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You've dusted your soba or yakitori with this spice before, but not of this quality. Since before the war, the Miyagawa family has been providing Tokyo's better soba shops and other restaurants with hand-roasted and hand-mixed "nana iro togarashi," as it's called in Shitamachi.
Now that her husband has passed away, Mrs. Miyagawa carries on. She will mix the spices in her lacquer bowl according to your taste. The standard "chotto karame," slightly spicy mix, is excellent: ground togarashi red pepper (both roasted and dried), black and white sesame, sansho, poppy seeds, hemp seeds, aonori (laver) and chinpi (dried mikan peel). A small bag for 500 yen will last for several months.
She also has the lovely gourd-shaped wooden shakers used to hold the spice. She carries ground mustard too, and few other spices.
To get there, take the Oeda Line to Ryogoku station. Take the exit for the Edo Tokyo Museum and turn right away from the museum entrance. Once you cross the river, the Miyagawa shop will be in the third block after the traffic light. It's six or seven minutes from the station.
--mjk
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