Food　Toshikoshi-Soba (soba during New Year's season)
Date　December 31

Toshikoshi-Soba ,a custom from the middle of the Edo Period, became natural at some areas in the end of Edo Period．

history

• About seven hundred years ago in the Kamakura Period, a trader from China at Hakata served poor peoples who cannot celebrate the old year sobagaki-mochi. Then they became fortunate in the next year,so they bacame eat soba as a custom.

• When you eat Soba-kiri that is thin and long, you wishing a long life and a growth.

• Soba gives a good metabolism and makes internal clean, you eat soba in the end of the year to welcome the New Year.

Recently soba is a kind of grain or noodle, but noodle soba was called sobakiri in the Edo Period.

It is said that Yunan,China is the origin of grain soba, but in Japan it has already grown in the Nara Period． people has eaten buckwheat early，but now there is soba-rice in mountain village in Tokushima Pref. And there is "muki-soba" in Yamagata Pref. This is boiled buckwheat in stock with salt until husk break a little, dried on a straw mat then threshed.

when people became eat soba such as a sobagaki and a sobamochi made from buckwheat flower， and there was soba-kiri in Keicho Era (1596-1615).