Actually, there are many ways to write "sushi". Like the name of a sushi restaurant, some write Li and some write Li. The Japanese pronunciation of "Su Shi" is (Su Shi), which comes from the old Japanese adjective "Sushi" and means sour taste. Now it is uncertain whether Chinese characters were added according to this pronunciation, or whether this food was introduced to Japan from China with Chinese characters, so it was named because of its sour taste. There are two words "Tai" and "Li" in Chinese, which have the same original meaning. The word "sushi" commonly used in Japan now uses Chinese characters as onomatopoeic words and does not mean anything. The use of these two words seems to have entered the nineteenth century. In the first year of Yongjia in the Edo period (1848), 95 sushi restaurants were introduced in Edo (Tokyo) at that time. Only two of them used "sushi" as the font size, and most of them used the word "Yi". The Chinese meaning of the word "Fu" is the same as that of Japanese, which means to marinate fish with salt and spilled grain. It can be confirmed in historical data that there is no rice in the earliest prototype of Su Shi's "Fu".

Fish put salt and distiller's grains not to stir, but to keep fresh. In fact, it took many years to add rice. Moreover, rice is added to keep fresh, because rice can promote fermentation and improve anti-corrosion ability. In other words, sushi is not a "side dish rice" food, but a way to preserve fish, and rice is a "medium" added for this purpose. This kind of fish whose main purpose is preservation is called "taming sushi", which is different from "holding sushi".

There is a famous product called "Fuyi" in Shiga County. In Japan, when it comes to fermented food, people will first think of "natto" and "horseshoe crab", whose pungent smell is far more than natto because of long-term fermentation. Catfish and rice were put into a wooden barrel, and the fish was naturally fermented by lactic acid bacteria of rice to achieve the purpose of preservation. Fermentation time varies from half a year to three years.

Because the main purpose is to preserve food, people have taken various measures to prevent decay. Not only waiting for natural fermentation, but also adding vinegar or pressing into various shapes, these methods have gradually become common methods. I think this is not difficult to understand. Now when we talk about sushi, we will associate it with "holding sushi" characterized by freshness. However, if we go to the local town, we seldom see rice balls held by our hands. Most sushi rice is pressed with a box-shaped or cylindrical wooden mold and then cut with a knife. This is called "molded sushi". This kind of sushi has a longer history than "holding sushi".

As can be seen from the above, Japan was extremely short of food in the past, and it was not easy to obtain fresh animal protein. It is not difficult to understand that sushi was not necessary in China in the past, but sushi has become a representative food in Japan.

Another function of vinegar is to eliminate the fishy smell of fish. In order to remove fishy smell, rice balls wrapped with magnolia leaves or persimmon leaves in Nara County are called "magnolia leaves" and "persimmon leaves". The famous "Trout Stir-fry" in Toyama County is wrapped with the leaves of Bambusa bambusa, because this kind of leaves has a strong deodorization effect.

Sushi, which can be preserved for a long time, is of course the most suitable as a lunch box. One of the pleasures of traveling by tram is to taste the "station lunches" in various places, among which there are all kinds of sushi lunches.

It is difficult to introduce all kinds of sushi in the country here. But it is possible to introduce a few representative and rare sushi.