Anri
When you think of hot pot, you think of hot pot eaten by beautiful women. When you open your mouth, you can see hot pot or plain soup.
Hope for sake
I don't think that's the case. I drink hot water too... but it's true that today is my first time having hot pot.
Kiriya Haruka
You may not know how to tell if a hot pot restaurant is good.
Tomoka Tanabe
I was looking forward to it so I looked into it. At Hanaju, you prepare the soup days in advance, right?
Shop owner
That's right.
Kiriya
(Taking a sip of the spicy soup) It's amazing! The complex aroma of spices is irresistible. It's like the umami flavor is wafting through your nose!
Tanabe
I love sansho pepper, and this fresh sansho pepper soup is way beyond my imagination. It's so delicious.
Anri
It's like being hit with umami. It has completely changed my image of hotpot.
Sakayori
Haru-chan and I added a little bit of fermented chili pepper seasoning (paolajiao), and it was so delicious that we could eat it forever.
Anri
(Add more ingredients)
Tanabe
When ingredients are added, the synergistic effect pushes the deliciousness beyond limits.
Anri
Doesn't Tanabe-san look so shiny after eating such healthy ingredients?
Tanabe
Well, yeah.
Anri
It was so delicious that I got the biggest "yeah" I've heard in a while.
Sakayori
I'd like to go to hot pot with the four of us again!
The pinnacle of Sichuan cuisine reimagined as hot pot
The late Zhao Yang was a renowned chef who popularized Sichuan cuisine in Japan and boasted numerous dishes that even top Chinese chefs are unaware of. His daughter Hanaju and her husband, Tanaka Hiroshige, have inherited his legacy and are serving hotpot as the main course, adapting the traditional recipe into a soup. "We make the soup from scratch using beef bones and gamecocks and use more than 20 types of spices, but because it is so time-consuming and labor-intensive, there are only a few restaurants in the original country that continue to do this," says Hanaju.
Despite the quality of the food, there are always six different dishes on offer. What's particularly noteworthy is the seasonal feel, with the soup made with oxtail, tomatoes, and fresh Japanese pepper, simmered for three days, only available for about two months. The ingredients are made with Sichuan-sourced Sichuan peppercorns and home-grown, pesticide-free herbs. The chef personally travels to various places to carefully select the "best ingredients of the day," risking his luck to eat them, resulting in a luxurious and splendid dish. The flavor is one of a kind, and the overwhelming deliciousness will have you hearing the sound of a gong ringing in your head!
The soups are, clockwise from the top right, a raw sansho soup, available only from May to June, made with Tama Shamo chicken stock and raw sansho pepper; an agaricus medicinal soup made with 14 kinds of mushrooms; and a beef bone mala soup, with its complex umami flavor created by the spices. The three-color hot pot course costs 12,800 yen (per person). "We don't overcook it, leaving room for the ingredients to absorb their flavor," says Tanaka. The combination of different flavors ensures that you won't tire of eating it. 
Although it looks like sashimi, it is a rich dish that includes red sea bream from Ehime, which has been thickened with egg white and pre-processed, as well as conger eel, squid dumplings, and mint dumplings.
