One night after a dinner with my lolo, lola, tito, and titas, my family stopped by a nearby Korean grocery that we spotted on the way to Little Quiapo’s BF branch (which has amazing kare-kare I LOVEE). It was just us and the employees at the cashier when we entered, so we had peace and quiet to look for something interesting to take home from the shelves.
That Korean grocery was also where my mom first discovered the Teazle yuzu green tea drink, branded yuja in Korean. Since coming home from a vacation in Singapore with my dad, she’s been obsessed with anything yuzu, like a yuzu soy sauce that she picked up from a Japanese grocery, a mystery yellow drink from KKV, the label of which we couldn’t read since it was in Chinese but assumed was yuzu (the English under it said yuzi), a yuzu syrup that she wants to buy when we go to Japan (I have no idea how and where you’re supposed to use that), but most of all, the Natsbee honey yuzu drink that she tried there.
No lie the Natsbee honestly smells faintly of armpit, but on the other hand the Teazle smells less armpit and tastes more delicious and therefore better.
We picked up one bottle of that Teazle drink and some other stuff before heading to the counter. There were suddenly more people by that time for some reason. As I was looking around (and my younger sister was too, at the buy 1 get 1 Pepero), I saw this purple onigiri mold hanging on a rack, alone. The last onigiri mold standing. So I decided to get it and try making onigiri.
I’m pretty sure I first tried it at 7-Eleven after hearing one of my friends say it was delicious and because of the packaging, which was a little confusing to open at first, but I love making life hard for myself for the fun of it, like with the bottle of Ramune Japanese soda my mom brought home one time.
There was a marble in it for some reason that somehow holds in the carbonation. We had to pull up a YouTube video to figure out how to open it. I don’t drink soda at all, but it’s so unreasonably complicated (fun) to open it. I miss it. I should get another bottle soon.
So one night I attempted to make tuna onigiri for dinner, basing loosely on some recipes I really only skimmed through, which I learned to follow more accurately on my second attempt the next day. I cooked some rice, opened one can of Century Tuna, and just guessed the amounts of kewpie mayo and Japanese soy sauce to put in with it. I skipped seasoning the rice completely since I was lazy and didn’t really feel like following a recipe. Don’t be like me. Always follow a recipe.
And with my purple onigiri mold, snack seaweed, tuna-kewpie-soy sauce-salt and pepper filling, and fresh, scorching hot rice which burned my hands through the plastic gloves, I tried to make 8 equally-filled pieces of onigiri for 4 people, so that everyone had 2 pieces each. Only once I finished did I remember to put the furikake seasoning in the filling, so I just… sprinkled it on top.
I bit in… and it was sad. It turns out that a regular can of Century Tuna isn’t enough to feed 4 people if you split it into 8. The ratio of rice to tuna was so sad… like, for example, if you had a full 10, a siopao:asado ratio of 9:1.
Lesson learned: put more tuna, less rice, follow a recipe.
(I actually made it last April 19, 2025 and only found the motivation to write a post about it today.)
