Rice dishes
Chagayu
Chagayu — rice porridge cooked in roasted bancha tea, sometimes with sweet potato
Rice is cooked directly in roasted bancha tea for this porridge, said to have spread across Yamaguchi after the Iwakuni domain's lord encouraged it in the early 1600s as a way to stretch scarce rice. Light and easy to eat, it is often served chilled in summer.
- Origin: Yamaguchi Yanai
- About 730 km west of Tokyo
What it's made of
Rice is cooked directly in roasted bancha tea for this porridge, prized for its light, easy-drinking texture. In the Suo-Oshima and Yanai areas, a version with sweet potato added—called "imogayu"—is also favored, bringing a faint sweetness to the bowl. The tea's gentle astringency mingles with the rice's starchy body, making it a comforting dish served hot in winter and chilled in summer when appetites flag.
How it's made
Roasted bancha or powdered tea is steeped in a cloth bag in water until the color deepens, then the bag is removed. Unwashed rice is added and cooked in the tea, with sweet potato going in once the rice starts to boil if that version is being made. Stirring brings out a starchy stickiness, so the pot is kept at a gentle simmer to avoid boiling over, then rested briefly off the heat and seasoned with salt to taste. Each household is said to pass down its own particular knack for cooking the porridge just right.
Why it took this shape
Chagayu, said to have originated in the Nara region, is thought to have reached Yamaguchi in the early 1600s, when the Iwakuni domain's lord Kikkawa encouraged it as a way to stretch scarce rice, spreading from Yanai and Suo-Oshima across the prefecture. Valued for the tea's properties and the porridge's easy digestibility, it has continued to be eaten as a health food, and the care some families put into cooking it—despite it being an everyday, frugal dish—has earned it a reputation in some quarters as an unexpectedly refined food.
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 Yamaguchi
- Chikin Chikin GoboBite-size fried chicken and deep-fried burdock are tossed in a sweet soy glaze in this dish, born in Yamaguchi's school lunches. A nutrition teacher is said to have devised it around 1995 from recipes submitted by families, and its catchy, rhythmic name helped it spread into a statewide favorite.
- Chisha NamasuKakichisha, an heirloom crinkled lettuce grown around Shimonoseki, is torn by hand and tossed with vinegared miso, flaked grilled fish, or whitebait. It is said to have been devised by the Mori domain's people after being impoverished by the Battle of Sekigahara, and is also known as "chishamomi."
- Choshu KurokashiwaSaid to draw on the blood of Kurokashiwa, a natural-monument fowl native to Yamaguchi and Shimane, developed into a jidori by a Yamaguchi research station and finished and named by a poultry farm; reportedly free-ranged for 80–100 days.
- Fugu no KaraagePufferfish, marinated in soy sauce and sake, is coated in potato starch and deep-fried—a homely dish from the Shimonoseki and Hagi areas. While pricier tiger pufferfish goes into sashimi and hot pot, the more affordable shirosabafugu species is the one most often fried this way.
- Fuku SashiPufferfish sashimi is sliced so thin it becomes translucent, then arranged in a chrysanthemum pattern in this Shimonoseki dish. Locals call the fish "fuku," a homophone for good fortune, and eat it with citrus ponzu and scallion; the practice traces to 1888, when eating pufferfish was legalized in Yamaguchi alone.
- GobomakiLizardfish skin, a byproduct of making fish cakes, is wrapped around a skewer of burdock root and grilled with a basting sauce—a dish from Hagi. Because it uses lizardfish, prized for the region's grilled fish cakes, seafood processors often make the two together, and it is a fixture of festival and cherry-blossom bento.