Baked Sweet Potatoes(Yaki-Imo 焼き芋）

We have very big and sweet potatoes during the autumn  and winter seasons. When I lived in Singapore, sometimes I bought the sweet potatoes from the wet market  labeled 'Japanese sweet potatoes". But they were much smaller and had less sweetness than the real Japanese ones so I was disappointed

A vegetable shop nearby  bakes sweet potatoes in this season, the nice smell spreads  in the air  attracting many customers who   start to  gather to buy them. I am the one of them !
When I went to  Thailand  I   saw baked bananas in  charcoal along  the road side for the first time .
 I thought they were sweet potatoes!

We have an old saying　by Saikaku Ihara (1642-1693) who was a poet and an author in the Edo period  that women  love sweetpotatoes, octopus and pumpkin.

By chance yesterday I found a real and traditional shop selling  sweet potatoes baked in hot pebbles in a hand cart on the road side　called Ishi-Yaki-Imo 石焼き芋 in Tachikawa , Tokyo. Amazingly his potatoes were much sweeter than the roasted chestnuts!! He said he is famous among the  foreign travellers.

158yen

200yen