Mizusawa Udon Street

photo by Unkei6hokusai4 · CC BY-SA 3.0

photo by tak1701d · CC BY-SA 3.0

Udon has been made for pilgrims here for 400 years: today a dozen eateries serve it.

The street brings together a dozen restaurants specialising in a single dish: thick, firm udon served cold with soy and sesame sauce, each with its own dough recipe. The custom began over four hundred years ago: in the Edo period, when Ikaho Onsen began to attract visitors, the monks of the nearby Mizusawa Kannon Temple served handmade udon to pilgrims walking the circuit of the 33 Bandō temples. Mizusawa Udon is now considered, together with Sanuki and Inaniwa, one of the three great udon of Japan.

Mizusawa Kannon Temple (五徳山水澤寺), the sixteenth of the 33 temples of the Bandō pilgrimage, has a history of about 1,300 years. At its foot, Mizusawa Udon Street brings together a dozen restaurants that share the custom, born in the Edo period with the arrival of visitors to Ikaho Onsen, of serving pilgrims udon made by hand on the same day, thick and firm enough to stand up to the bite. Three main families of recipes coexist on the same street, each jealously guarding its own dough and its own sauce.

ℹ️ Mizusawa Kannon Temple is open 9:00–16:00 on weekdays and 8:00–17:00 at weekends and on public holidays, free entry, with 400 free parking spaces. The restaurants on the street keep their own hours, mostly daytime only: several close in the early afternoon or when the day's dough runs out, so it is worth arriving before lunch. No collective opening hours are published for the street as a whole.

🚉 Mizusawa · 2 min walk

Sources: gunma-kanko.jp · city.shibukawa.lg.jp

All series · Open the map