Niigata Senbei Oukoku (Rice Cracker Kingdom)

I tried to make Senbei Okoku for the first time by learning to make it here. Someone taught me how to make it. It was fun, giving me the experience of making traditional Japanese desserts made from rice, lightly grilled and seasoned with various flavors. It depends on each person's formula. Can also draw various pictures.Wait for it to cool. When you're done, package it up to give as a souvenir. The package is very cute. The taste is crispy. Salty according to the taste of soy sauce. It's similar to Thai crackers.

Know what you’re getting into here. There is ONE giant window where you can watch 1-2 workers making some of the rice crackers. That’s kind of fun and it is free. Behind you is a “Taiken” place (“experience”) where for ¥1500 you can grill and decorate your own giant rice cracker. I suppose it’s fun but I’ve done stuff like this before. Doing it will not get you a factory tour or anything. Next door is a large souvenir store, and a small fun Bakauke shrine (that’s the name of their best selling cracker). That’s really all you can do here. It’s fun for what it is. If you really take your time, you could spend an hour. If you move quickly, 15 minutes is all you need. Know this before planning a day around it!

Fun diversion going through the more suburban parts of Niigata. Many people eat rice crackers without giving a second thought how they are made. And, of course, everything is automated these days, but it's fun to step an create one for yourself, and that's exactly what the Niigata Senbei Oukoku allows you to do. All the materials are set out for you, and the helpers demonstrate how to go through each step in the process until you get a lovely personalized rice cracker to enjoy before you indulge in eating the fruit of your rice cracker labor. It's an excellent part of a family outing, but parents will definitely need to help the little ones because of the amount of heat from the tables used to cook the rice crackers. The entire experience was fun, but the only reason not a 5-star review is the near complete absence of an English guidance in the case a visitor doesn't really understand Japanese. With a guide/friend, this will be an experience to remember.

It's only a small store. You can make your own senbei here though. Which is a neat experience. But I was just expecting more to see and/or read. They had many buildings but only one you could go in. The staff was super nice and helped us call a taxie. Plus we got a gift box of senbei free when we checked out, it was a big box...very nice service. (It was anpaman packages)

We had a lot of fun making our own senbei. It took maybe 20ish mins total. They also gave us a couple large boxes full of various rice cracker products for free!