Traditional shopping street, Oharaimachi Ise

I love Japanese traditional products, so whenever I visit a new town I always check if there is a traditional shopping area. And if possible, I always search for specific products, foods or drinks. Many of these traditional shopping areas are streets, a few hundred meters long, with traditional Japanese buildings, like the street from this photo, Oharaimachi, located right near Naiku, the famous Inner Shrine of Ise.

For hundreds of years, pilgrims from all over Japan were passing through this street when they were coming to pray at the shrine. The main attraction were the akafuku mochi, a pounded rice cake with a sweet bean paste topping and the Ise udon, a kind of thick and soft noodle, specific to Ise...