Wednesday, September 23, 2009

hele katsu musubi

The other day, I needed some rice for some leftovers I planned to have for lunch, so I stopped into Lawson (a convenience store), to pick up a musubi (rice ball).

What I found was a sale of their musubi...

I picked up this musubi...hele katsu (pork filet cutlet), normally 139 yen (about US$1.39)....everything was 100 yen (about US$1).

A nice sized piece of pork filet, fried then doused with a sweet-salty tonkatsu (pork cutlet) sauce.

When I first came to Japan and saw "hele" (hay-lay) in Japanese (katakana) I was like WT? It isn't a word we learned in school. When I looked it up I realized it meant "filet".

Apparently the Kanto area (East Japan) calls it "hire" (he-lay) and the Kansai area calls it "hele" (hay-lay), both meaning "filet".

This musubi could definitely be a meal in itself.

6 comments:

Admin said...

Are those dialects in Japan?

Deb in Hawaii said...

Looks good and what a bargain even not on sale!

K and S said...

yes Mikuru, the pronounciation is different in East and Western Japan :)

I know, I think I may go back after the sale Debinhawaii :)

Take care you two.
Kat

KirkK said...

Hi Kat - Now that looks like something I'd be eating all the time if I had a chance to....

Rowena said...

When I saw the word hele, I immediately thought of the song Hele On to Kauai. How neat to be learning new things about the language even after all this time!

K and S said...

Hi Kirk, this is some really good comfort food :)

Rowena, when I typed it out, all I could think of was "home"...

Take care you two.
Kat