--- title: "Hipparidako Meshi: Akashi's octopus rice ekiben in a ceramic octopus pot" description: "Hipparidako Meshi is octopus rice sold as an ekiben in a ceramic pot shaped like an octopus trap. What is inside, why it began in 1998, and how Akashi catches octopus." url: https://kama-meshi.com/en/articles/hipparidako-meshi language: en published: 2026-11-11 category: "Food and culture › Ekiben" tags: ["Ekiben", "RiceDishes"] author: "Oginoya Editorial Team" publisher: "Oginoya Co., Ltd." translations: zh-TW: https://kama-meshi.com/zh-tw/articles/hipparidako-meshi ko: https://kama-meshi.com/ko/articles/hipparidako-meshi zh-CN: https://kama-meshi.com/zh-cn/articles/hipparidako-meshi zh-HK: https://kama-meshi.com/zh-hk/articles/hipparidako-meshi th: https://kama-meshi.com/th/articles/hipparidako-meshi de: https://kama-meshi.com/de/articles/hipparidako-meshi fr: https://kama-meshi.com/fr/articles/hipparidako-meshi es: https://kama-meshi.com/es/articles/hipparidako-meshi --- # Hipparidako Meshi: Akashi's octopus rice ekiben in a ceramic octopus pot ![A brown glazed pot filled with rice and topped with a slice of octopus, a flower-shaped slice of carrot, greens, shiitake and shredded omelet](https://kama-meshi.com/_astro/hipparidako-meshi-open-2007.BLLOVqL8_ZkqtWh.webp) Hipparidako Meshi is an [ekiben](https://kama-meshi.com/en/articles/what-is-ekiben) from Nishi-Akashi, a Shinkansen station in the city of Akashi, next to Kobe: soy-seasoned rice topped with simmered octopus, conger eel and vegetables, packed in a ceramic pot modeled on the pots used to catch octopus. The Kobe ekiben maker Awajiya put it on sale on April 5, 1998, the day the Akashi Kaikyō Bridge opened, and has since made more than 16 million of them. ## What is in the pot The pot is filled with rice seasoned with soy sauce. On top go *madako*, the common octopus, simmered in a sweet soy seasoning; chopped grilled conger eel; shredded omelet; rape blossoms; simmered shiitake and carrot; and bamboo shoot simmered with bonito flakes. At the bottom of the pot sits a *tako-ten*, a fried fish cake. An autumn edition adds chestnut, mushrooms and kabocha squash. Octopus rice is home cooking on this coast. *Takomeshi*, rice cooked with octopus, is a regional dish of Awaji Island and of eastern Harima, the district around Akashi, and is said to have begun as a meal that took little preparation after a day's fishing. In Akashi, octopus is also dried to keep. The dried octopus is lightly grilled, cut small and cooked with the rice. ## The octopus pot ![A brown glazed pot with raised lettering and an octopus in relief, its mouth covered with paper tied with a cord](https://kama-meshi.com/_astro/hipparidako-meshi-2007.D6RjOGiU_Z1oMVe3.webp "Hipparidako Meshi with its paper cover on, 2007.") The container is a ceramic pot that Awajiya has fired to its own design, in the style of a *takotsubo*, an octopus pot. The standard pot is brown. The name of the bento and an octopus stand out in relief on the front, and Awajiya's logo is on the back. A sheet of paper printed with a cartoon octopus covers the mouth. Hipparidako Meshi is one of several ekiben [remembered for their containers](https://kama-meshi.com/en/articles/famous-ekiben). There is no lid. Buyers had been asking for one since 1998, and in January 2021 Awajiya put a ceramic lid on sale by itself. It is lifted by a knob in the shape of an octopus's head, and it was made to fit nearly every pot the company had sold. Other goods have taken the pot's shape: a sake cup, a sake flask, a coffee cup for the bento's twentieth anniversary, and an unglazed planter with a drainage hole in its base. Special editions change the pot itself: pink for Hello Kitty, yellow for the Doctor Yellow Shinkansen train, black and white like a patrol car for the Hyogo prefectural police. Forty years before Hipparidako Meshi, on February 1, 1958, Oginoya put [Tōge no Kamameshi](https://kama-meshi.com/en/articles/what-is-kamameshi) on sale at Yokokawa Station in Gunma Prefecture, in [an earthenware