芋煮会 -- Imonikai

In October I experienced my first imonikai. The very first one was my friend Shuichi's neighborhood imonikai.An imonikai is a gathering outside, usually near a river, at which the people prepare together and eat a soup called imoni. It has meat and vegetables in a miso (fermented soybean product) or soy sauce flavored broth. The miso flavored way is the "Miyagi prefecture way" and the soy sauce flavored soup is from Yamagata prefecture. I got to try both.

The neighborhood imonikai was on Saturday and our church had an imonikai on Sunday. In one weekend I had two great experiences of this tradition, which is so popular in this region of Japan.