There is a long-running rivalry between the east and west of Japan. Kansai (west) includes cities like Kyoto and Osaka, and Kantou (east) includes Tokyo and Yokohama. For reasons the author doesn’t understand well, the people of Kansai and Kantou pride themselves on these differences.
The shape of the country historically made for roughly bipolar military confrontations, involving shifting alliances between the many warlords. Centuries ago, Kyoto was the Imperial Capital and Osaka the economic capital. West of Japan are Korea and China, and the commercial and cultural trade made the region wealthy and powerful. Near the end of the 16th century, a warlord named Nobunaga managed to unify most of Japan, but was betrayed by an associate. An intense struggle for control ensued, culminating in a battle at Segihara in 1600, which is more or less the middle of the country. The winner, a general named Tokugawa Ieyasu, became a Shogun (military governor, nominally in service of the Emperor but pragmatically in charge) and was based in Edo, now named Tokyo. His defeated rival was based in, you guessed it, Osaka.
Edo was just a small fishing village with a broken-down castle until Ieyasu showed up around 1590, rebuilt the castle, and made the area into his base. After winning the battle of Segihara he was mostly generous in victory, but required other warlords to maintain households in Edo (making them de facto hostages) and contribute money and labor to build out the infrastructure there; within 5 years Edo was a large city of ~150k. Tokugawa also closed the country and banned foreign trade, not least to prevent his rivals from raising armies and capital overseas. His family continued to rule Japan until the Shogunate was abolished and the country opened up the outside world in the 19th century. Edo was renamed Tokyo and made the official capital, although the Imperial family continued to reside in Kyoto until Emperor Taisho moved to Tokyo in the early 20th century.
Some additional reasons for the rivalry between East and West are language and demography.
The dialects of Japanese spoken in Osaka, Kyoto, Kobe, etc. are distinct and different from both the colloquial Japanese spoken in Tokyo and the standard language that is taught in schools and used in broadcasting. A person from Osaka who visits Tokyo is immediately identified by their accent and vocabulary. This makes people very aware of where they and others come from within Japan.
Also, Tokyo is similar to cities like New York and London. While there are people who have lived in Tokyo their whole lives and whose ancestors also lived in Tokyo, since the 19th century the city has drawn waves of immigrants from throughout Japan. This makes it something of a melting pot for ethnic Japanese. While Osaka has also drawn outsiders, it has a larger core of people who have lived there for generations. This creates a sense of loyalty and attachment to the home area and to the food eaten there.
That localism is amplified by the mass media. A popular topic on television quiz shows is differences in food, speech, and behavior between eastern and western Japan.
> A popular topic on television quiz shows is differences in food, speech, and behavior between eastern and western Japan.
A popular topic on television quiz shows is differences in food, speech, and behavior in various parts or Japan. It's not only Eastern vs. Western. It's prefectures vs. prefectures. Hyogo vs. Fukuoka vs. Akita vs. Ibaraki, vs. etc.
This regionalism is amplified by the fact that there aren't, actually, fully national TV channels (except for NHK, with exceptions for the news).
So for example, I live in Aichi, which is between Kantou and Kansai. The channels I have are: Toukai TV, NHK, Chukyo TV, CBC, Meitele and TV Aichi. They are part of broader networks, so for instance, Toukai TV is "mostly" Fuji TV, Chukyo TV is "mostly" Nippon TV, CBC is mostly TBS, Meitele is "mostly" TV Asahi and TV Aichi is "mostly" TV Tokyo. "Mostly" because they all have local programs or even sometimes programs from Kansai instead of whatever might be on air in Tokyo on the corresponding channels.
To give an example of a program I can watch on Chukyo TV, that can't be seen in Tokyo and some other areas: https://www.ytv.co.jp/iinkai/area/index.html (it's produced by Yomiuri TV, which is from Osaka)
> Edo was renamed Tokyo and made the official capital
It is funny that they just reversed Kyoto when they picked that name. I wonder why they did that.
Edit: Apparently "kyo" just means capitol and Tokyo is eastern capitol and Kyoto is capitol city. But it wouldn't surprise me if they picked those names as a pun to make the names similar.
