first meal ceremony; 100-day celebration
A traditional Japanese ceremony held when a baby is about 100 days old, where the infant is symbolically fed solid food for the first time to wish for a lifetime of plentiful food.
At the okuizome ceremony, we pretend to feed the baby.
The okuizome meal includes auspicious foods like sea bream and red rice.
Standard kanji spelling for this traditional ceremony.
Honorific prefix 御 is occasionally used in formal contexts, but お食い初め is far more common.
From お (honorific prefix) + 食い (stem of 食う, 'to eat') + 初め ('first'). The reading ぞめ is a rendaku form of 初め.