Stand at attention, and in awe, of this towering behemoth of brain freezes and deliciousness.

In the middle of a steaming hot Japanese summer, there’s no better way to cool your stomach down than by filling your stomach with shaved ice. But what if it’s a really hot day?

Then you’ll want to stop by Hyakusho Udon. Yes, as the name implies, it’s first and foremost an udon restaurant, serving up bowls of tasty noodles, but during the summer months Hyakusho Udon also serves shaved ice. Massively, massively huge shaved ice.

We’d been hearing rumors about Hyakusho Udon’s shaved ice for some time now, and so we decided to stop by the Miyazaki restaurant ourselves. From the outside, it looks like just about any other family-oriented, casual noodle joint. Inside, the menu is pretty standard too, with two sizes of shaved ice on offer: mini, for 250 yen (US$2.30), or regular, for 590 yen, which is a reasonably normal price for shaved ice at a sit-down restaurant.

Unable to choose between the seven available flavors (which include strawberry, melon, mango, and hyganatsu citrus fruit), we decided to splurge on the 650-yen rainbow shaved ice, which contains a mix of all seven. “Do you want the mini size?” the woman who took our order asked, but we said no, we’d take the regular.

We then found out just how far from regular Hyakusho Udon’s standard-size shaved ice is.

It’s easily the biggest shaved ice serving we’ve ever seen. Our first impression is that looks like a frozen replica of the Burj Khalifa tower in Dubai, but its actual architectural inspiration is the Tokyo Skytree. Since the Skytree is 634 meters (2,080 feet) tall, Hyakusho Udon builds its shaved ice to a height of 634 millimeters (25 inches).

▼ 1/1000 of a Skytree tall

Hyakusho Udon’s shaved ice is so big that instead of bowl or cup, it comes in one of the containers that the restaurant keeps chopsticks in.

▼ As crazy-big as it is, the restaurant says the in midsummer, they sell more than 100 orders of shaved ice a day.

Due to its towering height, the shaved ice can’t be eaten in the normal way. It’s too tall to eat from the top (even if we stood up, it was awkward), and too tall to support itself if you start eating from the bottom.

So instead, we asked for two smaller dishes…

…and used them to grab a section off the top.

▼ This caused the shaved ice to stop looking like the Burj Khalifa, and instead to look like Christopher Reed, a.k.a. Kid of Kid ‘n Play.

Ordering the multi-flavor rainbow turned out to be a smart choice, since the variety of tastes kept our palate from getting bored. The bigger problem, though, is that having so much shaved ice also creates a virtually limitless potential for brain freezes if you try to eat it too quickly.

On the other hand, pacing yourself too slowly means that the ice is going to melt. So to make sure none of our massive dessert went to waste, we enlisted the help of a table full of junior high school students who were sitting at the next table over, who were happy to help/eat free food.

So not only is Hyakusho Udon an incomparably effective way to stay cool, it’s also an easy way to meet new people and make new friends.

Restaurant information
Hyakusho Udon / 百姓うどん
Address: Miyazaki-ken, Miyazaki-shi, Oysuka-cho, Midarebashi 4502-1
宮崎県宮崎市大塚町乱橋4502-1
Open 7 a.m.-7:30 p.m.

Photos ©SoraNews24
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