The Roadside Offal-Stew Shop Near Tokyo Where One Woman Cuts 120 Kilos After Closing

Tanazawa, in the town of Aikawa, Kanagawa — about 90 minutes west of central Tokyo by train and bus. There is no station nearby and not much foot traffic. Even so, an hour before the shop opens, people are already standing on the pavement outside.

Motsuno sells one thing: motsu-nikomi, pork offal simmered until soft. A set meal with rice, miso soup and pickles is 900 yen. Service starts at 11:00 and ends when it sells out, which is usually somewhere between 13:30 and 14:00.

The shop is run by its owner, with one part-time member of staff who arrives later in the morning. And the day is not over when the last bowl goes out. After closing, 120 kilos of pork offal arrive in cardboard boxes, and she cuts all of it by hand.

What motsu-nikomi is

Motsu (もつ) is offal — here, pork intestine. Nikomi means simmered. Motsu-nikomi is a working-class dish: offal stewed for hours with root vegetables until the fat gives up and the texture goes soft, then served in a bowl, usually with a mountain of raw spring onion on top.

It is normally an izakaya dish, something you eat next to a beer at night. A shop that serves it as a daytime set meal, with rice and miso soup, is unusual. A shop that does it in three separate flavours is rarer still.

Watch the video

06:51. The day starts by lighting the pots from yesterday

On the day of filming she was up at 4:30 and out of the house by 5:30 — first to her parents’ place to drop off her daughter, because the nursery is closed at weekends, then on to the shop. She arrived at 06:51.

I got up at half four, left at half five, dropped my child at my parents’, and came straight here

She had five and a half hours of sleep. The night before, a film came on television and she watched most of it. "I know I need to sleep," she says.

The first job is to light the burners under the stew prepared the previous day. It was late December, bookings were heavy, and the volume was up.

Twelve kilos of rice go on. "At weekends there are a lot of people who want a big bowl of rice." Three kinds of pickle are made in-house — lightly salted Chinese cabbage, daikon in vinegar, daikon in soy — and given away, one plate per customer.

Soy, curry, miso — three pots, every day

The stew is made in three versions. First-timers tend to order miso.

Everyone has their own preference. People coming for the first time usually go for the miso

Then someone tries the soy and that is it, they never order anything else. I am glad I make all three

The thing holding them together is chopped garlic.

It is there to give it a punch. It puts contrast in the flavour. One mouthful, then rice, then you want another mouthful — that is what I am aiming for

Her test for whether a batch is right is oddly precise for something entirely subjective.

I taste it every day, so I know the usual hexagon. I am checking whether anything sticks out of it, or whether anything has caved in

"If I can do it alone, the set stays under 1,000 yen"

There were 70 to 80 portions booked that day. She knows what hiring would buy her. She has done the arithmetic and come out the other side.

There is plenty that would be easier if someone else did it. But if someone does it, you have to pay them what it is worth. So I would rather work out how to do it alone — then the set meal does not have to go over 1,000 yen

Everything is expensive right now. Wholesale alone is expensive. So I move at one and a half times speed, and that covers maybe one person, or half a person

The load lands on her, and she is explicit that this is a choice.

In the end it comes down to me. So I do not think you can blame other people or other things

"I cried every day at the start"

Asked whether going independent had made her tougher, she did not reach for the flattering answer.

When the shop first opened I cried every day. Nobody came. Prep took forever

You solve one problem and another one appears. In the end it is all you. Nothing changes unless you change

Her daughter is one year and eight months old. Until two weeks before the birth, she was still running the shop alone. "I was lifting heavy things thinking the baby might just come out."

Omelette, 100 yen a piece, rolled while the phone rings

Just before eleven the part-timer arrives and starts on dashimaki tamago — rolled omelette cooked with dashi. Four kinds: plain, with spring onion, with red pickled ginger, and a sweet one. Each is 100 yen.

Next to the omelette pan, the following day’s stew is already being prepped. At one point she is rolling eggs with one hand and taking a takeaway booking on the phone with the other. Finished rolls are wrapped in foil to hold their heat, then sliced and set out in individual dishes.

11:00. Even the medium rice does not fit in the bowl

Orders go through a ticket machine. You buy a ticket, put it on the wooden tray, and wait. Rice comes in sizes.

"Large" is larger than the photographs suggest. The rice comes up out of the bowl in a white dome.

I was not expecting this much

The offal is cut big — 8 to 9 cm — and still soft enough to bite through cleanly.

It is good. Big pieces, no off-taste, really easy to eat, and the flavour is there

Soft, no gaminess. You should come

Customers are not all local. That day there were people from Fujisawa, and a group who had driven over from Hyogo, Okayama and Hiroshima. There are only two parking spaces; when they are full she comes out and explains to each driver where to wait.

Sold out. Then 120 kilos

The shop sold out that day and closed. As the clearing-up finished, the boxes arrived: 120 kilos of pork offal. At 50 to 60 kilos a day, that is a little over two days of stock.

Twelve bags, ten kilos each. She sets a timer and works against it.

If I can do a ten-kilo bag in five and a half minutes — times twelve — I want to be finished inside an hour and a half

Her time that day was 79 minutes 23 seconds.

She could buy it pre-cut. She does not, and the reason is size.

One supplier cuts at 3 cm. Even the newest one only goes to 6 cm. For us it is about this — 8 to 9 centimetres. That is what gives you something to bite

Think of a single sheet of shabu-shabu meat filling your mouth. If someone eats this offal and their mouth is happy, that is the point

Cutting is only half of it. As she works she sorts, pulling out the fibrous bits of fat and discarding them.

I still miss some. So after the blanching, while it is simmering, while I am stirring — if one turns up I take it out straight away. Right through to when I am serving it

When the offal is done she cuts the next day’s spring onion. It is always cut the day before and left overnight — "it takes the sharpness off." Then she weighs out the rice. That day she finished at 16:40. It was raining.

"I do not want to change what the shop is"

Asked where she wants to take the business, the answer runs against the usual direction of travel.

If I make it bigger, if it turns into a chain with a lot of employees, the good part of this shop disappears. I would rather stay this size

The one thing that does bother her is the people who arrive after it has sold out. "I need to think about a system that lets me serve more people — without changing the character of the place."

Asked for a closing line, she gave this:

I want to make somewhere fun and happy. Without changing what it is. And to have more people know about it and love it. I will keep working at it

If you are going

Hours and closing days change. The shop closes when it sells out, often by around 14:00, so it is worth checking before you travel.

A note on etiquette: it is one person cooking, one person helping, and two parking spaces. Buy your ticket, eat, pay, leave. If the car park is full, wait in the road with your hazards on — she will come and tell you when a space opens.

The part text cannot carry

Everything above is the reporting. What it leaves out is the hands.

Ten kilos of offal in five and a half minutes, twelve times over, at the end of a shift that started before seven in the morning — and the rhythm never breaks. That does not survive translation into sentences.

The offal prep starts at 33:15. The explanation of why she cuts at 8-9 cm is around 35:47. Both are worth watching.