Shaping Onigiri with the
Strongest Nori in Borneo

Domestic flight, international immigration

Bintulu sits on the northwest coast of Borneo, about two hours by air from Kuala Lumpur. Same country, but across the sea. And because Sarawak runs its own immigration control, you go through immigration even after a domestic flight. As a foreigner, I can’t travel within Malaysia without my passport. It’s like having a second border inside the country. Before worrying about onigiri fillings, the key is not to forget your passport.

Most Japanese people who know the name Bintulu probably work in energy. It is home to one of the world’s largest LNG (liquefied natural gas) production sites. On 29 January 1983, the LNG carrier Tenaga Satu left here for Sodegaura in Tokyo Bay, carrying Malaysia’s first LNG export, bought by Tokyo Electric Power and Tokyo Gas. For more than forty years since, part of the fire in Japanese kitchens and power stations has come from Bintulu.

So Japan owes Bintulu forty years of debt. Now, for once, Japanese nori is travelling the other way. It doesn’t settle forty years’ worth, but as a first instalment of interest, I think it’s not a bad gift.

The nori came from Mie

The nori for the day was provided by Fukui of Kuwana, Mie Prefecture, and norimomo, a brand of its group. norimomo’s nori is divided by purpose: for futomaki, for hand rolls, for hosomaki, for onigiri, and shredded. Normal enough in Japan, but the very idea of choosing nori by use must look fresh to many Malaysians.

The flyer’s tagline: “Japanese Nori × Malaysian Flavours”. Malaysian flavours, wrapped in Japanese nori. The venue provides rice and nori; participants bring the fillings. The flyer states that halal ingredients are used, so families of different faiths can make onigiri at the same table. The fee was RM15, or RM10 for AKITO students: very reasonable for a Sunday lesson.

First, a lesson in nori

Rather than diving straight in, the first half was about learning: how the sea grows nori, how it becomes a single sheet, and what nutrients it holds. For hungry children, quite a test of patience.

According to the slides, 3 g of roasted nori contains about 1.2 g of protein, plus dietary fibre, folate and vitamin C, and minerals such as iodine and iron. All that, in one thin black sheet.

Then came ideas for eating it in Malaysia. Uses of nori were neatly sorted into two: wrap and sprinkle. Rice balls and hand rolls are wrapped; rice, noodles and soup get a sprinkle. Home-style ideas followed: rolled into omelettes, laid on toast. Nori, moving from a side for rice to an everyday kitchen ingredient.

Nori toast came up too: butter a slice of toast and lay nori on top. Come to think of it, Malaysia is the land of kaya toast. Adding one sheet to the morning toast might catch on more easily than you’d think.

Then, a multinational army of fillings

Finally, time to make them. On the tables, fillings brought from home: canned tuna, cucumber, tamagoyaki, sausages, sweet-and-savoury braised meat. A multinational army of fillings. Canned tuna turned up far more than anything else; Malaysian households, it seems, keep a serious stock of it.

Something struck me. Egg, cucumber, fish: the cast of fillings was close to the cast of nasi lemak. And wrapping rice to carry around is not foreign to this country either. At a morning stall you are handed nasi lemak wrapped in banana leaf and paper, the classic nasi bungkus. Whether the wrapper is nori or banana leaf, the idea of putting rice into a portable form is the same. The ground for onigiri to take root may be more ready than we think.

The onigiri triangle is harder than it looks. Press too hard and it turns solid; too gently and it falls apart. Rather like developing people, really. Enter the teacher in the yukata. She went from table to table showing the shape of her hands, and gradually, things that looked rather like triangles began to appear around the room.

What came out revealed the maker. Triangles, barrels, discs, and a few shapes beyond description. In rice-sticky hands, each child’s own private geometry was taking form.

The children want to choose and make it all themselves: picking the filling, wrapping the nori, all with their own hands. And the moment it’s done, straight in. No time even to raise a camera.

Delicious, even with nothing inside

True to East Malaysia, the room brought together people of many ethnicities and many faiths, each household with its own rules about food. Seaweed, rice and salt, however, break almost nobody’s rules. That is exactly where Japanese nori is strong.

One comment we received: “This is so delicious. I’ve never had nori like this.” For anyone who makes nori, “never had anything like this” must be the finest compliment there is.

One family had brought Korean seaweed. Korean gim, dressed in sesame oil and salt; Japanese nori, dressed in nothing at all. Born in the same sea, brought up quite differently. It was never about which is better: it was a good chance to taste the difference.

The most surprised of all were the children. Nori fresh out of the pack, fragrant and crisp. Freshly cooked rice, and nothing but sea salt from the nature of Okinawa. No tuna, no sausage, no sweet-savoury meat: the fillings sat this one out. The Malaysian children took a bite, and their eyes went round. Delicious, even with nothing inside!

