Ikameshi

A squid body, cleaned of its innards, is stuffed with a mix of glutinous and regular rice and slow-simmered in a soy-and-sugar broth — a dish born as a station bento. The rice, soaked through with the squid's own savor, comes wrapped in a sweet-salty glaze and makes for a filling meal. Chopped tentacles, bamboo shoot, shiitake, or green peas sometimes go into the stuffing too, and locally it's said to double as a light snack or something to go with a drink.

The tentacles, called geso, are removed, and the cleaned, hollowed-out body is stuffed with glutinous and regular rice and pinned shut with a toothpick. It's then slow-simmered in a pot with soy sauce, sugar, salt, and sake. Overstuff it with glutinous rice and the body can split as it swells with heat, so poking a few small holes in the body beforehand with a toothpick is said to be the trick that prevents it. The gentle, unhurried simmer is said to be what lets the broth work its way all through the body.

During the Second World War, as wartime rice controls made shortages severe, it's said to have been devised as a station bento at Mori Station on the Hakodate Main Line — a dish meant to stretch rice as far as it would go. Using squid, which was landed in huge quantities in the Donan region at the time, is a way of reading the dish's own logic: keep the rice to a minimum while still making something filling. It's said to have become the signature station bento of the Donan region, with buyers lining up every time a train pulls in.