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Chemical_Enthusiasm4 t1_iusz18y wrote

Reply to comment by alzee76 in TIL Fish is not the main component of sushi, it's rice by TranquillizeMe

Where does onigiri fit into this schema?

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alzee76 t1_iuszdad wrote

Well onigiri isn't sushi, so it doesn't.

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Chemical_Enthusiasm4 t1_iut0ay3 wrote

I was curious about the words, not the food. It looks like the base word nigiru means to clench or roll in the hands.

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alzee76 t1_iut0qlo wrote

> I was curious about the words, not the food

Oh hah, sorry. I can't think of anything like that offhand, but another example of the same sort of Japanese approach to food naming is the "yaki" suffix which means cooking but usually means frying when used in the name of the food, giving you yakiniku (fried meat), yakitori (fried chicken), yakisoba (fried soba noodles), etc.

ETA: yakitori is more like grilled chicken than fried, which is called karage, but.. can't win 'em all.

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