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About three hours from Osaka and Kyoto, if you are staying in the atmospheric Kinosaki Onsen, you should stop by the castle town of Izushi. This castle town is home to a streetscape of traditional crafts and historical buildings. While strolling through the town, you can enjoy the local specialty, Izushi Sara Soba. We will introduce the history of Sara Soba and its unique style.
There are about 40 soba restaurants in Izushi Castle Town.
The basic "sara soba" style is the same, but the taste, store layout, and attention to detail vary. Some stores only serve sara soba, some also serve hot soba, and some have menus that combine soba with rice bowls or Tajima beef.
If you walk around Izushi Castle Town in the morning, you can see craftsmen making soba noodles.
Its roots date back to the Edo period. In 1706, when the lord of Izushi, Matsudaira, and the lord of Ueda in Nagano Prefecture, Sengoku, were transferred to another domain, Sengoku Masaaki brought soba artisans from Shinshu, and it was born. It is said that the current style originated from the practice of serving soba on an otesho plate at food stalls at the end of the Edo period. As times changed, it became a tradition to serve Izushi-sara soba using Izushi-yaki, a traditional craft of Izushi.
The different plate designs at each restaurant are another fun thing to look forward to. "Sara Soba" comes with five plates per person.
Condiments vary depending on the restaurant, and can include spring onions, wasabi, yam, grated daikon radish, eggs, etc. There are no set rules for how to eat "sara soba," so you can either put all the broth and condiments into the soba cup, or add them little by little to enjoy different flavors. Find your own way to eat it.
It is said that if you can stack the plates as high as your chopsticks are, you are a proper adult. Some restaurants will give you a commemorative gift if you eat 15 to 20 plates.
Each restaurant has different condiments, and some recommend eating the first dish with salt. Also, each restaurant has its own unique style of broth, from spicy to sweet. One of the fun things to do is to visit different soba restaurants and compare the flavors. Why not find your favorite from the 40 soba restaurants?
The birthplace of hot spring tours in yukata and geta There are 7 public baths in Kinosaki Onsen town. Kinosaki Onsen can be compared to a large hot spring inn, with the station being the ``guiseki'', the roads being the ``corridors'', the inns being the ``guest rooms'', and the public baths being the ``public baths''. If you change into a yukata, relax, and go out on the town, you will become a character in this world.
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