🍚 Sekihan(Red rice)
Sekihan (red rice) is often eaten on special occasions throughout Japan. In Hokkaido, there is a unique food culture to cook sekihan with ama-natto (sweet soybeans). In other regions, sekihan is cooked with azuki beans and seasoned with sesame salt, so it does not have a sweet taste, but sekihan in Hokkaido with ama-natto is sweet. The origin of "sekihan" with ama-natto is a matter of some debate, but it is said to have been invented in the late 1950s by Ms. Akiko Nanbu, founder and first president of Koshio Gakuen Educational Corporation in Sapporo, to make it easier for busy mothers to cook sekihan. As a working mother herself, she wanted to give her children something they would enjoy to eat, even though it was time-consuming to cook azuki red rice, so she established a simple method of cooking rice, mixing it with ama-natto, and adding color with food coloring. Dr. Nambu, who is also a leading expert on Hokkaido's local cuisine, gave lectures throughout the prefecture. When he taught local mothers how to make "sekihan" (red rice) using amanatto, the children were delighted and it quickly became very popular. Later, it was introduced in newspapers, on the radio, and in other media, and quickly spread throughout the province.