Why Is Inari Sushi Named After a Fox?
Japanese Food, by Origin
Inari sushi is named after a fox god's favorite snack. A curry dish is eaten before matches because its name sounds like "to win."
Sorted by what actually explains the name, twelve food words fall into three groups.
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Three Kinds of Food-Name Stories
A word that is "just a sound" is easy to forget; a word with a legend, a pun, or a genuinely old history behind it is much harder to lose. Ayatoki's daily puzzles come with a short trivia note after every answer for exactly this reason. Sorting twelve food words from the game's genre puzzles by what kind of story explains them turns up three groups: names borrowed from a legend or an animal, names built from wordplay, and dishes whose real story is how long they've been around.
Named After an Animal or a Legend
01
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.
02
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.
03
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.
Named From Wordplay or Metaphor
04
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."
05
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.
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
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.
Ordinary Names, Surprisingly Long Histories
08
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.
09
わら納豆wara nattō
Natto fermented the old way — wrapped in rice straw, exactly as the name says. The bacteria naturally living on the straw itself does the fermenting, so historically all you needed to make it was straw and cooked soybeans.
10
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.
11
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.
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.
Learn More Words This Way, Every Day
Every one of these came from a single round of Ayatoki's Food genre puzzle. Play a genre puzzle, guess the hiragana word, and you'll get a short trivia note like the ones above — a new word and a new story, every day.
💡 Not every food name hides a legend — some, like wara nattō and gyoniku sōsēji, just describe exactly what's in front of you. That's often the easiest kind of word to remember.