blog for people from abroad about Fukui Prefecture in Japan.
December/23/2021
Echizen uni(越前うに in Japanese) is salted sea urchin. Echizen(越前) is the name of a region in Fukui. Uni(うに), or sea urchin, is a small sea creature with a round shell covered with spikes. Echizen uni is a specialty of Fukui.
Do you know what the top three delicacies are in the West? (By delicacies, I mean foods that are rare and delicious.)
September/28/2021
Satsukigase Senbei (五月ヶ瀬煎餅) is a well-known sweet in Fukui. It’s one of the best-known local specialties of Fukui.
Senbei (煎餅) means rice cracker or Japanese cracker. Usually rice crackers are salty, but Satsukigase Senbei is sweet. The biggest feature of Satsukigase Senbei is that it has peanuts in it.
April/2/2021
Goma dofu (sesame tofu), a dish in shojin ryori, is a specialty of Fukui. Goma in goma dofu means sesame. Dofu means tofu, which is a well-known food made from soybeans.
What is shojin ryori ?
Shojin ryori is a type of Buddhist cuisine that contains mainly vegetables and grains. It doesn’t contain any meat or fish. Strict Buddhist monks have compassion for all living things, so they don’t eat meat or fish.
March/4/2021
Mizu yokan (水ようかん、水羊羹 in Japanese) is a well-known dessert in Fukui. It’s also called decchi yokan.
Mizu in mizu yokan means water in Japanese. Yokan is one of the most well-known Japanese sweets. Mizu yokan contains more water than usual yokan. In general, the ingredients for mizu yokan are adzuki bean paste, sugar, and kanten agar.
November/1/2020
Every winter a lot of tourists come to Fukui to eat Echizen crab, which is called 越前ガニ, or Echizen gani, in Japanese. (Echizen is the name of one region in Fukui and Gani means crab in Japanese.) It’s a well-known Fukui specialty.
Echizen crab is a male snow crab caught in the sea near Fukui. The females are called Seiko-gani, and they’re smaller than Echizen crabs.
June/6/2020
Habutae Mochi (羽二重餅) is a sweet that originates from Fukui. A lot of travelers buy this as a gift.
In Chihayafuru, a well-known Japanese comic about competitive karuta, Wataya, who was born in Fukui, gives Chihaya the heroine Habutae Mochi as a gift. (If you don’t know about Chihayafuru, see my previous post: What is Chihayafuru? and what is karuta?)
March/21/2020
Echizen Soba no Sato(Echizen Soba Village)(越前そばの里) is in the city of Echizen, Fukui. There, you can eat Echizen Soba, buy souvenirs and gifts, see the soba manufacturing process, and experience making it. (If you want to know more about this, see the official English website.)
March/21/2020
Soba, which is a kind of Japanese noodle, is one of the symbols of Japanese cuisine. There are a lot of kinds of soba such as zaru soba, tempura soba, green tea soba, kake soba (soba noodles in broth), and oroshi soba.
Fukui’s oroshi soba is one of the most well-known kinds of soba in Japan. It’s soba noodles served with grated Japanese radish, green onions, and katsuobushi (small shavings of dried bonito) on top.
March/7/2020
If you’re interested in Japanese food, you might know katsudon (カツ丼), which is a bowl of rice with a pork cutlet, egg, and vegetables on top.
However, in Fukui Prefecture “katsudon” refers to a specific variety called sauce katsudon (ソースカツ丼). This is Fukui’s local specialty and is very well known there.