Yangome

Toasted rice and boiled red beans are combined with sugar and cooked together into this dish, which looks like red bean rice but tastes faintly sweet with a light, crumbly texture. It has been eaten at the Bon holiday, at celebrations, and as an auspicious food to pray for a good harvest. Its name varies by area — "yangome," "yakigome," and others — each carried on in the local dialect across generations.

Rice is washed and soaked overnight, then drained and soaked again for several more hours before the water is removed and the rice is toasted in a pot. Red beans are simmered with sugar and water, the toasted rice is added, and the pot is left over low heat, steaming gently, for about twenty minutes to finish. The light, crumbly texture of the toasted rice combines with the faint sweetness of the beans for a simple, deeply savory result, so the telling goes.

It is said to be tied to a custom performed at the welcoming and sending fires of the Bon holiday, in which rice and water are scattered toward the burning straw along with chanted words to welcome and see off the departed. It is also said to have been eaten as a way to use up rice grains left over after rice planting was finished, so this simple rice dish carries two threads at once — one from a ritual chant, one from everyday household wisdom.