Nikumaki Onigiri

A rice ball wrapped in marinated pork belly, roasted until the outside caramelises, and wrapped again in a lettuce leaf. It was devised in 1994 as a staff meal at a shop in central Miyazaki City and put on the menu when customers noticed what the kitchen was eating.

It spread across Kyushu and then nationally as a festival and convenience food, and it is one of the more successful B-grade inventions of the last thirty years. Eaten properly it is messy: the pork renders into the rice, the marinade runs, and the lettuce is there to hold it and to cut the fat. Nikumaki Honpo on Chuo-dori still makes the original, and shops across the city sell versions.