice flour) and nerikiri (a sweet made from white azuki bean paste, sugar and yamaimo, a kind of starchy mountain yam) that I ate a while ago. Here are some photos of my favorite Japanese traditional sweets. ( ω )