HeWhoMe Letter from Tokyo — Bettara-ichi, and the Sweetness That Takes Time
There is a particular smell that arrives in Tokyo in mid-October — sweet, faintly fermented, drifting from small wooden stalls before you even see them. It means one thing: Bettara-ichi has come to Nihonbashi.
A pickle with a warning built into its name
Every year on October 19th and 20th, the streets around Hoden Ebisu Shrine fill with vendors selling bettarazuke — daikon radish, pickled whole in sweet malted rice until it turns translucent and glossy. The name comes from an old warning shouted by young men carrying the pickles through the crowd: "Bettara, bettara!" — "sticky, sticky!" — so passersby wouldn't get the malt paste on their kimono sleeves.
The festival dates back to the Edo period, when merchants prayed at Hoden Ebisu Shrine for good fortune in business ahead of the Ebisu-ko season. The shrine is also said to be where Japan's lottery was born. It has survived earthquakes, war, and four centuries of a changing city, and it still opens with the same request: may the coming season be kind to the people who make things with their hands.
The starting point of every road
Nihonbashi is where the salon that delivers our shoes to you is located. Our headquarters, where our craftsmen shape each shoe by hand, is in Asakusa — about ten to fifteen minutes away by car. It may not be especially well known as a tourist destination. And yet Nihonbashi is the starting point of every road in Japan, the heart of its commerce since the Edo period, and the standard against which Tokyo has always measured its own trade: a district built on the quiet, unglamorous credit of keeping a promise, season after season.
A sweetness that cannot be rushed
A daikon does not become bettarazuke quickly. It rests in malted rice for days, sometimes weeks, before it is ready. There is no shortcut to that sweetness — only time, effort, and someone willing to face the radish honestly. It is, we think, not so different from a shoe made by hand: nothing about it can be rushed; it is built by following the steps, one by one, and letting time do its part. Within that repetition, knowledge and experience teach you to notice the smallest differences, and to adjust your hand just slightly to keep the same quality. We believe that is craftsmanship itself — and it is what trust and credibility are built on.
A small update from our side
The online tool for designing your own kimono shoes is nearly ready, and we've been quietly refining it based on the first customers who tried it. And as autumn turns toward winter, our thoughts are already on January — Maison et Objet in Paris will bring us back to France, and we hope some of you will be there too.
Until then, we send this from a city that is, once again, sweet with the smell of pickled radish and old promises kept.
Noriko Onozaki
HeWhoMe.Tokyo — Asakusa, Tokyo