They were not crazy about the taste as it was too sweet and also with too strong a vanilla flavor. The folks in the store told me that once a visitor brought them an American fortune cookie. Awareness has increased since, and Sohonke Hogyokudo now makes both types. However, customers kept eating the fortunes, so the stores in the neighborhood started putting them in between the cookie halves. ![]() The fortunes were originally put inside the cookies. The owners said that stores in this area have been making these omikuji senbei since the Meiji period. Perhaps if they fill it with unformed senbei then thirty-four will fit in. The package also says something about thirty-four cookies inside. That is five months after my 2008 date of purchase. I bought some of their fortune cookies and the unopened package lists, in Japanese, an expiration date of July. The one that makes the most sense to me to is omikuji senbei, for omikuji are 'written fortunes' you can draw at Shinto shrines. Omikuji senbei (written and translated as fortune crackers), suzu senbei (bell crackers), and tsujiura senbei (fortune crackers) are the three names used for these Japanese cookies. These use the same batter but are made in the shape of the fox face, a symbol of fushimi-inari-taisha. In fact, their shop, and others in the neighborhood, are just as famous if not more so for biscuits they make called inari senbei. They even graciously put their space heater next to my feet as this was a cold and rainy day.įirstly, they do not just make these senbei, a general word for biscuit or cracker in Japanese, that look like modern fortune cookies. They allowed me past the display cases to taste a few flattened duds as well as ask far too many questions. I spoke with the mother and with son in Japanese, and for about a half an hour. I think I noticed the father there, too, but that was later in the day when returning to the train. When I went in, the mother was selling and her son was creating the products. Sohonke Hogyokudo, the name of the producer in the article, is a family shop opened about eighty years ago. I must have taken the Japan Rail to the far side of the neighborhood. I am a bit surprised at myself for not noticing these cookies displayed there on a previous trip to Kyoto. If you have seen 'Memoirs of a Geisha' and the shrine in it where the main character runs up the mountain under the red gates and goes there, one practically falls into the store after getting off the Keihan train line. The shop is near Fushimiinaritaisha in the southeast of Kyoto. ![]() Actually, I finally did manage to locate the proper Japanese characters as well as the shrine she meant, but only after concerted Google searching. My suspicion was that the author was interested in protecting the place from New York Times tourists or saving the location for another professional use. ![]() That was no help in a city with thousands of shrines. I tried to find the place the author visited, but the article only mentioned a shop located in Kyoto near a famous Shinto shrine. While in Kyoto, I took a trip to the 'fortune cookie' producer mentioned in a not too recent New York Times article (January 16, 2008). Chinese Food in Asia (but not China, Hong Kong, or Taiwan)
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