Imo Kintsuba (Potato Kintsuba) from Junwado Ito in Ono City, Fukui Prefecture, will be on sale again in 2025!

  • Fukui
  • Eating
Imo Kintsuba, a limited time sweet from fall to spring.

Now on sale for the season!

Imo Kintsuba" is a limited time-only sweet that is sold every year from September to April of the following year. According to the store's SNS announcement, in 2025, it will go on sale from August 20!

What is "Imo Kintsuba"?

Fukui Prefecture is a prefecture where snow accumulates in many places in winter. Among them, Ono City is an area with so much snow that it is designated as a special heavy snowfall area. Naturally, shoveling snow is also a challenge, and "winter" is a difficult season for the locals. However, Ono City has a very special sweet that even the locals look forward to during this "cold season": imo kintsuba.
It is a winter specialty of Junwado Ito, a Japanese confectionery located on Shichiken Street in Ono City, and is sold from early fall to early spring (from around September to April of the following year), although the sales period varies from year to year. The sweets are so popular that they are sometimes sold out in the morning. On the day we visited the store in February 2022, we arrived around 10:30 in the morning on a weekday, but customers were coming in one after another.
No parking is allowed in front of the store!
During the period when Imo Kintsuba is on sale, there is a signboard in the color of a sweet potato in front of the store that reads "Imo Kintsuba" so you will never get lost. Parking is available in the parking lot next to the Ono City Tourist Association, about a one-minute walk from the store.
Boxed take-out is also available, but we strongly recommend that you try the "freshly made" ones when you come to Ono. If you tell them you want to eat it on the spot, they will serve it on a plate. There is a bench at the front of the restaurant where you can sit and eat.
You can eat it freshly made on the spot!
The warm, freshly made sweet-potato kintsuba is so sweet, you can almost taste the sweetness of the sweet potato in your mouth. Delicious. It has the texture of a Japanese sweet potato, but without any of the roughness of the sweet potato, and is very smooth to the touch. I finished it in no time.
At the store, you can observe the actual baking process through a glass window, and the way they roll out the imokintsuba without getting any burn marks is a true artisan's skill. By the way, the best-before date for this sweet-potato kintsuba is about three days, but it will keep for about two weeks if it is frozen. To enjoy it, thaw it naturally and warm it slightly in the oven without browning to recreate the "freshly made" taste you would get at a restaurant. Once you try it, you will be captivated by "Imo Kintsuba," a hidden specialty of Ono City, Fukui Prefecture. Please try it!
The store also updates sold-out information on Twitter at
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