FORTUNE Magazine - When Baskin-Robbins obtainable free scoops of ice cream for two hours on Japan's Ice Cream Day last month, 700,000 customers showed up at its 760 stores. But the newest new thing in ice-cream-crazed Japan these days is Cold Stone Creamery, another U.S. chain, which has unlock five stores in the past seven months and has appearance around the block around the clock.

Cold Stone, known for its "mix-in" strategy - 12 to 16 base tastes could be combined with any 30 add-ins - plans to open 150 stores in Japan by 2010, a violent growth strategy for a company with only 1,300 scoop shops worldwide.

Japanese people really appreciate quality and freshness," says Lee Knowlton, Cold Stone's senior vice president of international development, "and that's Cold Stone's wheelhouse."

But expenses in Japan are high, and rivalry, as one ice cream executive puts it, "isn't shy." Haagen-Dazs, owned by General Mills, come into the market in 1984 and is the leader in the premium segment. "The advertising is more like what you would expect from a cosmetics company or a jewelry company," says CFO Jim Lawrence. Seventy stores and a leading position in the grocery business make revenues of about $400 million annually.