Sweets
Botamochi
Botamochi — pounded rice topped with sweet bean paste for equinox and Obon
Cooked non-glutinous and glutinous rice is shaped and topped with sweet bean paste — a fixture of spring and autumn equinox and Obon, with names like 'harvest botamochi,' made from rice gleaned after threshing to mark the season's end.
- Origin: Tochigi
- About 100 km north of Tokyo
What it's made of
Cooked glutinous and ordinary rice topped with sweet azuki bean paste — an essential treat for the equinox and Obon. Some shape it into small ovals wrapped in bean paste, while busy farming households often simply topped a bowl of rice with paste — both versions go by the same name, "botamochi," a treat marking the turning of the seasons.
How it's made
Ordinary and glutinous rice, mixed roughly seven to three, are washed and soaked in water for about an hour before cooking. The rice is either served in a bowl topped generously with bean paste, or lightly crushed with a pestle, shaped into small ovals, and coated in the paste. Bean paste simmered from raw paste with sugar, water, and salt is finished to each household's preferred sweetness.
Why it took this shape
A custom survives of gathering rice ears and grains left scattered on the ground after the harvest or threshing to make a special botamochi — called "kariage botamochi" or "kokiage botamochi" — a practice said to carry gratitude for the harvest. Tied to both the equinox and Obon observances, it has been made in households each season as a plain, familiar treat.
Before you go
- 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.
- Osechi and zoni for the New YearA guide to the meaning behind osechi's tiered boxes, the regional differences in zoni (square vs. round mochi, clear vs. miso broth), and the nanakusa-gayu custom.
- Setsubun: ehomaki and lucky beansA guide to ehomaki, the uncut sushi roll said to be eaten facing a lucky direction on Setsubun, and to mamemaki, the bean-throwing custom with roasted lucky beans.
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
Also from Tochigi
- Agemaki Yuba no NimonoFresh yuba sheets are layered, rolled into a log, sliced into rounds, and deep-fried before a slow simmer in a light broth — a Nikko dish built on the region's rippled yuba-making craft, served at New Year's and celebrations.
- Aiso no KanroniDace that gather to spawn each spring in the Naka and Kinu rivers, known locally as aiso, are slow-simmered in a sweet glaze until soft to the bone — food from a landlocked prefecture where river fish once meant protein.
- Ayu MeshiAlong the Naka River and other ayu-fishing streams, unseasoned grilled ayu is cooked into the rice — made for festivals and farm rest days, with any leftover fish skewered and hung by the hearth to keep.
- Bandai MochiIn the Kuriyama district of Nikko, firm-cooked non-glutinous rice is pounded on a wooden board — hence 'itadai-mochi,' board-mochi — and eaten with miso glaze, sweet bean paste, or a perilla-seed sauce depending on the hamlet.
- Battou JiruWheat dough is torn by hand into a miso soup simmered with seasonal vegetables — known by different names, hattou-jiru or dango-jiru, across the region, and long relied on when rice ran short.
- Chitake to Nasu no Abura ItameChitake mushrooms, which weep a milky sap when torn, are stir-fried with eggplant — a summer-only find tied to managed satoyama woodland, and also prized as a broth base for udon and soba.