Hokkaido · KushiroNo.1146★★Open in map →

Zangi

— Hokkaido's soy-marinated fried chicken

foodOff the trail — and worth it

Hokkaido's name for fried chicken, and a method behind the name: the meat is marinated in soy, ginger and garlic before it is floured and fried. The dish is traced to Kushiro, and Washo Market by the station is where the city's food is laid out.

FromKushiro Station (JR Nemuro Main Line)
A few minutes on footOn foot from Kushiro Station
Zangi

Directions ↗

The sweet spot

Zangi is not a discovery. It is on menus all over Hokkaido and the word is ordinary there. What is easier to miss is that the dish belongs to Kushiro, and that the city still treats it as its own — the local way of serving it, with a tare sauce over the crust, is what the Hokkaido tourism board points to when it writes about Kushiro zangi.

Where it is

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What to look for — in walking order

Kushiro Washo MarketAsasa198 / CC BY-SA 4.0

The station-side entrancea shallow arched front on the corner nearest Kushiro Station, under the market's blue and red crest
The fish countersrows of seafood stalls stocked from Kushiro's own port, the trade the market was built on
The rice counterwhere a bowl of plain rice is bought first, before it is carried round for katte-don toppings
The cooked-food sidechicken and fried-food stalls working alongside the delicatessen counters
The produce and dry-goods aislesgreengrocers, konbu and dried fish, sweets and pickles filling the back of the hall

How to actually get there

Sapporo or Obihiro → Kushiro Station (JR Nemuro Main Line).
Leave on the town side and walk a couple of minutes south-west to Washo Market.
Buy a bowl of rice at the rice counter, then walk the aisles having toppings laid on for katte-don.
Look for zangi at the chicken and fried-food stalls, and eat in the market's rest area before the stalls shut for the day.

Straight out of Kushiro Station: Kushiro Station sits on the JR Nemuro Main Line, reached from Sapporo by way of Obihiro. The market is the low white block on the corner just south-west of the station front — a level walk of a couple of minutes with no turns to remember. Airport buses also set down at the station, so the market can be the first thing you reach after arriving in the city.
Back to the station: The station is a couple of minutes away, so there is no return leg to plan. Trains run west toward Obihiro and Sapporo through the day, but departures thin out in the evening — read the board when you arrive rather than when you leave. The market closes in the late afternoon, well before the last services.

Directions from my location (Google Maps) ↗

About the place

Zangi is what Hokkaido calls fried chicken, and the name stands for a way of making it. The Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries describes chicken steeped in a sweet-salty soy marinade with ginger and garlic, then dusted with flour and fried — the marinade is what separates zangi from plainer karaage. The same ministry traces the dish to a chicken restaurant in the Suehiro entertainment quarter of Kushiro, where a whole bird was cut up and fried bone-in. The name is usually explained as a play on the Chinese zha ji, with an extra syllable slipped in for luck. It spread across the island from there, and in Hokkaido the word now stands in for karaage on menus far from Kushiro.

How to enjoy it

The market keeps morning hours — the official site gives 8:00 to 17:00 from Monday to Saturday, with Sundays varying by month — so this is a stop for before lunch rather than after dinner. Fried food here is sold to carry out and the market sets aside a seated rest area, so a bowl of katte-don and something from the fryers can be eaten on the spot. For zangi served hot at a table, look to the izakaya streets of Suehiro, the quarter the ministry names as the dish's birthplace.

Background & history

Kushiro Washo Market dates from December 1954, when traders working out of handcarts on the road in front of the station formed a cooperative under the motto wa shite akinau — trade in harmony — which is where the market's name comes from. It moved into its present block beside the station in the late 1970s. Zangi belongs to roughly the same post-war decades: the agriculture ministry places its invention in the mid-1950s, other accounts put it a few years later, and the exact year is still argued over in Kushiro.

Before you go

Cash: Entering the market costs nothing. The stalls are small independent businesses, so carry cash rather than assuming cards are taken. Katte-don works stall by stall: you pay for the rice at one counter and for each topping at the stall that serves it, which makes a run of small transactions rather than one bill.
Good to know: Sunday opening changes from month to month and the official site publishes a calendar for it, so check the date before building a morning around this. Posted hours are those the operator gives at the time of checking, and individual stalls set their own; the fish counters are the reason to come early rather than late.
Another way: If you are driving, the market runs its own car park and its site notes room for coaches and camper vans, which makes it a practical first stop before heading east toward Kushiro Marsh or Akan. Kushiro Airport is linked to the station by bus, so the market also works as a first stop straight off a morning flight.
After you get off: Leave Kushiro Station on the town side and cross the station square. The market is the low white block on the corner to your right, with a shallow arched entrance facing the station. The walk is flat and takes a couple of minutes.

Nearby notes

Culture · Hokkaido★★