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Last week there was a holiday in Japan on Tuesday. It was National Foundation Day, so we had some time in the afternoon and evening to go to the Oden Street in Shizuoka.
Its the first time I've been there. Its very retro and seems to be from the 1960s. The shops are old and many of the owners have been there for a long time. Sometimes the places change hands, there was one shop closed last week waiting for a new owner to buy it.
Oden is basically a winter food. There are many ingredients which you can put on a skewer and then put into the oden stock Foods include, eggs, meat, daikon radish, konyaku etc. The special Shizuoka stock uses soy sauce and beef stock and so makes it darker than most other oden in Japan.
The skewered food all takes on the appearance of the stock and the taste too. Think of slow cooker stew which you left on for too long and all the ingredients go a similar brown colour and all taste similar too, thats a good representation of oden. Its not great tasting, but its warming on cold winter evenings, like last Tuesday.
There are maybe twenty oden places in this street. Its an undercover avenue, maybe only 100 meters in length, maybe less, the shops are more like tiny bars. Room to fit about eight customers at most. Some of the places were full, we chose an empty one, and the woman there was friendly and talkative. She even managed some English, because apparently some tourists like to go there. Each skewer was 100 yen and the beer and highball was regular price. So, its not expensive and definitely worth a try for a traditional slice of old Japan in Shizuoka city.
Here are some pictures I took that day...
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