One of the goals in life” since that day when he was a boy. …… “Honjamaka” Hidehiko Ishizuka’s Favorite Food

Hello, everyone. My name is Hidehiko Ishizuka, and I am a little awkward because a housewife in my neighborhood saw me talking to the sparrows that come to my yard every morning.

This time, I would like to write about my favorite food. I am the type of person who “likes everything that is good to eat,” but if I had to name one, it would be datemaki. The reason for this goes back several decades.

An incident at New Year’s

I spent my childhood in a municipal housing complex in Yokohama. The house was a wooden row house, and every New Year’s, my relatives would gather there. Even though the Ishizuka family did not have much money to spare at that time, my mother served osechi dishes to the relatives on a platter that was used only once a year. Among the red and white kamaboko, kombumaki, black soybeans, chestnut kinton, etc., there was datemaki.

Nowadays, I speak in public for a living, but back then I was so nervous in front of my relatives whom I only met on New Year’s Day that I could only say “yes” and “ha ha ha. There were two chabudai on which Osechi dishes were placed, and small plates and chopsticks were placed in front of my brother and me, but neither of us could bring out our chopsticks due to our nervousness.

A relative of ours said to us, “You should eat too, Zhou-kun (my brother) and Ying-kun (me),” and my brother and I took the small fish closest to us that we were unfamiliar with.

At this time, however, what I was really after was the Datemaki. The body was somewhat reminiscent of sponge cake, with its seductive yellow and brown dough. In addition, the cross-section was a hypnotic vortex roll. Among the many members of the Osechi family, Datemaki is the loveliest. I found myself looking neither at the faces of my relatives nor at the Hakone Ekiden on TV, but only at the Datemaki.

As each such datemaki was taken one by one in front of me, my heart rate increased. At this time I even wanted my relatives to go home as soon as possible. Then the last piece left for my relative’s aunt’s mouth. Everything was over. A dinner table without date rolls is meaningless. There were conversations among adults who did not understand, and only my brother nodding his head, trying his best not to hurt my relative’s uncle.

A few hours passed and it was time for my relatives to leave. I said “good-bye” at the door, and for the first time that day, I said the words properly. At the family table, my brother sighed, “Whew,” as he was relieved of his nervousness. But my mother was great.

You guys are not eating anything,” she said.

With that, she went to the kitchen and made us curry. My brother and I devoured the curry as if it were the first food we had encountered on a deserted island in seven days. I have never eaten curry with such gusto before or since.

For the first time in my life, I earned the money for a part-time job…

From that day on, my love for datemaki grew stronger and eating datemaki became one of my goals in life. Time passed, and it was winter break of my sophomore year of high school. I was supposed to work part-time at the opening of a huge supermarket with a friend of mine for a week, but due to a mistake on their part, it turned out to be two days.

The total pay was 12,000 yen. It was the first money I earned by myself in my life. After agonizing over how to spend the money, I bought some high-end salted squid for my father, a wallet for my mother, and my long-sought-after date rolls for myself. With trembling hands, I took off the plastic and bit into the datemaki as if it were a Snickers.

I didn’t know how to say “maiu~” at the time, so I said, “Yum!

From the June 20, 2025 issue of FRIDAY