What they did, though, is change Tokyo from a fu (符) to a to (都). Tokyo is the only to, and there wasn't one before, they came up with it for Tokyo. There were other fus, but there are only two left nowadays: Kyoto-fu and Ōsaka-fu.
Why do I mention this? Because Tokyo-to is written 東京都. Kyoto is written 京都. Remember that 東 means East. And yes, there are places in the east of Kyoto that carry the name 東京都 (higashi-Kyoto, higashi being another reading of the character 東). This has to be a troll.
The amylopectin details may be right, but the rest is wrong. Conbini's sell brown rice onigiri (look for 玄米), it's just usually a very limited selection. They don't fall apart, and you eat them the same as normal onigiri.
After posting this comment I then decided to look into it (in my usual way) and just looking for homemade brown rice onigiri what I found was that at least the couple of recipes I looked at used short grain brown rice (which I did not even realize existed) and/or recommended using more water than usual.
Whole Foods carries a store brand short grain brown rice at a reasonable price that I really like. It’s one of my go-to rices and essentially the only thing I go to Whole Foods for, as I haven’t found a comparable product or price point elsewhere. I think it’s about $2.50/lb these days.
I just finished some tonight, and I’m certain it’s sticky enough to hold its shape.
Yup, if you want to do it at home, make it a little bit mushier. I don't like it, but it is very doable. Commercially they may use a binder, I don't know, I just wanted to make sure people knew they're available!
I did it tonight and when i picked up the rice i used wet fingers to give it just a touch more binding ability. Worked well. Kids loved it. Am excited to eat the brown rice onigiri tomorrow.
There is no white rice plant. It's all brown rice with the bran removed. Brown short grain rice doesn't have different starches than the same rice without its bran.
Diabetes scales with obesity and age. Japan has a very old population, but less obesity than the US. White rice despite its glycemic index is not super high calorie. If it's a contributing favor, it's because of weight-gain, not glycemic index.
There are also other food items which have versions that are black in colour, some of which could be not naturally, but by processing them in some way, for example, black garlic.
It’s the Japanese equivalent of “cup” as a measurement unit, and at 180 ml is about 76% of a US cup. Japanese rice cookers are marked and filled in units of gō. You put n gō of uncooked rice in it, and then fill water up to the n mark. One gō is roughly 150 grams of uncooked rice, which amounts to around 530 kcal. Traditionally, a wooden box was used to measure one gō: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Masu,_One-Gō_measure...
A Japanese measuring unit for rice, kind of analogous to "one cup" in US kitchens. Measuring cups distributed with rice cookers are usually one gō in volume even in the US.
I've been on two trips to Japan - 2014 and 2023. We enjoyed eating a lot of onigiri on both trips. During the latter trip I noticed that the ¥ price hadn't changed much but the amount of filling (various proteins) had gone down considerably, which makes sense from a business perspective.
We've tried making them at home a couple of times but haven't perfected it yet. Reading this is motivating me to give it another shot soon.
You can find onigiri at independent shops not only convenience stores, with good price and better fillings/quantity. Convenience stores seem cheap compared with America but everything they sell is expensive locally
There are also onigiri adjacent foods worth exploring like tenmusu. I love this tiny place in Tsu (Mie prefecture capital) that serves 6 of them with soup for about $3, a full meal offered with dine-in, even though it’s now Michelin recommended. It's probably 1/3 the price of convenience store onigiri per unit cost and it's freshly made to order.
Oh don't get me started. In Korea, the size of the samgakgimbap has increased in some cases, and the price DECREASED in some cases... but the filling, ugh....!!!! Not only has the amount of filling decreased, but the quality is going down. Some of the tuna mayo ones have basically no mayo in them anymore, the tuna quality has also gone down. If I wanted rice and seaweed I'd buy rice and seaweed...!!!! And this isn't just CU/711/etc, it's everywhere! </rant>
I love onigiri, but find it difficult to make them into triangles, I got frustrates one day, threw all the ingredients into a bowl and stirred, and I have enjoyed Onigiribowl(patent pending/s) ever since.
