Rice dishes
Iiyachi
Iiyachi — leaf-wrapped millet mochi carried through a harvest festival
Mochi rice mixed with millet and red beans, cooked in a large pot, worked smooth, then wrapped in banana leaf and steamed — a keeping food from Taketomi Island. Made to eat on the go during the harvest-prayer Tanadui festival, when there's no time to cook amid the rites.
- Origin: Okinawa Taketomi Island
- About 1960 km southwest of Tokyo
What it's made of
Glutinous rice is cooked with millet and red beans into this preserved food handed down on Taketomi Island. Steaming it wrapped in banana leaf gives it a distinctive fragrance, and its chewy texture carries a faint flavor of millet and red bean throughout. For islanders who once lived mainly on sweet potato, the dish eaten at festival time is said to have felt like a real feast, and it remains particular to Taketomi, a small island just a ten-minute boat ride from Ishigaki.
How it's made
Glutinous rice, millet, and red beans are cooked in a large conical pot called a shinmeenabi, and once drained, the mixture is worked with a large wooden paddle called an ibira until it comes together. It's shaped into rounds on oiled banana leaf, wrapped, set in a bamboo basket, and steamed. Cooking it in the shinmeenabi is said to be customary especially on the days just before and after the festival's dedicated performances.
Why it took this shape
A festival held on Taketomi Island, tanadui, involves sowing millet seed and praying for a good harvest, held over nine days beginning on the day of the monkey in the ninth or tenth lunar month. Because the days around it kept everyone busy, this ready-to-eat preserved food is said to have been prepared in advance for the occasion. Designated a national Important Intangible Folk Cultural Property, the festival is said to have a history stretching back some 600 years.
Before you go
- How to use a convenience storeA quick guide to choosing rice balls and hot snacks, buying coffee, paying by cash, IC card, or tap payment, using the eat-in corner, and sorting your trash — the basics for a first visit.
- Station food and ekiben (station bento)Where and when to find ekiben (station bento) before it sells out, etiquette for eating on board, how standing soba and udon stalls work, and where to find souvenirs sold inside the station.
- Soraben and airport diningA guide to what soraben means and how it differs from ekiben, whether to buy before or after security, etiquette for eating on board, airport restaurants, and things to check before buying food souvenirs to take home.
Dishes in the same style
- Aburafu DonDeep-fried wheat gluten, shaped into a log, is simmered in a sweet-savory broth and set with egg over rice, katsudon-style — a Tome City bowl said to trace to a tofu shop's shelf-stable gluten product, later turned into a bowl dish by a local innkeeper.
- Aburi-zushiNigiri with just its surface flash-seared by torch or hot iron. Unlike Edomae's shigoto curing for keeping, the searing here is done purely for the change in aroma and fat it brings — a relatively recent way of eating sushi.
Ingredients and dishes from this land
Also from Okinawa
- Ashi TibichiPig's trotters are simmered for hours with kelp and daikon until the bone slides free on its own. Rooted in the belief that eating a body part heals the same part in the eater, it's traditionally favored by older people, anyone with trouble in the legs, or those minding their skin.
- AwamoriA distilled spirit from Okinawa made only from Thai rice and black koji, with every grain of rice turned into koji in a method called zen-koji-jikomi. Citric acid from the black koji is said to keep the mash from spoiling even in hot, humid conditions, and it's classified alongside shochu as a single-distillation spirit.
- Chii IrichiiPork blood is worked with pork meat, carrot, and wood-ear mushroom into a distinctive stir-simmered dish. Rooted in the same eat-what-ails-you logic as ashi tibichi, it was thought to guard against anemia, and it's traditionally offered before Lunar New Year and at memorial services.
- Chimu ShinjiPork liver and a native yellow carrot are simmered down almost like a medicinal decoction, meant for days the body needs support. It follows the kusuimun idea that food itself can be medicine, and is traditionally made for anemia or when someone's caught a cold.
- Gooyaa ChanpuruuBitter goya is stir-fried together with Okinawa's firm tofu and egg. A dish only earns the name champuru once tofu is in it, and this one has long served double duty — coaxing back a summer-flagged appetite while delivering vitamin C, now eaten year-round.
- HanazakeA distilled spirit made only on Yonaguni, Japan's westernmost island, at around 60 percent alcohol. Its raw materials and method are the same as awamori, but because its proof exceeds awamori's legal ceiling, it's classified as 'spirits' rather than awamori under the liquor tax law.