Lucky-direction Sushi Roll (Ehou-Maki Sushi)

Brand: 7-11

Cost: ~400 yen

Found at: 7-11

It is probably, at this point, fairly obvious that eating is not only a hobby, but a passion. I love to eat – and I especially love to eat in the most efficient way possible. This is why I love burritos so much – there is no stopping to chat with a burrito. Once you’ve picked it up, you’re committed to the single-minded, focused enjoyment of your meal. You have an excuse to eat quickly and with gusto, without any of the distracting intricacies of table manners.

And I have the same feeling at Setsubun, with Ehou-Maki sushi. Unlike normal sushi rolls, which are chopped up into smaller, bite-sized units, an Ehou-Maki sushi is left intact in one long tube of rice and fish. On Setsubun itself, if you live in and around Osaka (or if you’ve been swayed by the marketing campaigns of the convenience stores), you orient your sushi roll to face the lucky direction (east-north-east this year) and eat the whole thing in one go, without talking. I like this tradition very much.

However, I’m not sure this particular sushi-roll was the right choice for me. As much as I love an Ehou-Maki stuffed with sweet egg, cucumber and raw fish, this one had more mayonnaise than I am usually comfortable with. In fact, I would say that there was a shocking amount of mayonnaise on this roll, and since I was eating it on the bus from Nagano to Nagoya, this meant that I was soon feeling very nauseous and full of regret. But then again, I was oriented east-south-east, so I might well have brought it on myself.