pot of Mashiko ware](https://kama-meshi.com/en/articles/the-kama-pot). It is regarded as the leading example of the ekiben named for a local specialty that [appeared all over Japan from about 1955](https://kama-meshi.com/en/articles/ekiben-history). Oginoya collects used pots, washes them and uses them again, and it publishes recipes that use the empty pot. ## Launched with a bridge The Akashi Kaikyō Bridge crosses the Akashi Strait between Maiko, in Kobe's Tarumi Ward, and Awaji Island. It is a suspension bridge 3,911 meters long. The span between its two towers is 1,991 meters, and when the bridge opened on April 5, 1998, that was the longest span of any suspension bridge in the world. Hipparidako Meshi went on sale that day to mark the opening. Awajiya, which began in 1903 selling bento aboard the trains of what is now the JR Fukuchiyama Line and moved to Kobe in 1944, had been through the Great Hanshin-Awaji Earthquake in 1995, three years before the bridge opened. Every one of its shops in Kobe closed, and with water and gas cut off, the company turned out 20,000 meals a day for evacuation shelters and recovery workers. In the same year it opened a shop on the Shinkansen concourse of Nishi-Akashi Station. Awajiya describes the bento of 1998 as its way of getting past the earthquake. Production passed 10 million, which Awajiya marked with a gold-colored pot, and had reached 15 million by 2023 and 16 million by 2025. In the autumn of 2019 Taiwan Railways invited Awajiya to its railway bento festival at Taipei Station, where Hipparidako Meshi sold out soon after opening. The two signed a friendship agreement in December 2023 and sold a navy-blue pot carrying the Taiwan Railways logo in both Japan and Taiwan. ## The name *Hipparidako* is a Japanese word for a person or thing so popular that many people compete for it. The *tako* in it can be written with the character for a kite or the character for an octopus, and *meshi* means rice or a meal. Awajiya puts the bento's popularity down to its taste, its pot and its name. It also sells a kite printed with a photograph of the pot. ## Akashi and its octopus ![A covered shopping arcade hung with large, brightly colored fishing-boat flags, with pictures of a red octopus on the shop signs](https://kama-meshi.com/_astro/akashi-uonotana-2021.CyENZ0OH_16JqBY.webp "The Uonotana shopping street in Akashi, 2021.") Akashi faces the Akashi Strait, a channel about 4 kilometers wide between the city and Awaji Island, where the tide runs at up to 9 kilometers an hour. The seabed off Akashi is a mix of rock and sand, and together with the fast current it draws plankton, shrimp, crabs and small fish. The city has long been known for two catches, Akashi sea bream and Akashi octopus. Akashi octopus is madako caught in the strait or in the waters off Akashi. It feeds on the strait's crabs and grows up in the current, and its flesh is firm. Its arms are short and thick. Hyogo Prefecture lands more madako than any other prefecture in Japan and ranks second for octopus of all kinds. Summer is its season, for the catch and for the taste, and the Akashi octopus of June and July has its own name, *mugiwara-dako*, "straw octopus." Octopus also goes into *akashiyaki*, the city's own dish: soft balls of a batter of flour, egg and dashi, cooked in a copper pan with a piece of octopus in each and dipped in dashi to eat. Locals call it *tamagoyaki*. A few minutes' walk from Akashi Station, the Uonotana shopping street is said to have been laid out about 400 years ago, when Akashi Castle was built. About a hundred shops line it, selling sea bream, octopus and other seafood from the midday landing. ## Fishing with pots ![Rows of barrel-shaped octopus pots and coils of rope on a quay, with fishing boats moored behind](https://kama-meshi.com/_astro/akashi-futami-octopus-pots-2006.si8fHMyr_ZmUe9v.webp "Octopus pots at Futami fishing port, Akashi, 2006.") Madako protects itself from predators by squeezing into gaps in the rocks. Octopus-pot fishing offers it a hole