Tanuki Senbei

The tanuki is a crafty, semi-magical creature in Japanese folktales. The senbei is a thick, old-fashioned rice cracker. Put them together and you have Tanuki Senbei, one of the Azabu Juban-area shops that goes heavy on the nostalgia inducement. They sell a variety of rice crackers in the usual flavors: spicy red pepper, crushed black sesame seed, sugar-coated, soy-sauced. The crackers come in the typical shapes - big circles, big rectangles, small amoeboid, small crescent - as well as the utterly kawaii tanuki silhouette. As at many Japanese shops, your purchase will be wrapped up in multiple layers of tanuki-emblazoned paper and bags. But best of all are the man-sized tanuki statues standing watch by the door and in the display window, which changes seasonally. Like gnomes, tanuki statues are common as garden decorations, but these are definitely the largest I've ever seen.