Musubi are beloved for their simplicity, portability and satisfying blend of tender rice and savory fillings. Now, Hawaii's premiere musubi maker, Manabu Asaoka, introduces the culinary history and cultural importance behind the dish, along with surprising statistics, essential tools and techniques, and easy-to-follow recipes to make tasty musubi at home. Charmingly and colorfully illustrated in the Japanese yuru-kyara style by Manabu's niece, artist Maria Asaoka, The Musubi Book is an essential resource for any food fanatic. When Manabu and his wife, Fumiyo, first opened Mana Bu's, their boutique musubi shop on South King Street in Honolulu, they were surprised by their customers' questions: "Do you have chopsticks?" "Don't you have wasabi packets?" Musubi, they realized, were often confused with the better-known Japanese rice-and-seafood creation sushi. (For the uninitiated, the basic differences between the two come down to size and how they are eaten. Musubi are hand-held, multiple-bite-sized, triangular balls of rice, usually wrapped in seaweed and filled with cooked seafood or other items, often packed to consume on the go. Sushi is also typically composed of rice, seafood and seaweed, but individual pieces are single-bite-sized, often topped with raw seafood and eaten with utensils in dining establishments.) Despite the initial confusion, the Asaokas' shop quickly grew in popularity, fueled by coverage in local media and features on Food Network and Travel Channel television programs. "We make just over one thousand musubi a day, up to thirty-five different types, and are sold out by lunchtime," Manabu says. "My life has been blessed by musubi. I think they must be my life's mission! But since we can only serve so many people each day, I felt limited in my ability to spread the message of how wonderful musubi are—I think they are the perfect food! I realized that if I wrote a book, I could carry the musubi message to more people, across generations and all over the world. I want to share musubi culture everywhere." Prior to opening Mana Bu's (now known as Mana Musubi) in 2008, author Manabu Asaoka spent sixteen years as a hull insurance underwriter for Tokio Marine & Fire Insurance Co., Ltd. He left the insurance business to earn a master's degree in communication at Hawaii Pacific University, specializing in customer service in intercultural business environments. Asaoka has since branched out from musubi and now divides his time between Mana Musubi and his newest venture, a Japan-based online retailer of aloha shirts. He and his wife, Fumiyo, travel between Japan and Hawaii throughout the year. Illustrator Maria Asaoka, known professionally as Maria, specializes in yuru-kyara , the contemporary Japanese drawing style featuring cute, unsophisticated characters. Yuru-kyara is synonymous with the identity mascots widely used by Japanese companies, government entities and other organizations as emblems of their history, culture, philosophy or sense of values. Maria has received several local and national awards for her artwork. She strives to imbue her work with deep meaning, illustrating with a single yuru-kyara concepts otherwise requiring thousands of words to explain, thus enabling communication beyond language barriers.