Nara has nothing delicious to eat. At least, this is what novelist Naoya Shiga wrote in a 1938 essay about Nara prefecture, which he called home for 13 years. Although he then qualified this statement with some faint praise for his local tofu shop, readers latched on to the damning line, and Nara has since been burdened with a less-than-flattering culinary reputation, even among the locals. To visitors, Nara is famous for the deer that roam its capital city, its ancient temples, and—to a certain subset of archaeologists—the kofun tombs,…
