Gunma People Love Rice Ball?


As one of our prefecture-specific topic, I found an article about Gunma prefecture today.

Gunma prefecture is one of prefectures, which does not face to sea in Japan, and is famous as a production area of konjac root.  According to the article, it seems people in Gunma tend to love noodles and rice balls more than any other area. Actually, some survey result revealed that Gunma won the first place on average spending in the category of rice balls.  And for the category of noodles, it was ranked 5th.  You can see that these results certainly show passion of Gunma people for rice balls and noodles…

 

Japanese rice ball

 

In addition to these survey results, Gunma has Mizusawa Udon, one of the 3 Best udon noodles in Japan as well as very famous regional unique noodles; Takasaki pasta, Fujioka ramen and Ota yakisoba noodle!

 

Japanese udon noodle

"rhosoi" some rights reserved. flickr

 

Of course, such delicious foods cannot be created for the first place without love for noodles! (^^)

When you look at Maebashi city, the capital city of the prefecture, its consumption of udon and soba noodles is ranked 2nd nationwide, and spaghetti was ranked 3rd .

But how about consumption of rice balls?  Gunma prefecture owns very nice rice brand, which has received gold medal on Rice taste analysis competition for surprising 5 consecutive years.  So, rice itself is already tasty enough to consume more than other area.  But surprisingly, rice consumption of the prefecture is not that high (26th place out of 47 prefectures).  Then, why consumption of rice balls is still so high you think? (><)

The mystery is not 100% clear , but it seems Gunma has wide variety of nice rice ball ingredients such as pickled Japanese pepper/mountain veg and savoury miso paste with butterbur sprout and spring onion etc.  So, there are naturally wider options for rice ball sections of stores in the prefecture 🙂

Ah, I see.  Of course, pickles and miso paste are one of the best things to go with rice~ 😀  Rice balls are really easy to have when you are busy, so if such nice rice balls are available around my area, I’m sure my personal consumption on rice balls will also dramatically increase Lol!

What do you think about today’s article?

Please let us know about your countries food-related story☆

 

Source: web R25

 

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