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Survey creates map of what different parts of Japan call one of its favorite traditional desserts<\/strong>.<\/span><\/p>\n <\/span><\/p>\n Every region of Japan has its own local foods, either dishes or ingredients, that it\u2019s particularly proud of. There are some things, however, that transcend prefectural and regional borders, things that are loved across Japan, and one of them is the treat seen in these photos.<\/p>\n These discs of pancake like batter, thick and with sweet fillings such as anko (sweet red bean paste), custard, or chocolate cream<\/strong>, can be found at snack stands and supermarkets from one end of Japan to another. They\u2019re something that pretty much every single person in Japan has eaten several times in their lifetime, instantly recognizing and craving them whenever one comes into view.<\/p>\n So what are they called? Well, that\u2019s the thing; Japan hasn\u2019t reached a consensus on that<\/strong>.<\/p>\n To be clear, these are not some brand-new, trendy snack riding a wave of fad popularity that\u2019s gotten in front of linguistic development. They\u2019ve been around for generations. It\u2019s just that different names caught on in different parts of the country, and perhaps because they\u2019re a simple pleasure, no big-budget marketing campaign pushing one name or another has been made to unify the nomenclature nationwide.<\/p>\n Instead, different names have gained traction in different parts of Japan, and to get a better understanding of the situation, Nichirei Foods<\/strong>, one of many companies who make this kind of snack, conducted a survey, gathering 14,057 responses from participants aged 20 to 79, asking them what they<\/em> call these sweets. Then they sorted the responses by prefecture to determine the most common name for it in each of them, and used that to create this color-coded map showing which of six different names is the most prevalent for each prefecture<\/strong>.<\/p>\n Let\u2019s take a look at each.<\/p>\n 1. Imagawayaki (shown in red on map)<\/strong> While far from universal, the top response, both in terms of total responses and number of prefectures where it was the most common, was Imagawayaki. The exact origin of the name is unclear, but one theory is that the sweet became popular in Edo, the old name for Tokyo, at a shop located near the Imagawa Bridge, which was built by a village headman with the family name Imagawa<\/strong>.<\/p>\n Imagawayaki is the most common name for the sweets in Tokyo<\/strong> and the prefectures of Japan\u2019s eastern Kanto<\/strong> region, but the name also stretches up into parts of the Tohoku region and also has a few pockets of support far from the capital, including Kyoto<\/strong>, Hiroshima<\/strong>, and Okinawa<\/strong>. And though its 19 prefectures still give it a minority share of Japan\u2019s total of 47, those 19 prefectures include some of Japan\u2019s most populous cities, leading to 60.5 percent of the survey participants given Imagawayaki as a response.<\/p>\n 2. Obanyaki (shown in blue on map)<\/strong> Unlike Imagawayaki, the linguistic origin of obanyaki is pretty easy to figure out, since oban<\/em> literally means \u201cbig coin.\u201d<\/strong> Granted, coins in the old days of Japan were more oval shaped than purely circular, but the resemblance is still close enough to warrant tacking a yaki<\/em> (\u201cgrilled\u201d) onto it to get obanyaki.<\/p>\n With Nichirei\u2019s survey apparently allowing for multiple responses, obanyaki was chosen by 52 percent of the respondents, so while it\u2019s not as common as Imagawayaki, you\u2019ve probably still got a pretty good chance of most people in Japan understanding the term if you say it, even if it\u2019s not the top pick for their prefecture. In addition to obanyaki\u2019s pockets of support in the Tokai<\/strong> region and western end of Japan\u2019s main island of Honshu<\/strong>, it also claims the entirety of Shikoku<\/strong> as its domain.<\/p>\n 3. Kaitenyaki (shown in green on map)<\/strong> Chosen by 25.9 percent of respondents, kaitenyaki holds sway over all of Kyushu, as well as Osaka, one of Japan\u2019s most enthusiastic foodie prefectures. In addition to tasty food, Osaka <\/strong>loves a good laugh, so that might have something to do with their fondness for the name kaitenyaki, as kaiten<\/em> means \u201crevolve,\u201d<\/strong> so it\u2019s a fitting name for a snack that could roll away if you accidentally drop it.<\/p>\n 4. Oyaki (shown in yellow on map)<\/strong> Oyaki was the most popular name in Japan\u2019s two northernmost prefectures, but it\u2019s not hard to see why oyaki hasn\u2019t spread very far. It\u2019s just the yaki<\/em> (\u201cgrilled\u201d) we mentioned before with an honorific o-<\/strong> added to the front, so it could sort of refer to anything, which could be especially confusing when you\u2019re trying to talk about something that doesn\u2019t have a unified definitive name in first place.