Ibaraki · NakaminatoNo.409★★Open in map →
Ankou Nabe
— Ibaraki's winter monkfish hot pot
The market beside Nakaminato's fishing harbour, where Ibaraki's winter monkfish is sold whole before it becomes a pot. Fishmongers, processed-seafood shops and eating places, a short walk down from the station.
Monkfish from the Joban waters off Ibaraki is graded highly in Japanese markets, and the prefecture sets it against Kyushu's pufferfish as the eastern half of that pairing. Almost none of the animal is wasted: skin, flesh, roe, stomach, gills, fins and liver are counted together as the fish's seven tools. Because the body is too soft to work on a board, it is butchered hanging — suspended by the lower lip while water is poured in through the mouth to steady it. Nakaminato Osakana Ichiba sits at Minato-Honcho beside the fishing harbour, a run of fishmongers and processed-seafood shops with the municipal wholesale market's ground behind it.
Why it stays quiet
This is a well-known market, and winter weekends are busy. What it adds is order rather than quiet: see the whole fish and its seven parts on the ice first, then eat the pot. The same bowl reads differently in that sequence. Weekday mornings in the season are the calmest time to do it.
Background & history
Monkfish has been valued in this part of Ibaraki since the Edo period, when it went out as a gift of the Mito domain and its liver was counted among the country's great delicacies. The fishermen's own version is dobujiru, cooked without added water so that the dissolved liver clouds the broth; ankou nabe is that dish softened for the table. The Ministry of Agriculture also records tomozu — boiled parts of the fish dipped in a vinegar miso cut with liver — as a dish found only in Ibaraki.
What to look for — in walking order
- Nakaminato Station
- a wooden station building in use since 1913, listed among the Kanto Station 100
- Nakaminato Reverberatory Furnace
- a reconstructed late-Edo cannon furnace, about seven minutes from the station
- Nakaminato Osakana Ichiba
- fishmongers and processed-seafood shops in a row facing the water
- Nakaminato fishing harbour
- the working port directly in front of the market
How to enjoy it
The Ministry of Agriculture puts the fish at its best from December to February, when the liver has fattened. Walk the fishmongers first and look for a whole monkfish on the ice — seeing the seven parts laid out is what makes the pot legible — and only then sit down to eat. On the first Sunday of each month the station platform itself holds a morning market, roughly nine to eleven, with vegetables and dried fish.
How to actually get there
- Katsuta Station → Nakaminato Station (Hitachinaka Seaside Railway Minato Line, about 15 minutes, 350 yen).
- Nakaminato Station → Nakaminato Osakana Ichiba (about a 10-minute walk toward the harbour).
- Look along the fishmongers for whole monkfish on the ice, then take the pot at one of the eating places by the market.
- Minato Line from Katsuta Station
- Katsuta is the JR Joban Line station where limited expresses stop. Change there to the Hitachinaka Seaside Railway Minato Line and ride to Nakaminato — about 15 minutes, 350 yen for adults on the operator's fare table. Trains run roughly one to two an hour through the day.
- Return from Nakaminato Station
- The same Minato Line runs back to Katsuta and its JR connections. Services continue into the evening but thin out, so check the platform timetable before you settle in for a long lunch.
Before you go
- Cash
- Walking the market costs nothing. The station window takes cards and QR payments such as PayPay, but the market's shops each set their own methods, so carry cash as well.
- Closing days
- Monkfish is a winter fish: the season runs November to March, and the pot is not on the menu the rest of the year. Opening hours and closing days at the market are set shop by shop.
- Another way
- By car it is about ten minutes from the Hitachinaka interchange, roughly 4.5 km, and the municipal wholesale market's ground next door is opened as overflow parking. Nakaminato Station also has a park-and-ride lot of about forty spaces for Minato Line passengers.
- After you get off
- From Nakaminato Station, walk down toward the harbour for about ten minutes; the market faces the water at Minato-Honcho.