Enjoy Making, Eating Oyaki Steamed Buns at Showa-Era School Building Deep in Mountains of Ibaraki Pref.

The entrance of Daigo Oyaki School in Daigo, Ibaraki Prefecture
17:02 JST, January 27, 2025

A doll resembling a Showa-era schoolchild stands at the entrance.
DAIGO, Ibaraki — Daigo Oyaki School, a tourist facility that has been renovated from an abandoned school building deep in the mountains of Daigo in northern Ibaraki Prefecture, takes visitors back to the Showa era (1926-89) where they can also enjoy making their own oyaki steamed buns.
Oyaki, which are shaped like flat senbei rice crackers, are a local specialty of the town. In the past, wheat flour was kneaded with miso and baked in the ashes of a hearth. The local people used to eat them when taking a break from farm work.
The facility makes use of the now-closed Makinochi Elementary School, which was built in 1950. It is a one-story wooden building that is about 70 meters long from east to west. When you open the door at the entrance, you are first greeted by a statue of historical figure Ninomiya Kinjiro, who is often depicted reading a book while carrying firewood on his back as a role model for students. In the room beyond, a classroom from a bygone era has been recreated, with rows of desks in front of a blackboard. The room is kept warm using an oil heater.

A room inside the facility retains the atmosphere of an elementary school classroom.
When I visited the facility, oyaki were made in a room on the west side of the school building. A female staff member, who was wearing an apron, lined them up on a hot plate and pressed them down with a spatula as they baked. They smelled delicious.
At the oyaki school, fillings for oyaki are wrapped in dough, which is shaped to resemble a manju bun, and there are seven kinds of fillings, including pumpkin, kinpira sauteed burdock root and carrot, and nozawana turnip leaves.

Oyaki are baked at Daigo Oyaki School.
Visitors can also try their hand at making the arranged oyaki. When I visited the facility, I saw a boy and his parents busily shaping the dough into the shape of oyaki around a filling of apple paste.
The canteen on the east side of the school building comes alive before lunchtime as visitors can enjoy school lunch meals. There are two types of lunch sets on the menu: one with a roll, a bottle of milk and fried whale, and the other with naporitan spaghetti, fried white fish and fruit punch.
The food is served on aluminum plates and eaten with a spork.
The visitors were thrilled, saying things like, “This is so nostalgic!” and “I’ve never eaten whale before.” Eating lunch at a desk designed for elementary school students makes you feel like a schoolchild from the Showa era.
Due to depopulation and the low birth rate, Makinochi Elementary School was merged with a nearby school in 1996. However, the town and others worked to preserve the historic school building, and in 1998 it was reborn as Daigo Oyaki School.
The building is a nationally registered tangible cultural property, with the exterior walls and windows retaining their original appearance.
Visitors can enjoy nostalgic local cuisine in a quiet wooden schoolhouse deep in the mountains.
“I want visitors to have a luxurious time here,” a manager of the facility said.
***
Daigo Oyaki School

Address: 2469 Makinochi, Daigo, Ibaraki Pref.
Access: About 15 minutes by taxi from Hitachi-Daigo Station on the JR Suigun Line
Memo: Closed on Wednesday. The price for an oyaki-making experience is ¥800 for junior high school students and older, and ¥500 for 4-year-olds to elementary school students. Reservations are required at least two days in advance.
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