Sweets
Kakigori
Kakigori — shaved ice, a summer sweet with roots in Nara's ice-worship shrine
Shaved ice topped with syrup, a summer sweet in Nara. Nara City's Himuro Shrine is said to have sent ice to the imperial court for roughly seventy years, and Sei Shonagon is said to describe shaved ice sweetened with amazura sap in the Pillow Book.
- Origin: Nara City, Nara
- About 380 km west of Tokyo
What it's made of
A dessert of finely shaved ice topped with syrup. Each shop crafts its own syrup, and the treat is prized for its delicate, freshly shaved texture and the cooling way it dissolves in the mouth.
How it's made
Ice is shaved fine and piled in a bowl, then topped with syrup. Because the area is a notable strawberry-growing region, syrups made from Nara strawberries are said to be especially popular.
Why it took this shape
Himuro Shrine in Nara City is said to have begun in the early eighth century, when the capital moved to Heijo-kyo, with the enshrining of an ice deity at a large rock near Mount Wakakusa. Ice stored in an ice house there was reportedly offered to the palace each summer in a long-running ceremony. A Heian-era essay also describes shaved ice drizzled with amazura syrup as an elegant treat, suggesting that court nobles cooled themselves with ice in summer even then.
Before you go
- How to shop in a depachika (department store food hall)A guide to browsing prepared foods and bento, choosing wagashi as a gift with a good shelf life, sampling etiquette, end-of-day discounts, asking for cold packs and wrapping, and finding your way around a depachika floor.
- At kissaten, cafes, and kanmi-dokoroThe difference between jun-kissa and chain cafes, the morning-set custom, and kanmi-dokoro staples like anmitsu and zenzai.
Dishes in the same style
- Abekawa MochiFresh-pounded rice cake is dusted in soybean flour mixed with sugar. Named for the Abe River, it's said to have been famous among Tokaido travelers as a teahouse specialty and to appear in the travel novel Tokaidochu Hizakurige.
- Iga ManjuSweet bean paste is wrapped in rice flour dough, then coated with dyed sticky rice grains. One account ties the name to the grains' resemblance to a chestnut's spiny husk, and in the western Mikawa region it's said to be offered to Hina dolls at the Doll Festival.
Ingredients and dishes from this land
Also from Nara
- Amago no KanroniRiver trout, called the queen of the mountain stream, first grilled plain and then simmered in roasted tea before being finished sweet and savory in soy sauce and mirin — a dish of the Yoshino and Uda districts. The fish is said to have little of a river-fish's usual edge, and the dish is remembered as a mother's home cooking.
- Asuka NabeA hot pot from Asuka Village of chicken and seasonal vegetables simmered in milk and dashi. It is said to trace to a dairy product brought from Tang China in the Asuka period and later reworked by monks who simmered their chickens in milk, taking its present form around the early Showa era.
- Ayu ZushiA whole sweetfish pressed onto vinegared rice, made along the Yoshino River. Sweetfish, raised on river-stone algae, are called kogyo, 'fragrant fish,' and the sushi is said to have become known in part because a sushi shop featured in a kabuki play actually existed in Nara.
- DengaraA sweet from Higashiyoshino and Kawakami villages: bean-paste mochi steamed inside magnolia leaves. It is made for Boys' Day, wishing a son success and safe growth, and because each leaf on a single branch is wrapped around its own mochi, the finished cluster hangs like a bunch of fruit.
- Ei no NikogoriRed stingray simmered sweet and savory in soy sauce and sugar, a Nara dish. Its own gelatin dissolves into the cooking liquid and sets into a jelly once cooled, giving the dish its name, nikogori. It is said to have been eaten together with noppei at Kasuga Shrine's Wakamiya festival.
- Hangesho MochiA Nara Basin mochi pounded from cracked wheat and glutinous rice around hangesho, the eleventh day after the summer solstice. It is made at the point when the wheat harvest and rice planting both wind down, and is also called sanaburi mochi for the rite that sends off the rice-field deity.