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Columnar Joint Shaped Cookies
Shimoda City

Columnar Joint Shaped Cookies

Deceptively crunchy chocolate biscuits

Wheat flour, butter, sugar, egg, cocoa, almond, chocolate, brown alga (from Shimoda)/ emulsifier (soybean origin) , fragrance (including the milk ingredient)

Cape Tsumeki (or Tsumeki-zaki) is a tiny peninsula sticking out of southern part of Izu Peninsula. In the mid-winter, many tourists flock to this small area to see the filed covered with over 3 million wild daffodils. Five minutes’ walk from the daffodil field takes you to a rugged coast line, resembling to Giant’s Causeway in Northern Ireland, famous for its interlocking columnar rocks. Until recently, this impressive scenery was known only by local fishermen who started to call this place Rice Sack Coast (Tawara Iso in Japanese).

Why does only this part of the cape display this unusual rock formation? Standing at the rock and looking around, you will notice the surrounding coastlines don’t contain these uniformed columnar joints. Only this small Tawara Iso boasts the nature’s wonder which looks even delicious. You can feel the texture of the rock when you stand on barefoot. The sensation is as if you are receiving a nice foot massage.

The story of Tawara Iso begins when Izu Peninsula was a small volcanic island in the Pacific Ocean.

It was 2-10 million years ago when submarine volcanoes in the Pacific Ocean were active and erupting magma. Some magma flows horizontally swept in the gaps between stratum layers in the sea. In most cases, hot magma gets smashed into pieces as soon as it exposed to the water. However, some lucky magma found dry gaps, allowing them slowly to cool down, without causing breakage. The end result is columnar joints. In a technical term, this type of vertical rock formation is called sill. You can impress your fellow visitors by using this technical terms, if you feel like using it at the Geosite.

Many years passed by. Volcanic soil on the seabed was washed away by the tide, exposing solid structured sills. Many more years passed by. The sills finally came out of sea surface, showing off their beauty to modern humans.

We thought chocolate biscuits is a perfect form to celebrate the eventful history of Tawara Iso coastline and the columnar joint rocks there. It also contains hijiki seaweed from Shimoda City. We hope you enjoy the history while munching this crunchy biscuits.

Crunchy, bitter sweet biscuits represent an early history of sills being deprived of soft layers by rough tides, as if a young child trying to hide oneself under a warm duvet but the mother has no mercy on…
Cape Tsumeki and its surrounding area were thrived in Edo era, as a sheltering harbour on the route from Kyoto to Edo (Tokyo). Businesses targeting the sailors from all over Japan were doing good, including entertainment business such as sporadic sumo wrestling matches on the white sand beach. Still, the main industry was fishery. Hijiki seaweed from this area was popular products. Even now, the sea vegetable is still one of the most popular local sea products. In spring, lucky visitors
in Shimoda can observe a spectacular view of a lush pitch black carpet of sun-dried hijiki dotted around the city.