A sea urchin is not a youngish pirate or a youthful seafaring Samurai.

A sea urchin is a small round spiny hedgehog-looking shelled animal inhabiting the tidal environs of oceans around the world. Sand dollars found in the wet sands on morning beach walks are related to sea urchins, but sea urchins can cost much more than a dollar or two or even hundreds, because the roe (or corals) of the little urchin is considered a culinary delicacy.

In Japan, sea urchin is called “uni.” People travel the world at great expense to sight a bite-sized preparation of raw “nigirisushi” of sea urchin, “uni nigirisushi” or “uni nigiri” for short.

A little background on raw seafood talk: “Sushi” is a name for various combinations of raw seafood, fish and rice, and “sashimi” is the raw fish or other seafood alone – no rice.

“Nigirisushi” means “hand-pressed sushi.” For nigirisushi, the sushi chef presses an oblong of sushi rice into the shape of a small rectangular box. The chef than carefully drapes a topping (or “neta”) over the rice. That is a nigirisushi.

When sea urchin roe (or “uni”) is the neta-topping, the rice and roe can be wrapped with a strip (or “nori”) of seaweed or other edible binder. The binding strip keeps the uni nigiri together, because sea urchin roe is delicate and the corals easily disassembled. The resulting uni nigirisushi (the rice, roe and weed) is called a “gunkanmaki” (or warship) because the entire toss-in-your-mouth concoction resembles in appearance a tiny battleship of the waves.

A sushi chef handing over a nigirisushi gunkanmaki of uni may bow politely and utter the quiet exclamation, “Hokkaido,” to honor the preparation and presentation.

Hokkaido is the northernmost and second largest island of Japan. In shape, it does resemble the head of a horned dinosaur where it rides the Northern Sea Circuit defending the watery borders of its homeland. Of the bounties of that homeland is its seafood. The Hokkaido catch is reputedly and reportedly some the freshest and tastiest on our planet.

Chief among the salt-water treasures is the uni urchin that is transformed to gunkanmaki and other wondrous dishes for sea urchin aficionados rushing to the “asaichi” (or morning markets) of the Northern Island Circuit. For them, Hokkaido is royal realm, if not a revered temple, where reign and can be found the crustaceous hedgehogs of the seas.

Urchin is an old nickname for that little roly-poly mammal the hedgehog, and urchin is the name applied throughout the restaurants of the world for the uni of Japan’s cold waters.

Hokkaido.

I wish you well on your search for the tastes of your dreams.

May you discover the sea urchin you seek and escape any teenaged pirates or juvenile rabble rousers vying for space at the asaichi.

Uni, Hokkaido. See you at the morning market.

Grandpa Jim