The most famous Japanese food is sushi. It's eaten all over the world now. The well-known sushi is nigiri-zushi, small piece of rice topped with fish fillet on top of it. Sushi wrapped in seaweed is called norimaki. Furthermore, a bite-sized norimaki, resembling to a battleship, is called gunkan-maki (battleship is called in Japanese gunkan).
However, these sushi were invented in the Edo period after the seventeenth century. In Takashima City, you can find and taste the origin of Japanese sushi: funazushi.
Funazushi was invented in eighth century, using simply rice and salt to pickle fish. It is totally different from present-day sushi. This dish was very valuable at that time, and it was eaten by the Imperial family and nobles' families. Since the fish used mainly was crucian carp (in Japanese funa), this dish was called funazushi.
Today, we eat funazushi on a day of celebration. Takashima people call the day of happiness "hare-no-hi", literally "shine day". Funazushi is a must-have dish for celebratory occasions. We can buy it at the shop, but there are a lot of households where carp is pickled at home. We take out the pickled carp from the barrel, slice it and put it on a plate. You can remove extra rice, but it is also good if you eat it with fish.
We recommend you to eat funazushi once when you travel in Western Japan. If you want to eat delicious funazushi, please come to Takashima.
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