Why Japan is Changing its Most Popular Food

for over 2000 years Japan has lived off the backbone of one food this little guy [Music] this is rice balls or onigiri or omusubi or nigiri Meshi there is a lot of names for it and that's because of Japanese mythology and social hierarchies which just shows How Deeply ingrained this food is in Japanese history but now most people call it onigiri I wanted to talk about this humble food today because a lot of people outside of Japan might not really know much about it I mean they have to replace it with a sandwich in the American release of Pokemon giant sandwich or call it a jelly donut these Donuts are great jelly filled are my favorite most people who do know unikivi just really think of it as a quirky snack that's not that interesting but it is interesting onigiri is one of Japan's most important foods it's in markets and convenience stores everywhere it's in school lunches and the most common thing people eat when they're on the go it's a staple here onigiri has a storytell so I want to show you how it's evolved over the years to keep playing an important role in Japanese Society oh and also how that role might be changing again foreign [Music] which sounds like a weird mix but it actually works pretty well so the role of onigiri today is pretty much food on the go when you're traveling long train Journeys road trips or hiking a few of these serve as a pretty good lunch they're easy to pack and they have enough carbs to get you through the day but the onigiri wasn't always meant for this this food that you can find pretty much anywhere used to actually be a ceremonial gift from the elite during the hand period onigiri was called tonjiki and it was a ritual food instead of one for convenience it was made with sticky rice and wrapped in bamboo leaves unlike today where it's made with normal rice and Nori which is a dried seaweed back then Royal and Noble households would sometimes hold special events in appreciation of their servants and present their best servants with unigiri as a thank you gift but a few Generations later it started appearing as military rations for Samurai in eastern Japan these onigiri rations were often filled with umeboshi or pickled Plum and this is where onigiri with certain specific fillings started to really spread across the country it's easy to carry around and the rice is filling enough this convenience the samurai took advantage of started becoming popular and by the Edo period in the 1600s onigiri started popping up in Bento boxes this was around the time Japan was becoming a more united country and travelers were moving across it many of them would pack onigiri with them for their Journeys but the food wasn't really standardized yet Japan was still pretty futile at this point so onigiri everywhere was different some were wrapped in bamboo leaves some had umeboshi and some were wrapped in Nori this dried seaweed it took the next 200 years for onigiri to start looking like this [Music] this began with the Meiji restoration when the U.S asked Japan to open the country and stop having it be closed so Japan opened up modernized and started building trains and more trains everywhere around the time where trains were starting to take over the country a Japanese Hotel started serving onigiri bentos at utsunomiya station they called this Bento ekiben a mix of two words eki for a train station and Ben for bento this ekiben had two onigiri filled with umeboshi and still wrapped in bamboo leaves so people were now taking onigiri with them onto trains that took them all over the country a few years later a school in Northern Japan started feeding onigiri in school lunches to impoverished kids this time filled with salmon and a few more years later a tempura restaurant started serving onigiri with tempura inside and then 7-Eleven makes this it's called the pariko film with Japan's industrialization a lot of onigiri are now made by machine and sowed at convenience stores and you know they're a perfect snack or easy lunch they're cheap gluten-free and vegan friendly and once you know what filling you like they taste pretty good foreign [Music] but I have to be honest they are a pain in the ass to try to unwrap let me see if I can do this right so you have to rip the middle I think and then you pull it out by the side right and then it's supposed to look like that oh there's a lot of rice I didn't think it's fruit but yeah it's all right it's not amazing but it's not bad and it definitely gets better once you get deeper into it because that's where all the filling is but they're now very commercial and are honestly kind of boring I mean this is cheap and easy but it lacks the human element and the history that earlier versions carried which is where we are today where onigiri is super important to Japanese society yet it doesn't have the same excitement around it like sushi or Ramen because now most onigiri are produced on an assembly line and not made by a crafts person anymore but Japan is trying to change that [Music] foreign ly headed to a place called onigiri Bongo it's one of the few remaining onigiri restaurants in Tokyo and it's similarly set up like a sushi restaurant letting you see the cooks make onigirien witness the craft this shop apparently has like 50 different kinds of onigiri so I'm pretty excited to see what they have [Music] [Music] just look at it inside that's that's crazy that's really beautiful [Music] these are so good these are like the best one Achilles I've ever had like Yeah The Filling is just so generous it's actually really crazy yeah definitely I've never really seen onigiri in this fight before wow foreign [Music] but that restaurant is more of a window into tradition something you definitely should experience to learn and love the dish but onigiri might be beginning to evolve again and change its role once more and I want to see what that looks like [Music] at the moment there is a new trend of onigiri that's been popping up called onigirazu while there's a lot of shops that don't Mass produce onigiri by Machine onigiri still has this image of just being something that you eat for convenience and not because it's really good so now there's a new version of onigiri that's been spreading around the internet over the past few years to try to make onigiri hip and cool and look flavorful again so it's called onigirazu and it's a much larger onigiri with a more complex set of ingredients inside and it's even what some people have been calling like a rice sandwich onigirazu is usually intended to be made at home but there is one shop here in asakusa that sells onigirazu it's called [Music] it's called tanakogoro right you know what I'm just going to put the name on the screen [Music] okay so this one is filled with cheese and tarako tarako is a Cod roll I think right Conroe so let's give this one a try there's a lot more flavor than I thought a little bit salty but it was nice I like it all right this is the one that I'm most excited for this one's blue Nike all right I've never had Nagi in an onigiri before let alone uh unagi with cheese so let's see how this turns out I like it yeah you don't really taste the cheese but otherwise there's not really much different from a new Nike dog feel like you're eating in onigiri but yeah that's onigirazu and to be completely honest because the Shop's in a really touristy area I was actually pretty worried that it would be underwhelming or just not be good but onigirazu is pretty nice or at least that shop is I mean at the end of the day it tastes just like onigiri it's the only difference is the shape and to be fair I never really thought about onigiri other than just that thing to eat when you're on the go but the story of onigiri is kind of romantic to me in all its forms it's always been food for the people whether it being a gift to servants school lunches for kids or food for hikers and Farmers onigiri has allowed itself to be transformed throughout the centuries to become whatever Everyday People needed to be and I don't think a lot of people give the love it deserves I definitely didn't so here's the 2000 more years this is good this one's the best one actually yeah actually it just went first this one's the best one I look like a weirdo holding two onigiri in the middle of the street this is a good one you want to try it

Channel: Matthew Li

Views: 230,841

Keywords: off the menu, matt li, japan food, japanese food, onigiri, japan onigiri, japan riceballs, riceball, onigiri recipe, onigiri tokyo, where to eat onigiri

Id: rVCRpl8mkIc

Length: 11min 38sec (698 seconds)

Published: Thu Jun 29 2023