Everybody loves dried sweet potatoes—one of the most famous products of Ibaraki.  They are sweet and delicious with a lot of nutrition.  In Ibaraki, making dried sweet potatoes started around the Hitachinaka area at the end of the Meiji period.  The soil is suitable for growing sweet potatoes.  In winter, this area has little rain, and the sea wind helps dry thousands of thinly sliced potatoes.  Now, Ibaraki produces 90 percent of the dried sweet potatoes in Japan.