Yamanashi

Excellent nutrition and digestibility, a dish for the Takeda troops?

Houtou

A noodle dish with wide and thin udon noodles simmered with pumpkins, negi, shiitake mushrooms, and potatoes in miso-based soup. Simmering row noodles thickens the soup, and it keeps the soup hot. There are several different stories of its origin, and one of the stories says that Shingen Takeda invented it as an alternative food to rice since rice was precious during the Age of Provincial Wars. There are a lot of events related to Houtou in Yamanashi such as “Takeda jinchu houtou festival” and houtou has been quite a popular dish. A rice bowl with the left over Houtou soup is called“Houtou meshi” and it is often eaten at home next morning.