Got Rice?

I had my first day at Midori no Mori – which I think translates to “forest green”, school today. This means that me and everyone around me were walking on eggshells for most of the afternoon. I had prepared my tentative greetings in Japanese: “Hajimemashite,” “watashi wa Bryce des,” “Kanata no Vancouver kata kimashita,” “dozo yoroshiku onnegaishimasu,” and they had their awkward greetings in English: “Hello,” “Nice to meet you,” “How do you like Japan so far,” and so on. And there were also several bows at every meeting – and then more bowing after the meetings… and now that I think about it, during the meetings as well.

The other day, I finished my first 5kg bad of rice. Japanese rice is of a short grain variety and is much stickier than other types of rice. It is used exclusively when making sushi. Most Japanese people only eat Japanese rice – part of this comes from a sense of pride in their rice, if not all things Japanese; also Japan has a lot of heavy tariffs on imported rice, so it is not so practical to eat other kinds. Still, whenever I’m asked how I like Japanese rice, I am sure to respond quite positively and very enthusiastically.

I tend to eat a lot of rice. Cereal is rare and expensive over here, and bread isn’t the same as it is at home, so I asked several Japanese people what they eat for breakfast. Amongst answers of fish and omelets, the answer always seemed to include miso soup and rice. I don’t have a proper kettle yet, so I don’t eat as much miso soup as I probably should (I’ve been told many times that it is very good for you), so I generally have rice in the morning with some tofu – and kimchi for flavour. On occasion I will have fish or an omelet. I also have rice with lunch or dinner quite often. In any given day, I usually eat one or two bowls of rice.

A 5kg bag of rice goes for about 1800 yen. This time I opted for the 10kg bag, which was about 3200 yen. I'm hoping that this will last me a couple of months. I’m not too sure how this compares to prices at home.

Photographing rice for this post was more difficult than I imagined. It is very shiny – and white, so it blows out easily. Also, a large light source will wash out any kind of texture. It took me a while to fashion a small enough light source, but eventually I thought these images turned out decent (make sure to click on the image for better resolution).