Traditional Books

“The first one is red bean rice ball. Red beans and sticky rice were often steamed together to create red bean rice on celebratory occasions. It was considered to be a feast in the olden days.
Many areas in Japan still carry on the tradition of making red bean rice whenever there is something to celebrate. In that sense, I think you can say red bean rice is deeply rooted in the Japanese soul."
"That's right. I made red bean rice along with other foods when the framework of my house was completed."
"It feels very festive for some reason."
"I like the salt and sesame seasoning on it."
"The next is a hijiki rice ball. You cook the rice together with the hijiki, thin fried tofu and carrots...
...flavor it with soy sauce and make a rice ball with it.
The hijiki rice is the typical Japanese commoners' food that mixes riches from the sea and the soil together. A rice ball made of hijiki rice is one of the original Japanese foods with a long continuing history."
"Aaah. This brings back memories."
"It makes us realize that we're Japanese. It's a flavor we must not lose."
"The last rice ball of the past is dried seaweed. Dried seaweed is one of the most familiar seaweeds to the Japanese, apart from konbu, wakame and hijiki.
And the way to fully enjoy the taste of the dried seaweed...
... is to make seaweed tsukudani and use that as the filling for the rice ball.
For the tsukudani, you simmer top-quality dried seaweed in sake and soy sauce. Once you learn its taste, you will never be satisfied with eating the dried seaweed tsukudani that's commercially available."
"It tastes nothing like that one we can buy at the market."
"It's refreshing, yet has a very strong scent of seaweed."
"It's interesting to see the difference in flavor of the tsukudani filling and the seaweed wrapping the rice ball."
"Red bean rice, hijiki rice and dried seaweed tsukudani rice balls...
These are flavors that will never fade away as long as the Japanese are around.”
― Tetsu Kariya, The Joy of Rice