There is a cheap triangular contraption which allows you to make onigiri yourself to your preferred specification. You may want to invest in proper rice and nori, it is smooth sailing after that.
The best Onigiri are the ones that you nigiru yourself, homemade. Konibini Onigiri are convenient in a pinch, but they pale in comparison to homemade ongiri from some who know the right nigirikata techniques. Plus, homemade has way more variety, the choices of what you can put in them and mix with them are endless, furikake is great for making ongiri. I wouldn't consider it a comfort food, I think it would be more correct to compare it to the likes of a sandwich in many Western countries.
I agree, they most closely resemble sandwiches from Western cooking. I think Konbini ones are just bland most of the time. A few of the super markets that make their own seem to taste better in my opinion than the Konbini ones. I do think the onigiri with tempura on the inside is a real treat. However, sometimes I want just plain salted rice ones if I am in a rush and eating pre-made super market foods.
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The link to the video showing how to unwrap an onigiri was very helpful! I’ve encountered that wrapping before but I found it confusing. (I don’t read Japanese and I couldn’t figure it out from the diagrams.)
In Taiwan there is a variation of 飯糰/rice balls shaped like a triangle but no seaweed wrapping, usually with 肉鬆 (pork floss) in the middle, which have been around forever as a breakfast item. The Japanese type wrapped in seaweed with better ingredients started popping up in 7-elevens about 15 or 20 years ago, and are known as 日式飯糰 ("Japanese food rice balls"). I think they cost about NT$40-50, or around US$1.50. It's not enough for a meal, but as a snack they're great.
飯糰 also come in a Shanghainese variety (粢飯）. They're long and stuffed with a deep fried dough stick 油條, the pork floss, and sugar. As well as a savory variety with mustard greens 榨菜. Seems like the Taiwanese version is fusion of both Chinese and Japanese styles for Taiwanese tastes.
McDonald's had nice rice bun burgers in Asia. Apparently originated in Japan (MOS chain), and also popular in Korea. I'm still waiting for this variation to make it's way to the west.
I love Japanese food. I really like recipes which focus on the flavor of a specific ingredient. Japanese food like Sushi and Onigiri made me realize how good rice tastes.
Kind of like how French and Italian food made me realize how good wheat tastes. In terms of wheat, Italians mastered the savory and French mastered the sweets.
In all these cases, the grain is treated as the central ingredient. It's an ingredient which most people consider bland, and yet it takes the leading role in many recipes.
For those of you as clumsy as I am, you can form onigiri by pressing it into the corner of a Ziplock bag. Just dampen the inside of the bag slightly first to reduce the rice sticking to the bag. If you're making Shio onigiri, you can salt the water.
My girls join the Girlscout in Japan. When they have outings, they'll prepare "girlben" which is short for "girlscout's bento/lunchbox", which is literally just 2 or 3 onigiris with whatever ingredients they want.
Curiously, I wondered why many onigiri we see are triangular in shape,
I found https://onlinemuseum.net/cuisine/onigiri/onigiri and others which seems to claim that this is because they're formed in the shape of mountains to drive off spirits.
But if you ask me, this is either true or is simply another one of those things,
where it happened so long ago that nobody really knows the answer for sure.
Well one thing that is sort of notable about Japan/Onigiri but left off this blog is that they will all contain fish.
Being a vegetarian in Japan was miserable. I want to go back with a pack of Protein bars so I can travel and feel decent.
I practically subsisted off potato chips on my trip.
Edit: The number of people telling me I should have hired a guide is hilarious. I couldn't have afforded that. I did go with 2 Japanese speakers, but wasn't with them the whole time.
I asked for help often, and got it (Japan is so cool like that <3), but when I was there in 2017 I had a really hard time with my diet.
I so wish I would have brought protein bars because I would have felt better, been more present as a result, and spent less time thinking about food/my diet and more time taking in the experience.
Also, being vegetarian is going to be miserable to me most places I go, as my home in California is one of the best places to be veg in the world. I find the mid-West just as bad as Japan, for example. Being vegetarian, fit and trim means I have to be very careful of my macros. Getting adequate dietary protien is hard even at home.
