A grandmother and a child in a kitchen, mixing sushi rice in a wooden hangiri tub with a flat paddle, the finished platter of chirashi sushi and its toppings spread out around them. Chirashi sushi — vinegared rice under a scattering of fish, egg and vegetables — is what Japanese households make for celebrations, above all for Hinamatsuri on 3 March. The word ちらしずし is printed in hiragana across the top corner of the drawing; it is part of the artwork and cannot be removed, and it simply gives one more shape to colour. The scene carries a great deal to talk about, which is why it suits care settings and family time. Free to download and print, with no registration.
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🗣 Conversation Starters — for care activities and family time
Which sushi topping do you like best?
Conveyor-belt sushi, or sitting at the counter in front of the chef — which do you prefer?
Do you remember going out for sushi with the family?
Have you ever had a hand-rolled sushi party at home?
How old is sushi?
Its ancestor is narezushi, fish preserved by fermenting it with salt and rice. The technique is usually traced to Southeast Asia and is thought to have reached Japan by around the Nara period. The hand-pressed sushi most people picture today appeared in Edo in the early nineteenth century as hayazushi, or “quick sushi”, which used vinegared rice instead of months of fermentation. Conveyor-belt sushi is far newer: the first shop, Genroku Sushi, opened in Higashiosaka near Osaka in 1958.
Which topping is the most popular?
Recent surveys of diners in Japan usually put salmon at the top, which is a modern turn. Raw salmon was long avoided here because of parasites in wild Pacific fish; it entered the Japanese market in the 1980s through a determined sales campaign by Norway, which offered farmed Atlantic salmon raised and handled to be eaten raw. Today it is a fixture on every conveyor belt.
Why do sushi shops use words like shari, gari and murasaki?
They are trade slang from the Edo period that outlived the counter. Shari, the vinegared rice, is usually explained as a borrowing from the word for the relics of the Buddha; gari, the pickled ginger, from the crunching sound it makes; murasaki, “purple”, from the colour of soy sauce. Oaiso, heard at the end of a meal, comes from the same shop vocabulary and has since spread into ordinary speech.
