Something every guidebook mentions about table manners in Japan is that, while almost every restaurant and home keeps a bottle of soy sauce on the table, it’s there to add to things like sashimi and grated radish, and not to be poured on white rice.

This isn’t to say that people in Japan always eat their rice plain, though. A recent Internet popularity poll pitted four of the country’s top rice toppings against each other in a battle royale.

In this corner, mentaiko, also known as spicy cod roe. A specialty of Fukuoka Prefecture, mentaiko is the odds-on favorite going into this bout, due to the success of a recent limited-time promotion by Internet retailer Rakuten in which jumbo-sized 1 kg (2.2 pound) packs of it virtually flew off the website’s virtual shelves.

Playing the role of intimidator in this contest is natto. The bane of exchange students doing homestay in Japan for several decades now, natto is a mass of fermented soybeans, and smells exactly how you’d imagine it to. Mmmmn!

Our next challenger is umeboshi, or pickled plum, a long-time veteran of the so-called “Japanese flag boxed lunch,” consisting of a single one of these reddish preserved fruits placed in the middle of a tray of rice.

And finally, our lone overseas entrant is good old kimchi, which despite hailing from Korea has made considerable inroads into the Japanese diet.

So when the dust settled, who came out on top in this culinary throwdown?

Mentaiko, and it wasn’t even close! The fiery fish eggs captured the top spot with 43.3 percent of the survey’s 152,286 respondents saying it was their favorite out of the bunch.

“I probably end up eating more natto, but the one I really want to eat the most often is mentaiko,” explained one participant. Others pointed to how the topping stimulated their appetites, with one commenting, “I can really put away a lot of rice if there’s mentaiko on top of it.” In a few cases, mentaiko won by default, as some people aren’t fans of the admittedly acquired tastes of the other three toppings.

Trailing mentaiko was natto, with 31.4 percent of the vote. “I’ve liked natto since I was a kid, and since I recently found out it’s really good for you, I’ve been eating it every day,” wrote one fan. Aside from its health benefits, natto also picked up a few votes through process of elimination. “I don’t care for the pudding-like texture of mentaiko, and I worry about the sodium content in pickles like umeboshi,” one respondent gave as the rationale for his selection.

Far behind in third place was umeboshi, at just 11.8 percent. Nonetheless, its supporters were adamant in their choice. “I love my family’s homemade umeboshi so much that I just can’t eat the store-bought ones anymore” gushed one. Others were won over by the pickled plums’ long shelf-life and restorative properties for people who feel wore out by the summer heat.

Kimchi finished with a paltry 8.5 percent, scarcely more than the 5 percent who went to “I don’t like any of them” town with their answer. That said, kimchi is popular enough that it’s readily available at just about all Japanese supermarkets these days, and one participant remarked that he can no longer imagine breakfast without it.

There was relatively little variation in responses from different age groups, with the exception of participants aged 10 to 19. Only 30.7 percent of this demographic chose mentaiko as their favorite, a more than 10 percent drop compared to the survey group as a whole. Participants in this set gave the number one slot to natto, at 31.9 percent, and also gave the largest response of any age group for “none of the above” at 9.6 percent.

Prices for mentaiko tend to be higher than the other candidates in the survey, and it’s also the most likely to be eaten as a snack with alcoholic beverages. These two factors were most likely the reason for the topping’s reduced popularity among younger eaters, showing that although adulthood brings the responsibilities of work and taking care of yourself, it also offers the upsides of beer, disposable income, and spicy fish eggs.

Source: Shunkan News