During my stay in Kyoto for university, we had one vegan girl with us. We all thought she would suffer a lot due to everything having fish in it (dashi).
However, she managed really well. She found so many vegan restaurants and dishes that even our teachers were quite surprised. She also knew the most food-related Kanji of us all and thus knew exactly what to look for in stores/restaurants.
So yes, you can totally get by in Japan as a Vegetarian/Vegan, but you have to do a lot of research/looking up beforehand
Kyoto is a uniquely good place for vegetarian food in Japan - there are a lot of Buddhist temples from which the monks etc. follow vegetarian diets, and the traditional Kyoto cuisine is simple vegetable-based meals. Even someone who did the same amount of research might struggle in Hakata or Sapporo.
Yes, Japan is actually not terrible for vegetarians/vegans, especially these days where even Mos Burger has good plant-based options. But you need good language skills and local knowledge. Even most Japanese locals won't know how to help.
For onigiri, there are vegan varieties even at combini like kombu, daikon, or ume-shiso. They don't have a lot of protein though. At a dedicated onigiri place you can often find natto, bean, tofu, or egg onigiri, as well as inari.
A lot of vegan restaurants are just marked as "Japanese restaurant" on Google maps. Many of them don't market or present themselves as vegan. There are especially a lot in Kyoto, which has traditional specialties like yuba and shojin-ryori.
If for any reason you want protein bars, Japan has a decent amount of them in drugstores (although I think North America's are better).
I find this very hard to believe. Japan, and Asia in general, has plenty of vegetarian food. Any guide can point you to restaurant with suitable dishes.
Potato chips would be way down in my list, unless I had a very tight budget... but then I wouldn't be in Japan.
With a guidebook/website you can easily find some restaurants with vegetarian options in cities, or vegan restaurants (although they tend to also serve ultra-healthy low calorie dishes). But in towns you may be out of luck and it can be super frustrating trying to explain that you don't eat fish or dashi which normally has fish in it especially if you don't speak the language well. It's common that a restaurant will not make you anything. Certain areas pretty much only have ryokans as accommodations, you're expected to eat there and they won't always accommodate you.
In the recent few years, "plant-based" options are popular in conbinis and chain restaurants. But half the time they are seasoned with meat extracts. I would say "plenty of options" is stretching it, you really have to put effort in once you get out of a city. I get GP's comment and I've known other people that, if a known vegetarian Japanese option isn't available, stick to pizza, Indian restaurants and a few reliable things from conbinis so they can travel without it being a hassle.
Nepalese restaurants are also all over the country and reliable veg friendly options. They sometimes serve only Indian food but the menus are made to Japanese taste so it's fun to try as something new. They also often stick to the Japanese tradition of offering free rice refills by having free naan refills instead, at least until recent inflation.
Japanese cuisine doesn’t use large amounts of meat but most dishes are prepared with some ingredients of animal origin. Fish stocks are ubiquitous, for example.
I can only imagine that a strict vegan would have a hard time finding suitable food.
On the other hand, a typical omnivore Westerner will usually eat far less meat than usual while in Japan.
> Well one thing that is sort of notable about Japan/Onigiri but left off this blog is that they will all contain fish.
They don't. There are onigiris containing beef or chicken. Also shrimp, except if you count that as fish.
Edit: of course, I reacted to this before reading the next sentence about vegetarianism... There are also rice balls with nothing else than salt, usually called shio-musubi. And as others have pointed out, there's also umeboshi.
There are vegan onigiri, even at 7-11s, if I recall. I think salt, umeboshi, and kombu onigiri are safe. But yes, some surprisingly contain fish sauce which would otherwise be vegan.
(I live in the Boston area and can even find vegan onigiri at the local Japanese market, Maruichi.)
Umeboshi is made from Japanese plums (more like an apricot) salt and purple shiso, nothing else. The salt is ground into the Shiso (Perilla plant) to draw out the liquids and then sprinkled on washed ume (plum) and then left to ferment for weeks. The salty shiso draws out the liquid of the Ume and dies the green plum a dark purple color. Extremely high salt content, but no fish whatsoever.
