Sweets
Imomochi
Imomochi — pan-fried potato cakes (also called imodango)
Steamed potato is mashed and bound with potato starch, then pan-fried until browned — also called imodango. Said to have begun as a stand-in for mochi rice in years when rice was hard to grow.
- Origin: Hokkaido
- About 880 km north of Tokyo
What it's made of
Steamed potato is mashed, bound with potato starch, and pan-fried until browned — a simple snack also called imodango in some areas. It's most often made with danshaku potatoes, and the appeal is said to lie in the crisp, toasty outside against a soft, chewy inside. Butter on top, or a sweet-savory sesame sauce — how it's eaten varies by household and region, and since potatoes are sold year-round, so is the snack itself.
How it's made
Steamed potato is mashed, shaped into small patties, and pan-fried until it browns. Potato starch alone will bind it, but a little wheat flour added in is said to make the texture smoother. Households vary it further — stuffing it with cheese before frying, deep-frying it, or dropping it into soup — so that a single ingredient branches into several different ways of eating.
Why it took this shape
In an era before rice-growing technology had taken hold locally, potato — already grown in abundance — is said to have stood in for glutinous rice when making mochi, and that's how this began. During the Meiji-era settlement it served as a vital source of energy, and its simplicity to make helped it spread as an everyday, working people's food. It kept being eaten through the wartime and postwar years of rice shortage, and a pumpkin version made the same way, kabocha-mochi, is also still passed down today.
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.
- How to shop in a depachika (department store food hall)A guide to browsing prepared foods and bento, choosing wagashi as a gift with a good shelf life, sampling etiquette, end-of-day discounts, asking for cold packs and wrapping, and finding your way around a depachika floor.
- Takeout and convenience store customsHow to answer "Shall I warm it up?", choosing chopsticks and a paid plastic bag, saying whether you'll eat in or take out, handling trash and eating while walking, and the different tax rate for takeout versus eating in.
Dishes in the same style
- Abekawa MochiFresh-pounded rice cake is dusted in soybean flour mixed with sugar. Named for the Abe River, it's said to have been famous among Tokaido travelers as a teahouse specialty and to appear in the travel novel Tokaidochu Hizakurige.
- Iga ManjuSweet bean paste is wrapped in rice flour dough, then coated with dyed sticky rice grains. One account ties the name to the grains' resemblance to a chestnut's spiny husk, and in the western Mikawa region it's said to be offered to Hina dolls at the Doll Festival.
Ingredients and dishes from this land
Contrast
- BekomochiRice-flour dough colored white with sugar and dark with black sugar is shaped like leaves and steamed. One story behind the name bekomochi (beko meaning cow) is that the pattern recalls a Holstein.
- ImomochiTaro and rice are cooked together, mashed smooth, shaped and skewered, then grilled over charcoal and dipped in ginger soy sauce — a dish of the Nakatsugawa area said to have begun with combining leftover broken rice from the harvest with sticky taro, or as a way to stretch rice in lean years.
- ImomochiBoiled sweet potato is blended with glutinous rice flour into a paste, wrapped around red bean paste, and dusted with roasted soybean flour. Said to have spread widely once sweet potato reached Naruto in the late 19th century, offering an affordable sweetness for ordinary households.
- Oni ManjuCubed sweet potato is folded into a batter of flour and sugar, then steamed. Said to have spread as a stand-in staple for rice during wartime and postwar food shortages, its name is said to come from the potato cubes' resemblance to an ogre's horns.
- ImomochiSweet potatoes grown on red clay bluffs are pounded together with a smaller-than-usual measure of sticky rice into this treat from the Kumano coast. Said to have begun as a way to stretch scarce rice on land ill-suited to growing it, it's toasted once it cools and firms up.
Also from Hokkaido
- Asahikawa RamenSoy-sauce broth built on seafood and pork bones, topped with lard so it stays hot. A response to the region's severe winters.
- Asahikawa HorumenA local dish that crosses Asahikawa's two soul foods — soy-sauce ramen and grilled pork offal. Pork offal, cleaned and prepped to remove its odor, sits on a soy-based broth. It was devised in Asahikawa in the 2010s.
- Gatatan RamenAshibetsu's local dish gatatan, turned into ramen: a salt broth thickened with potato starch, loaded with vegetables, meat and seafood, and finished with a stream of beaten egg.
- Bibai no TorimeshiChicken and onion are cooked into rice with soy sauce, sugar, and sake — said to trace back to a Meiji-era landowner in Bibai's Nakamura district who had tenant farmers raise chickens, then served them to guests.
- Bibai YakitoriOne skewer carries the whole bird — offal, skin and all.
- Biratori WagyuJapanese Black raised in Biratori, Hidaka, founded on breeding cattle brought from Shimane in 1962 — finished slowly through harsh winters, said to give the meat a notably deep flavor.