<\/p>\n 5 (tie). \u201cA certain brand name\u201d (shown in pink on map)<\/strong> Nichirei gets a little cagey with the results for Hyogo, the prefecture that includes the city of Kobe, only saying that \u201ca certain brand name\u201d is the most common way to refer to this snack. A little digging around indicates that it\u2019s most likely Gozasoro<\/strong>, a confectioner maker headquartered in Ehime (also in Hyogo) that specializes in the sweet and has a handful of shops in other parts of Japan that sell it, but is apparently most popular in its home prefecture.<\/p>\n 5 (tie). Ajiman (shown in orange on map)<\/strong> Yamagata\u2019s situation is pretty much exactly the same as Hyogo\u2019s, in that the top response for the prefecture was also the name of a locally based maker of the snack that has modest operations in other parts of Japan. For whatever reason, though, the survey was comfortable revealing what that name is: Ajiman.<\/p>\n Amazingly, the survey turned up even more names than these six, with some respondents saying they called them taiko (\u201cdrum\u201d), jiman (\u201cpride\u201d), niju (\u201ctwo layer\u201d), or enban (\u201cdisk\u201d) -yaki<\/strong>.<\/p>\n Ultimately, with so many different possibilities, it\u2019s probably best to be prepared for the possibility that if you\u2019re talking about Imagawayaki\/obanyaki\/kaitenyaki\/etc., the listener might not immediately get the mental picture of what you\u2019re talking about the first time you say it, so you might have to use another of its possible names for things to click. Thankfully, though, these sweets really are delicious, so they\u2019re worth putting in a bit of effort to talk about, though if it all starts to feel like too much hassle, you can always switch gears and talk about desserts with clearly correct names instead, like the Chocobo-yaki<\/a>.<\/p>\n Source: PR Times<\/a>, Nihon Keizai Shimbun<\/a>, Lasisa<\/a><\/em> Survey creates map of what different parts of Japan call one of its favorite traditional desserts. Every region of Japan has its own local foods, either dishes or ingredients, that…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"rop_custom_images_group":[],"rop_custom_messages_group":[],"rop_publish_now":"initial","rop_publish_now_accounts":[],"rop_publish_now_history":[],"rop_publish_now_status":"pending","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3251","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-rss"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/catbradley.io\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3251","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/catbradley.io\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/catbradley.io\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/catbradley.io\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/catbradley.io\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3251"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/catbradley.io\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3251\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/catbradley.io\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3251"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/catbradley.io\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3251"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/catbradley.io\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3251"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"https:\/\/soranews24.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/3\/2025\/12\/iy-2.jpg?w=640\")
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\n\u25cf Most common name in 19 prefectures:<\/strong> Chiba, Fukui, Fukushima, Gunma, Hiroshima, Ibaraki, Kanagawa, Kyoto, Miyagi, Nagano, Okinawa, Saitama, Shiga, Shizuoka, Tochigi, Tokyo, Toyama, Wakayama, Yamanashi<\/p>\n
\n\u25cf Most common name in 15 prefectures:<\/strong> Aichi, Akita, Ehime, Gifu, Ishikawa, Iwate, Kagawa, Kochi, Mie, Niigata. Okayama, Shimane, Tokushima, Tottori, Yamaguchi<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/soranews24.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/3\/2025\/12\/iy-5.jpg?w=640\")
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\n\u25cf Most common name in 9 prefectures:<\/strong> Fukuoka, Kagoshima, Kumamoto, Miyazaki, Nagasaki, Nara, Osaka, Ota, Saga<\/p>\n
\n\u25cf Most common name in 2 prefectures:<\/strong> Aomori, Hokkaido<\/p>\n
\n\u25cf Most common name in Hyogo<\/strong><\/p>\n
\n\u25cf Most common name in Yamagata<\/strong><\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/soranews24.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/3\/2025\/12\/iy-6.jpg?w=640\")
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\nTop image: Free Sozai.com<\/a><\/em>
\nInsert images: Free Sozai.com (1<\/a>, 2<\/a>), PR Times, Free Sozai.com (3<\/a>, 4<\/a>)<\/em>
\n\u25cf Want to hear about SoraNews24\u2019s latest articles as soon as they\u2019re published? Follow us on Facebook<\/a> and Twitter<\/a>!<\/em><\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"