A local guide would be invaluable to recommend vegetarians options. Also, be very explicit if eggs or milk are acceptable, because there's very few strict vegetarians in Japan. Even monks and nuns who practice Buddhist vegetarianism consume milk.
IIUC, the original Buddhist teaching is that getting involved in taking life smears your karma, not necessarily that consuming the results will. Confucianism influenced branches tends to take the latter interpretation so that's what a lot of Asian(Japanese or Chinese) guys would say, but hardcore Indian style counterintuitively is that everything already on the platter is lost cause and even wasteful to refuse, given one does not actively seek it or support it.
My highschool teacher had an anecdote on this. There was a small, yearly post-event party which a Buddhist guru is invited to join. One time there were couple chicken wings for each. They feared the guru would have some words on consuming meat, or others next to him has to take the extra, but he saw no problems with it since it was offered and presented to him passively, and just stated he has to reasonably clean the bones and that that isn't a fast process. From next time on the party had become strictly boneless, but not vegetarian.
If it makes you feel better many fish don't have a cerebral cortex. Their level of sentience is on par with insects, which is a popular protein suggested by some flavors of vegetarians (or at least was).
On the scale of things you can wrap in rice, Onigiri is a 2/10 for me. I can understand it for kids, its cheap, easy to make and relatively healthy, but the filling could be so much more creative. IME the Chinese fan tuan (饭团) is so much better.
Japantown has some vegetarian restaurants, and since they get a lot of tourists they're used to specific food requests. Just ask before you sit down.
There's also a Japanese supermarket there and you can check the ingredients list on the packaged food in the refrigerated section.
You'll find a million places to get them if you search yelp or google maps but the ones most like the article are likely found at asian grocery stores.
Woori or Nijiya both have a good variety of them and should have some vegetarian ones like pickled plum.
Across the bay at Berkeley Bowl they make some an surprisingly good ones too.
Nijiya Market in Japantown has at least plain seaweed Onigiri in far right of the fridge near the entrance for $2.79. Unfortunately it was the same price as ones with filling.
There’s a fun version of this that they have at 7-11 (or 7 & I) there. Probably other convenience stores too. They come in a plastic wrapper that separates the nori from the rice and filling so it doesn’t get soggy. When you pull a little tab, it somehow removes the plastic from in between without messing up the shape. Magic!
There are two layers of plastic wrap, one on either side of the nori. It works because there's no nori at the side and that's the direction you pull the plastic off.
You have to be pretty specific about how you pull it apart. Most people will ruin their first onigiri because they do it wrong. But basically you break a seal and then pull the plastic out on each side, sliding them out.
The shape of the country historically made for roughly bipolar military confrontations, involving shifting alliances between the many warlords. Centuries ago, Kyoto was the Imperial Capital and Osaka the economic capital. West of Japan are Korea and China, and the commercial and cultural trade made the region wealthy and powerful. Near the end of the 16th century, a warlord named Nobunaga managed to unify most of Japan, but was betrayed by an associate. An intense struggle for control ensued, culminating in a battle at Segihara in 1600, which is more or less the middle of the country. The winner, a general named Tokugawa Ieyasu, became a Shogun (military governor, nominally in service of the Emperor but pragmatically in charge) and was based in Edo, now named Tokyo. His defeated rival was based in, you guessed it, Osaka.
Edo was just a small fishing village with a broken-down castle until Ieyasu showed up around 1590, rebuilt the castle, and made the area into his base. After winning the battle of Segihara he was mostly generous in victory, but required other warlords to maintain households in Edo (making them de facto hostages) and contribute money and labor to build out the infrastructure there; within 5 years Edo was a large city of ~150k. Tokugawa also closed the country and banned foreign trade, not least to prevent his rivals from raising armies and capital overseas. His family continued to rule Japan until the Shogunate was abolished and the country opened up the outside world in the 19th century. Edo was renamed Tokyo and made the official capital, although the Imperial family continued to reside in Kyoto until Emperor Taisho moved to Tokyo in the early 20th century.