They are shiny and round. They are pretty and lovely like the marbles that we used to play with when we were young.
They have Amaguri in Tokyo, as well as in Kyoto. When walking down Kion street in Kyoto, I often stop at the smell of roasting chestnuts. Amuguri smells very sweet like its name. I haven’t asked yet if they use the sweet variety of chestnuts or if they just put sugar on chestnuts.
The wrapping paper says “Famous Old Store of Amaguri Hayashi Manshodo” It must be famous Amaguri store that have been run for generations. I asked and they said they’ve been running for almost 150 years. They are definitely tasty but I mostly visit there for the beautiful memories.
As Amaguri is tastier when eaten warm, so I asked for the smallest one, they start roasting chestnuts first, weigh them and wrap the exact 150g of chestnuts several times.
I always tell them that they don’t have to wrap it, as I don’t want to waste fine quality wrapping papers or wait for the wrapping. Yet, they always wrap the chestnuts with great care even when they recognize me, so I always have to stop them.
As far as I know, Amaguri was originally Pyongyang chestnuts, or Heijoguri.
When I walked down Ginza street with my father in Tokyo, I could often find stalls that sold roasted chestnuts. We walked together and ate the chestnuts. My father was delighted, saying they were ‘Pyongyang chestnuts’. You had to put an effort into peeling chestnuts, either roasted or boiled in Korea, yet these chestnuts were peeled with one finger stroke. They called them Heijoguri, meaning Pyongyang chestnuts, perhaps because they were from Pyongyang.
Before I was born, my father came to Seoul from Pyongyang alone. His mother visited Seoul from Pyongyang. There is a picture of the three of them, my newly married parents and grandmother standing in front of a house with my father’s doorplate "Yoon mo Lee". I don’t have the picture with me now, yet the black and white photograph of my grandmother who my father said, I look like, remains in my heart.
Soon, the 38th parallel was drawn and my grandmother could never visit Seoul from Pyongyang again. For 30 years until my father passed away in 1983, he never said anything about missing his mother or homeland, yet now I realize that his buying Heijoguri on the street and having a hankering for Pyongyang Naengmyon meant that he missed them so much. If I realized that in his heart while alive, I would have been able to be a better daughter, I feel sorry for the immaturity.
“Are these from Pyongyang?” father used to ask the vendor. Reminded of it, I buy whenever I pass the Amaguri store in Gion, Kyoto. It’s like a materialization of invisible memories that were only present in my head and heart. I ask as my father used to ask. “Are these from Pyongyang?” they reply that they come from China now.
The autumn comes even in this noisy world. It’s now the season for roasted chestnuts.
Whenever I smell the roasted chestnuts on the street, the memories of eating chestnuts roasted in the big fireplace of the house that I used to live in Oswego, at the far north of New York State, in front of Great Lake Oswego where my son was born, come to me.
Chestnuts are the best snacks in the cold winter in Korea. They are nutritious in that they contain all the five main nutrients, they are good for growing and antiaging. And, if they also contain beautiful memories of love in them, life would be more beautiful.
