🍚 Fermented Sweetfish Sushi

“Fermented sweetfish sushi,” a preserved sweetfish dish, is a fermented food made by stuffing sweetfish full of freshly cooked rice and pickling it in a barrel for about two months. Salt, sweetfish, and rice are pickled with the help of bacteria, and the meal provides a valuable source of protein in the winter and increases the shelf life of the seasonal fish. The first thing that comes to one's mind upon thinking of sweetfish in Gifu is cormorant fishing, with a history said to be over 1300 years old. “Nagara River Cormorant Fishing'' was supposedly used by Oda Nobunaga to convey hospitality. In the Edo period, sweetfish caught while cormorant fishing was used to make ayu-zushi (fermented sweetfish sushi) and presented to the Tokugawa Shogunate family. Today, the road along which the ayu-zushi was transported is called Ayu-zushi Highway, or Sushi Highway.