SHOPPING 

DASHI Café “HANANOSHO” – Experience and taste the “DASHI” (Japanese soup stock)

Life Takamatsu

The new shop HANANOSHO has opened as the sister store next to the traditional dried food, dried seafood grocery MARUICHI on May 2nd, 2016.

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They specialize in selling pre-packed bags of DASHI broth that contains a mix of various ingredients such as dried bonito, shitake mushrooms, dried flying fish and kelp.

Dried bonito is divided in two categories. Bonito that went through the first 3 steps of process (cutting/boiling/smoking) are called AREBUSHI. AREBUSHI that has been fermented with a special fungus is called KAREBUSHI. It’s depends on the individual’s taste, but it is said that KAREBUSHI has a deeper fragrance and flavor than AREBUSHI, and HANANOSHO sells dried bonitos in both styles.

IMG_3161HANANOSHO usually sells 12 kinds of DASHI, also they are planning to sell a personalized selected mix of DASHI which customers can choose the ingredients to match their own tastes.
They only carry domestic ingredients like dried bonitos produced from Kagoshima and Shizuoka. Dried sardines from Ibukijima Island, Kanonji-city, Kagawa. Further more, HANANOSHO is “the” store where you can taste the “made in Japan” flavor.
You can sample from three kinds of DASHI on weekdays and four kinds on the weekends to find which flavor of DASHI best suits your palette.

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Customers can have your selected dried bonito freshly shaven by this electric Bonito shaver. Setting dried bonito inside and pressing the button will instantly make thinly sliced bonitos fall gently below. The marvelous fragrance and flavor of freshly shaven bonito spread over your tastebuds as soon as it enters your mouth with incredible delight.This machine definitely entertains kids as well.

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MARUICHI, located just next to the HANANOSHO, sells a variety of traditional dried products such as dried bonitos, dried sardines, dried NORI, dried shitake mushroom, dried KONBU seaweed, dried Udon and Somen noodles, rice crackers and candies etc.
Most of the products they sell went through a sun drying process which makes the food last longer and it is a perfect souvenir from Japan.

MARUICHI has been loved by the locals and has been rooted in Kagawa for more than 60 years and a lot of people come to the shop just to purchase their dried bonito.

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Shaved dried bonito is sold from 50gram and up.

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The numbers of the foreign tourist customers are increasing too. Right now, about 10% of customers from MARUICHI and HANANOSHO are from foreign countries such as Taiwan, Hong-Kong and South Korea. They purchase dried bonito and seaweed for souvenirs from Japan. If the purpose of purchase is for consuming, they are willing to do the overseas shipping (some products do not allow overseas shipping), asks the store clerk to make sure.

Mastering the secrets of DASHI

IMG_3124Hirai san is the owner of both MARICHI and HANANOSHO.
He has opened HANANOSHO, which is much easier to enter and would attract more customers who have never been to MARUICHI and wants them to know what real Japanese DASHI is about.

He is qualified as a DASHI Sommelier and has abundant knowledge about DASHI. He is also planning for all employees in HANANOSHO to get a qualification as DASHI sommelier within half year.

DASHI is the UMAMI, ” the savory taste” of Japan. It is the origin of Japanese cuisine, it is like the bouillon of Europe. HANANOSHO represents the owners strong obsessiveness about DASHI and the wish for Japanese people to know and understand what real DASHI is all about.

INFORMATION

HANANOSHO/ Dried food, Dried Seafood grocery MARUICHI / 花の将/乾物屋・海産物専門店 丸一

ACCESS
5 minutes walk from Kawaramachi station
ADDRESS：〒760-0051 香川県高松市南新町4-1
OPEN HOURS: 11:00am-5:00pm
CLOSED：—————-
PRICE：440yen～
TEL： +81-87-831-3307
MAIL：shop@maru-1.info（丸一）
WEB：http://www.hananosyo.jp/
FACEBOOK：https://www.facebook.com/wadashian.hananosho/
Wi-Fi: Available
Languages: Japanese, English, Chinese（There is also a day when there are no foreign laungage speaking staff)