Korian stands on the old port of Kaizu, at the northern tip of Lake Biwa, where the funazushi house Uoji has fermented nigoro-buna from the lake since 1784. Seven generations have kept the work alive with a house culture — the kuramochi no kin — unbroken since the founding; each batch takes two winters. The present head, Sazaki Kensuke, seventh to bear the name Jiemon, trained at Kyoto Kitcho Arashiyama. The Tabelog Award lists the house at Silver (2024, 2025) and Bronze (2023, 2026).
The novelist's charge
The restaurant grew from the sixth generation's vision, and its name came from the novelist Endo Shusaku, a devoted customer whose pen name — Korian, written with the characters for fox and tanuki — puns into 湖里庵, a hermitage of lake and village. His charge to the family: make your specialty something that can be eaten at Korian and nowhere else. The funazushi kaiseki was born of that sentence; he recorded the naming in his essay collection Mangekyo. In September 2018, Typhoon Jebi destroyed the house entirely. Rebuilt over two years and eight months, it reopened in April 2021; the fermentation cellars, and the culture living in them, survived.
What you eat
A kaiseki that carries funazushi through some ten forms: sliced plain; tomoae, dressed with its own fermenting rice; funazushi mochi; a pasta in which the fish plays the role of cheese; a small soup; and the closing funazushi chazuke that the manga Oishinbo made famous. The lake's seasons run alongside — biwa trout sashimi, young ayu tempura, ice fish, lake shrimp. The town is part of the meal: Kaizu's Edo-period stone embankments belong to the nationally designated Important Cultural Landscape of Takashima's waterfront.
The booking reality
One seating at lunch, one at dinner, about two hours each; parties of two or more, junior-high age and up. The phone-only calendar opens on the first business day of each month for dates through two months ahead, and the two daily seatings go quickly. Our desk calls on the opening morning; we promise the attempt, not the seat. No smoking, no perfume, no video.
