04/15/2026
What looks simple is actually history layered into every bite — Japanese influence in the rice and nori, American military supply in the Spam, Hawaiian hands putting it all together into something entirely their own.
For context, That Hawaiian Guy’s Mom explains:
“…the history of the musubi itself goes way back during the samurai days in Japan. When people walked from village to village, they would make a salted nori-wrapped rice ball (it was literally round). The salt preserved the rice for the long travel, and the nori kept the rice from sticking to their hands. They would put an “ume” (salted pickled plum) in the middle of the rice to give the musubi extra taste. Also, the ume was red and made biting into the musubi very pretty ... black, white, red. The ume was like a side dish so they did not have to have anything else. Sometimes, they would use dried fish or other pickles. Once, I used tuna salad. Sounds weird but it tasted good and the people loved it.
…the popularity of spam in Hawaii is interesting. During WWII, the military had first dibs on meat. So the local population relied on spam as a meat source. Currently, more spam is sold in Hawaii than the rest of the entire United States combined. Was it last year or the year before ... Spam honored Hawaii with beautiful designs of flowers, etc on their cans. They even made Portuguese sausage spam, which didn’t appeal to me.
The original spam musubi was wrapped entirely in nori, except for the ends. But nori got to be expensive so now it is made with a smaller piece of nori for just in the middle of it. Also, the original had a piece of egg omelet on top of the spam.”