Having assembled a multinational army of fillings, I hate to say it, but the most valuable players of the day may have been a trio: nori, rice and salt. The army applauded from the bench.

Through a business lens

Occupational hazard, so briefly. First, where nori stands in Malaysia. Say nori here and most people think of Korean seaweed: a snack, eaten straight from the packet. Nori that wraps rice, nori used in cooking: there are still many uses people don’t yet know.

Korean seaweed’s momentum shows in the numbers. Korea’s gim exports reached about US$1.13 billion in 2025, passing the billion-dollar mark for the first time. Nori is now a serious export industry.

So where is the world’s nori made? By farmed production volume in 2023, China accounted for about 70 percent, Korea about 20 percent, and Japan under 10 percent. Japan’s output has fallen from a peak of 480,000 tonnes to about 200,000 tonnes.

But this is only about weight. By value, the story changes completely. China’s nori falls into two broad lines: a species like Japan’s and Korea’s sheet nori, grown mainly in Jiangsu, and zicai, grown in Fujian and elsewhere, a familiar soup ingredient in Chinese cooking. In 2018 data, Fujian’s zicai alone made up about 37 percent of China’s total. Sheet nori and soup ingredient differ in use, quality and price. The same tonne carries a very different price tag.

By export value, Korea is the star, running away with more than US$1 billion a year, as the chart above shows. Japanese nori, small in volume, competes on the quality of each sheet and on the care of matching nori to its use: futomaki, hand rolls, onigiri. Volume from China, exports from Korea, quality from Japan. Judging Japanese nori as small from the size of the pie slice alone would be a mistake.

The wind is behind it. A wave of Japanese food is sweeping Malaysia right now; nobody can say any more which boom number this is. Walk through a mall, and you can hardly avoid a Japanese noren curtain.

According to Japan’s farm ministry, there were about 181,000 Japanese restaurants outside Japan in 2025, the first decline since the survey began, driven by a slump in China. Malaysia, however, grew from about 1,890 to about 2,200 in two years, up 16 percent, even as Asia as a whole shrank.

A caveat: these figures count restaurants presented as “Japanese restaurants”, whoever runs them and however authentic they are. More Japanese signboards is not the same thing as more Japanese taste getting across.

But this is no time to get carried away. Japanese restaurant chains, large and small, have had some bitter experiences in this country. A place with queues out the door in Japan can find itself nearly empty in Malaysia; that story is far from rare. The deciding factor is how far you localise. Guard the Japanese taste too closely and it won’t suit local palates; change it too much and there’s no point in it being Japanese. It’s the opposite challenge to No. 06’s US Pizza, which went all-in on the local palate with extra chilli.

In that respect, onigiri is an interesting food. The vessel, a triangle wrapped in nori, stays Japanese; the filling can be tuna, tamagoyaki, or nasi lemak’s own. Vessel from Japan, contents from here. Japanese companies are tempted to export not just the vessel but the contents too. I suspect that is where many of the bitter experiences begin.

East Malaysia is interesting too. Nationwide, Muslims make up just over 60 percent of the population, but in Sarawak about half are Christian and roughly a third Muslim. In food, “halal-friendly” (no pork) is often enough here, without the strict halal certification expected in West Malaysia. The barrier to bringing Japanese food in is far lower than in the west. That said, how much concern there is about haram contamination through utensils or preparation varies by place and clientele. Anyone thinking of entering this market should look into it properly first.

To spread a food like that, I think experience works better than advertising. Shape it with your own hands, wrap your favourite filling, eat it with your family. The organiser even encouraged wrapping nasi lemak accompaniments in Japanese nori. Rather than drilling in the Japanese way of eating, make a place for Japanese nori on the Malaysian table. That is the right order.

In No. 03, I wrote that I wanted to hand over Japanese culture “not as an imposition, but as one option”. What I saw in a classroom in Bintulu was a model of exactly how to do that.

The triangle crosses borders

Nori from Japan, turning into slightly lopsided triangles in the hands of Borneo’s children. Filled with tuna, or tamagoyaki, or sweet braised meat. Shape and flavour differ from family to family, and that’s fine. That is what onigiri has always been.

From Bintulu to Japan, fire has been arriving for forty years. From Japan to Bintulu, today, nori arrived. Both are things that warm someone’s table.

My thanks to everyone at AKITO Global Education, the organiser, and to Fukui and norimomo for sending the nori. Might I suggest a nasi lemak onigiri contest next time? I’d happily serve as a judge, though a lenient one.