Katayaki from Iga town may chip your teeth, it is a quite solid food

Iga city, Mie prefecture, is famous place for legends of Ninjas.
Moreover, in Iga, there is a very solid traditional food.
It is called Katayaki.
Katayaki is a sort of cookie.
It has a circular shape and tastes a little sweet.
Usually sesame seeds and blue seaweed powder are on it.

It is baked on a hot plate.
Katayaki craftspeople use a lever and weight to press the dough of katayaki on the hot plate.
They take a long time to press and bake the dough.
This procedure makes katayaki very solid.

According to legend, the prototype of katayaki was a portable ration for ninjas.
Sometimes ninjas had to hide somewhere for a long time, so they carried the potable ration with them.
That was origin of katayaki.

Now, katayaki is sold with a small wooden hammer.
For it's hardness, you can't bite the whole of it off with your teeth.
That's why they sell katayaki with the hammer.
You need to break that into pieces by the hammer and mouth the small pieces one by one.
Then, the pieces will melt slowly on your tongue.

In times of ninjas, there weren't such hammer.
How did they eat the solid food?
In my imagination, probabry ninjas used hilt of their katana (a samurai sword) or shuriken (a throwing knife used by ninjas and some samurais) to crash their original of katayaki.
I guess they had a hard time not to make any sounds when they ate their katayaki in their hiding place.

You can buy katayaki at the souvenir shops in Iga city.
In case you worry about your teeth to bite katayaki, they sell the softer one than original kaytayaki, too.
In addition, there are various flavored katayaki nowadays.
Take care not to chip your teeth with katayaki, and enjoy to eat it.