Nara, the birthplace of ice culture.

French style, patisserie style, teahouse style. There are many different ways to prepare kakigori, which many of you may also know as shaved ice.

In this guide we will introduce only shops that specialize in kakigori. The demand for this treat is concentrated around the summer months, but kakigori shops cannot rely on only business during only one season, as they need to make ends meet outside of just the summer. In order to succeed each shop has a unique speciality.

These stores don’t miss a beat when it comes to making the ice. While there is a small tendency to get lost in making niche kakigori, having a specific store flavor often makes the ice taste that much better.

The unique banana meringue flavor..
The rare Taiwanese tea flavor.
The homemade red bean and mochi flavor.

In Nara there is a never ending pursuit to create new types of kakigori, and we will introduce the different colors of each store.

The list was compiled with the creator of the Kakigori Festival, Sousuke Hirai. Without a doubt each spot is worth a try. By going to every single store, we tasted the flavors ourselves and listened to the story of the shop owners and staff. With the help of each shop we were able to create a special guide for our users.

We don’t want you to just try one location, we want you to use our guide to hop from one location to the next, and in doing so you can enjoy the different flavors of Nara.

Both tourists and kakigori shop owners from other countries come here to study to meet the flavors of ice unique to Nara.