It began in the monks' quarters of Todaiji and Kofukuji, using tea delivered from the temples' own estates. Tea was a valuable thing at the time, and nothing about it was wasted. The original form used the second steeping to cook the rice, and the strong first steeping was poured over it to eat.

There is a record of it in the meals of the practitioners at Todaiji's Shunie, the water-drawing rite, where it appears under the name gecha. That is taken to be the origin of the dish.

What happened next is the interesting part. It did not spread among ordinary people in Nara at all.

Travelers who liked it carried it back to Edo, where shops selling it opened around Sensoji and hung out signs reading Nara tea to bring customers in. It appears in Jippensha Ikku's Tokaidochu Hizakurige, and from there became better known still across the whole country. Only after the Meiji period did it start to spread in Nara itself. The method now: brew hojicha, cool it, cook the rice in it, and add roasted soybeans and salt. It is served with miso soup made from shijimi clams in some places, and it turns up now in school lunches in the prefecture. It reached its own home last.