Why is inari sushi named after a fox? Why is a green bean paste named after a bird?
Twelve food words that make vocabulary stick.
Why Word Origins Help You Remember Vocabulary
One of the fastest ways to make a word stick in memory is to attach a story to it. A word that is "just a sound" is easy to forget; a word with a legend, a historical date, or a strange fact behind it is much harder to lose. Ayatoki's daily puzzles come with a short trivia note after every answer for exactly this reason — every genre word you guess comes with a bit of the story behind it.
Here are twelve of our favorite food words from the game's genre puzzles, each with a name that turns out to have a story worth knowing.
12 Food Words and Their Stories
01
河童巻きkappamaki
A thin cucumber sushi roll, named after the kappa — a river-dwelling folklore creature said to love cucumbers above all else. Sushi restaurants traditionally serve it between richer, fattier fish courses to cleanse the palate.
02
衣被kinukatsugi
Small taro corms steamed with their skins left partly on. The name literally means "wearing a robe" — a reference to how Heian-era noblewomen would cover their heads with a robe when going outside, which the steamed taro's thin skin is said to resemble.
03
カツカレーkatsu karē
Breaded pork cutlet served over curry rice, invented in 1948 at a Western-style restaurant in Ginza, Tokyo. It's now a national comfort food — and athletes often eat it before a match, since katsu (as in tonkatsu) is a homophone for the verb "to win."
04
うぐいすあんuguisu-an
A vivid green bean paste used in spring sweets. Despite the color, it isn't made with matcha — it's made from green peas, and gets its name from the uguisu (Japanese bush warbler), whose feathers are the same soft green.
05
ところてんtokoroten
A jelly made by boiling down tengusa seaweed, eaten chilled with a vinegar-soy dressing. Records show it was offered at the imperial court during the Nara period — meaning this exact dish has been eaten in Japan for well over 1,000 years.
06
アシテビチashitebichi
A slow-simmered pig's-trotter stew from Okinawa. Both ashi and tebichi mean "pig's foot" in the Okinawan language — so the name says the same thing twice. It's rich in collagen, simmered until the skin turns silky, and eaten as an everyday oden or stew ingredient.
07
わら納豆wara nattō
Natto fermented the old way — wrapped in rice straw. The bacteria naturally living on the straw itself does the fermenting, so historically all you needed to make it was straw and cooked soybeans.
08
魚肉ソーセージgyoniku sōsēji
A fish-based sausage, invented during Japan's postwar food shortages as a way to stretch scarce meat supplies using surimi (ground fish paste). It's still sold today as a cheap, shelf-stable, high-protein snack.
09
稲荷寿司inarizushi
Sweet-simmered fried tofu pockets stuffed with sushi rice. The name comes from Inari, the Shinto god of harvest, whose messenger fox is said to love fried tofu — and the shape even differs by region: barrel-shaped in Kanto, triangular in Kansai.
10
干しなまこhoshi namako
Sea cucumber, gutted, boiled, and dried for long storage. Prized in China as haishen, it was one of the "three treasures of the sea" — traded alongside dried abalone and shark fin as a valuable Edo-period export to Qing China.
11
ちゅるちゅるchuruchuru
An Okinawan noodle dish made from mozuku seaweed. Okinawa produces roughly 90% of all the mozuku grown in Japan, and the dish's onomatopoeic name — describing the slippery, slurpable texture — is basically a description of itself.
12
のっぺい汁noppei-jiru
A thick, starch-bound soup packed with taro, konnyaku, and vegetables. Passed down as a local specialty in places as far apart as Niigata, Nara, and Shimane, with some tracing its roots back to Buddhist temple cooking.