Let’s head to Hokkaido’s Washo Market for the original kattedon experience.

There are a lot of dishes in Japanese cuisine that end in “-don,” which is short for donburi, meaning “rice bowl.” For example, gyu means “beef,” and so gyudon is a beef bowl (of the sort served up at Yoshinoya), and katsudon, from katsu/cutlet, is a pork cutlet bowl.

The linguistics get a little less straightforward, though, with the rice bowl called kattedon, since katte, on its own, means “selfish.”

To confirm, yes, that’s selfish, not shellfish, although sometimes “selfish bowls” include shellfish. That’s because kattedon include whatever you’d like, chosen from what’s on offer from the merchants at fish markets in Japan.

To make a kattedon, you head into the market and first purchase a bowl of rice, then make the rounds and pick out whatever cuts of sashimi or other seafood you’d like to add, designing the meal as you go from stall to stall. Today, “kattedon” has become sort of a general term, but the word actually originated at Washo Market in the town of Kushiro in Hokkaido Prefecture, so that’s where we went for our kattedon experience.

▼ Washo Market

▼ Even if you can’t read Japanese, there’s a big “RICE” sign pointing you toward the kattedon starting point.

Depending on how much white rice you want, the price ranges from 120 to 350 yen (US$0.85 to US$2.50). Along with your rice, you’re also given a pair of tongs and a secondary tray to place your seafood on until you’ve got all the components together and are ready to physically assemble your kattedon.

Not every stall in the market is part of the kattedon system, but on the day we stopped by there were three merchants participating. Our Hokkaido-travelling reporter Saya Togashi was a little worried that would mean there wouldn’t be that many different kinds of seafood to choose from, but those fears turned out to be completely unnecessary.

Waiting at those three stalls was a gigantic variety of mouthwatering fresh fish and other blessings of the sea, including tuna, salmon, sujiko (salmon roe), octopus, tantaka (barfin flounder), menme (rockfish), surf clams, and hakkaku (tokubire).

You’ll also see some fish displayed with a sign or sticker with the characters 釧路産, indicating that the fish was caught locally. You can also ask the staff “Kushiro san no sakana wa arimasu ka?” (“Do you have Kushiro-caught fish?”), and there was enough on offer that we could have easily made an entire meal out of nothing but locally sourced seafood.

With so much to choose from, it might take a while to make up your mind, but when you do decide on something you want to add to your kattedon, just use your tongs and transfer it to your tray. Prices vary by ingredient, but most were in the 100 to 300 yen range, with a few premium items, like the extra-fatty otoro tuna, at 500 yen.

▼ There are eat-in spaces inside the market where you can sit and enjoy your kattedon.

When you’ve finished making your selections, you head to the register and pay, then find a seat, place your seafood atop the rice, add wasabi and soy sauce, then dig in. On our visit, it seemed like most customers’ kattedon ended up in the range of 2,000 to 3,000 yen (though there’s currently a 10-percent-off coupon here), so these aren’t the cheapest sashimi bowls around…but they’re some of the freshest and best-tasting!

To illustrate how good Washo Market’s fish is, Saya actually isn’t that big of a sushi/sashimi fan, since she feels like she can almost always detect some sort of gaminess in raw fish, even when the average Japanese person finds it perfectly tasty. But not only did Saya find her kattedon palatable, it was so tasty that the only thing stopping her from immediately getting up and building another to eat was that she was stuffed after finishing her first. It was so good that she’s done a complete 180 on her opinion regarding sea urchin. Until now, Saya had always thought she just didn’t care for it, but after trying the super-fresh sea urchin at Washo Market and finding it absolutely delicious, she realizes that she just has very high standards.

Washo is said to have started serving kattedon when motorcycle tourers would stop by the market and wanted to try the seafood, but because of their mode of transportation couldn’t exactly bring an ice chest to fill up with whole fish to take back home. You don’t need wheels of your own to visit the market, though, as it’s just a five-minute walk from Kushiro Station, making it yet another great place to slot into your Hokkaido itinerary.

Location information
Kushiro Waho Market / 釧路和商市場
Address: Hokkaido, Kushiro-shi, Kurogane-cho 13-25
北海道釧路市黒金町13丁目25
Open 8 a.m.-5 p.m.
Closed Sundays
Website

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