Nov 30 (Insider Food) - Every autumn, Japan's largest imoni-kai, or imoni soup party, is held in Yamagata City. At the center of the celebration is a 4-ton, 6.5-meter-wide pot that holds enough soup to feed 30,000 people.
For more than a century, imoni soup parties have been held in the Yamagata Prefecture to celebrate the changing of seasons from summer to autumn. Always cooked outside, these soups also have one defining ingredient, taro root, known as satoimo in Japanese.
We visited the largest imoni soup party in Yamagata City to see how the imoni is prepared in such big batches.