of the same kind. The traditional pot is unglazed earthenware, 10 to 20 centimeters across the mouth, 20 to 40 centimeters deep and 1 to 1.5 kilograms in weight, with a small hole in the base to let the water drain. Each pot is tied by a branch line to a long main rope. In Akashi about sixty pots make one set, and the sets are laid around rocky shores. The pots lie on the seabed for a day or two, or by another description two or three days. Then the rope is hauled in, the octopus are taken out and the empty pots go back into the sea. A new pot is first left in seawater until barnacles grow on it and it no longer stands out. Most pots today are made of concrete or plastic. The method has been used at Akashi since ancient times. The Akashi City Museum of Culture holds an octopus pot from the Nara period, the eighth century, and a document from about 300 years ago records more than 900 fishing boats at Akashi, working mainly with octopus pots, longlines and beach seines. By one account octopus-pot fishing began here, and old pots still come up from the seabed in trawl nets. In haiku, *takotsubo* is a season word for summer. ## References - [Awajiya: Company history](https://www.awajiya.co.jp/history/) - [Awajiya: Bento lineup](https://www.awajiya.co.jp/bento/) - [Awajiya: News release, April 2026 (launch date of April 5, 1998)](https://www.awajiya.co.jp/renge/) - [Awajiya: News release, August 2025 (16 million produced)](https://www.awajiya.co.jp/ultraman/) - [Akashi City: History of fishing in Akashi](https://www.city.akashi.lg.jp/sangyou/nousui_ka/machizukuri/nosuisan/suisangyou/fishery1.html) - [Akashi City: Fishing in Akashi](https://www.city.akashi.lg.jp/sangyou/nousui_ka/machizukuri/nosuisan/suisangyou/fishery2.html) - [Akashi City: Seafood caught at Akashi](https://www.city.akashi.lg.jp/sangyou/nousui_ka/machizukuri/nosuisan/suisangyou/fishery4.html) - [Akashiura Fisheries Cooperative: Madako (octopus)](https://www.akashiura.or.jp/maemon/fishes/tako.html) - [Akashi Tourism Association: Uonotana shopping street](https://www.yokoso-akashi.jp/facility/2511) - [Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries: Our Regional Cuisines, “Takomeshi” (Hyogo)](https://www.maff.go.jp/j/keikaku/syokubunka/k_ryouri/search_menu/menu/40_27_hyogo.html) - [Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries: Our Regional Cuisines, “Akashiyaki” (Hyogo)](https://www.maff.go.jp/j/keikaku/syokubunka/k_ryouri/search_menu/menu/40_2_hyogo.html) - [Kotobank: “Takotsubo” (Japanese dictionaries and encyclopedias)](https://kotobank.jp/word/%E8%9B%B8%E5%A3%BA-560261) - [Kotobank: “Akashi Kaikyō Bridge”](https://kotobank.jp/word/%E6%98%8E%E7%9F%B3%E6%B5%B7%E5%B3%A1%E5%A4%A7%E6%A9%8B-174598) - [Kotobank: “Akashi-dako”](https://kotobank.jp/word/%E6%98%8E%E7%9F%B3%E8%9B%B8-1779619) - [Kotobank: “Akashi Strait”](https://kotobank.jp/word/%E6%98%8E%E7%9F%B3%E6%B5%B7%E5%B3%A1-24307) - [Kotobank: “Ekiben” (Japanese dictionaries and encyclopedias)](https://kotobank.jp/word/%E9%A7%85%E5%BC%81-444219) - [Oginoya: Tōge no Kamameshi in the ceramic pot](https://www.oginoya.co.jp/bento/kamameshi/) - [Oginoya online shop: Safety and hygiene](https://ec.oginoya.co.jp/pages/effort) Image credits (resized for display): - [veroyama / Wikimedia Commons](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Hippari-dako_meshi_by_veroyama_in_Kobe_Meriken_Park,_Hyogo.jpg), [CC BY 2.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), 2007 - [veroyama / Wikimedia Commons](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Hippari-dako_meshi_crock_by_veroyama_in_Kobe_Meriken_Park,_Hyogo.jpg), [CC BY 2.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), 2007 - [m-louis .® / Wikimedia Commons](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Uonotana_shopping_arcade,_Akashi,_Hyogo_2021-11-28.jpg), [CC BY-SA 2.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0), 2021 - [松岡明芳 / Wikimedia Commons](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Takotubo_akasi-si_PC012375.jpg), Public domain, 2006