Aichi · Nagoya Station WestNo.1163★★Open in map →
Nagoya Uiro
— Steamed rice-flour sweet sold by the Shinkansen gate
Rice flour kneaded with sugar and steamed into a firm, chewy bar: Nagoya's everyday souvenir sweet. The counters that sell it sit in Esca, the underground street directly below the west plaza of Nagoya Station, nearest of all to the Shinkansen gates.
- FromTokyo Station
- ~1 h 35 minTokaido Shinkansen, direct
- Get off atNagoya Station (Tokaido Shinkansen, Taiko-dori exit)
- On foot
- Nagoya Uiro
The sweet spot
Uiro itself is no secret. It is stacked on every souvenir shelf in the city and sold in department stores nationwide. What gets lost is why Nagoya owns the name at all, because the sweet is older than the city's claim to it and is still made in several other places. The answer is not in a workshop. It is in a station concourse.
Where it is
27 more notes in Aichi · open the map →What to look for — in walking order
- The Shinkansen central gatethe exit nearest the underground street, on the western side of the concourse
- The Taiko-dori plazathe open square on the station's west side, with stairways down to the basement
- Esca, basement level oneone underground avenue of Nagoya-meshi restaurants, cafes and souvenir shops
- The souvenir sectionshelves of Owari gift goods — uiro, pickled radish, fish cake and local confectionery
How to actually get there
- Tokyo Station → Nagoya Station (Tokaido Shinkansen, Nozomi, about 1 h 35 min).
- Shinkansen central gate → the Taiko-dori exit on the station's western side (a few minutes on foot).
- Down a plaza stairway into Esca, basement level one.
- Follow the avenue to the souvenir section and choose a bar or a pack of bite-sized cups.
- Tokaido Shinkansen from Tokyo
- Tokyo Station →(Tokaido Shinkansen, Nozomi, about 1 h 35 min)→ Nagoya Station. Nozomi services run through the day and Nagoya is a scheduled stop. Reserved and non-reserved seating are charged separately on top of the basic fare, so the total depends on which you pick. On arrival, follow signs for the Shinkansen central gate and then the Taiko-dori exit.
- Back east from Nagoya
- Trains toward Tokyo leave from the same platforms, and through the day the intervals are short enough that no return time needs planning. Late in the evening the gaps open up. If you are shopping on the day you leave, do it before you clear the gates rather than after.
About the place
Uiro is rice flour worked together with sugar and hot water, poured into a mould and steamed. What comes out looks like yokan bean jelly and behaves nothing like it: the texture is springy rather than dense, and the sweetness comes on slowly rather than up front. The old form is a long bar, cut into slices to serve, and bite-sized cups now sit beside it on the shelf. White, brown sugar, matcha and adzuki are the standing line-up, with seasonal flavours rotating through. In Esca it is stocked in the souvenir section, a few doors along from the Nagoya-meshi restaurants.
How to enjoy it
Reckon on about five minutes from the Shinkansen gate down to the shelves, and a little longer coming back up carrying a bag. Individual shops set their own hours and rest days, so a very early or very late connection is the one case worth checking before you commit. Bar-form uiro is packed for travel; the bite-sized cups are the ones that open easily in a seat.
Background & history
Uiro is not originally a Nagoya sweet — versions of it are made in Yamaguchi, Odawara, Kyoto and elsewhere. What made it a Nagoya name was the railway: Aoyagi Sohonke, founded in 1879, began selling from the kiosks and platforms of the old national railway's Nagoya Station in 1931. When the Tokaido Shinkansen opened in 1964 the same maker was permitted to sell on board, and the sweet travelled the length of the line with the trains. Esca opened under the west plaza in 1971, taking its name from the initials of Ekinishi Shopping Center Avenue, and the souvenir trade settled there.
Before you go
- Cash
- Walking the underground street costs nothing. You pay only at the counter you stop at, and each shop posts its prices on the shelf. Uiro is sold both by the bar and in small assorted packs, so the outlay comes down to how much you are willing to carry.
- Before you go
- Everything here is below ground, so weather never enters the plan. The street itself keeps no closing day, but opening hours and rest days are set shop by shop.
- Another way
- Nagoya is a scheduled stop on the same line from Shin-Osaka, so the underground street works just as well approached from the Kansai side. Arriving from Chubu Centrair Airport, the Meitetsu airport train terminates at Meitetsu Nagoya Station, which stands beside the JR station on its eastern side.
- After you get off
- Leave the Shinkansen platforms by the central gate and follow signs for the Taiko-dori exit on the western side. Stairways down to Esca open off the plaza in front of it, and the shopping level is one floor below ground.