Rice dishes
Tako Meshi
Tako meshi — rice cooked together with fresh octopus
Fresh octopus is cooked directly into the rice with a seasoning liquid, a dish from Adako on Toba's Toshi Island. Octopus firmed by the fast currents at the mouth of Ise Bay is known locally as "shiosai dako," and has long been offered at Ise Shrine's ritual meals as well as eaten at home.
- Origin: Mie Toba
- About 300 km southwest of Tokyo
What it's made of
Tako meshi is a simple dish of rice cooked together with raw octopus and its marinade. Real octopus from around Kamishima Island, tumbled by the rough currents of the Irako Strait, is said to have especially firm, flavorful flesh. Adako, a district on Toba's Toshi Island, is known for this dish, and each grain of rice, soaked in the octopus's savor, mingles with the springy bite of the meat.
How it's made
The method is simple: raw octopus and its marinade are cooked together with the rice, with carrot about the only extra ingredient added, keeping the dish otherwise unadorned. When fresh octopus isn't available, dried octopus is reconstituted instead, or small octopuses too small to sell are used, so the exact approach varies by region and household.
Why it took this shape
The waters off Toba are said to be a rich fishing ground where octopus-pot fishing continues year-round, and octopus is said to have long been offered at Ise Grand Shrine rites, suggesting it has been a familiar food for a long time. The name of the Adako district is also said to come from a legend that octopuses rode a great wave right up to the edge of the rice paddies, and a life lived close to both sea and paddy is thought to have shaped this dish.
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
Contrast
- Kounago no KuginiYoung sand lance from Ise Bay, called kounago locally, are simmered down with coarse sugar, soy sauce, and sake. As the slender fish curl while cooking, they come to resemble rusted nails — the source of the dish's name — and the catch is considered a herald of spring along the bay.
- Ehime Tako MeshiOctopus from the Iyo Sea is cut into pieces and cooked into rice with kelp and root vegetables. It's said to have begun with fishermen simmering their catch right on board, and the finishing touch of mikan peel on top is distinctly Ehime.
- Tako MeshiSun-dried octopus is rehydrated, chopped, and either cooked into rice with burdock and carrot or mixed in afterward — a dish that leans on the concentrated flavor of dried octopus, known for the summer sight of octopus hung out to dry in Amakusa's Ariake.
Also from Mie
- AhodakiOld takuan pickle, once its flavor and aroma have faded, is desalted and simmered again in soy sauce, a pantry staple from the Hokusei area. Its name — playfully self-deprecating, roughly "doing a foolish thing" — nods to eating it well past its prime, a frugal way to waste nothing.
- Arame MakiRehydrated arame, a brown seaweed once offered to Ise Shrine, is wrapped several times around sardine or saury and simmered in soy sauce and sugar. The choice of fish shifts by locality along the Toba coast.
- Bon JiruA miso soup packed with seasonal vegetables such as burdock, eggplant, and pumpkin. Following Zen Buddhist practice of avoiding killing during Obon, it skips bonito or dried-fish stock, relying instead on fried tofu and a generous mix of vegetables for its savor.
- ChagayuRice is cooked in water steeped with a bag of roasted tea leaves. Born in Iga, where farmland was scarce and rice precious, the extra water was a way to stretch the grain further; in summer some households chill the porridge before eating.
- ChatsuJulienned daikon, carrot, lotus root, kelp, and fried tofu are simmered in vinegar and sugar, a dish from Asahi town. Its name is said to come from "chatsu," the red-lacquered vessel once used to serve vegetarian temple food, and soy sauce is deliberately left out to keep the dish pale.
- Fuki DawaraRice cooked with soybeans is wrapped in butterbur leaves into a small rice-bale shape, an Iga-area harvest offering. It is set before the rice-paddy deity at planting time to pray for a good crop, and doubles as a portable snack for breaks between farm work.