Nakatsugawa Kurikinton

You don't need to speak the language to order well at Nakatsugawa Kurikinton — you need to know when to go and what to expect.

The kurikinton of Nakatsugawa is not the glossy sweet-potato paste served at New Year elsewhere in Japan. It is chestnut and sugar and nothing else — the nuts boiled, scraped out, mixed with sugar, and twisted in a cloth into a shape meant to look like a chestnut. There is no bean paste, no binder and no flavouring, so the quality of the chestnut is the entire product.

The Kiso valley has grown chestnuts for centuries and Nakatsugawa is where the sweet was commercialised. Because it uses only fresh chestnuts it is made from September to January and then stops — the shops sell other things for the rest of the year. In September, when the first batch appears, people queue.