October 16th

ALL YOU EVER WANTED TO KNOW ABOUT RICE, etc.
(Just in case you were wondering!)

There are many large and small challenges you encounter when learning Japanese.
For example, it’s difficult being at peace with the idea that your brain actually can learn to read hiragana and kanji just like it perceives written English, and breaking through this barrier is an important early milestone.
Another small challenge is translating single-word concepts in English into Japanese, which is usually more complex. For example, just as the Eskimo supposedly have many names for snow (which turns out not to be all that true), there are multiple words for rice that are used on a daily basis, like uncooked rice (kome), unpolished rice (genmai), steamed rice that’s ready to eat (gohan, which also refers to all food), newly harvested rice (shinmai, also used to refer to a new employee at an organization), and so on.
Being an island nation, the Japanese eat various types of plants grown in the sea, which we call by the unappetizing name of “seaweed.” Major categories include nori, the dried, green seaweed eaten with sushi; wakame, green leaves eaten in soup; and konbu, a kind of seaweed that’s almost black, used as flavoring in soup or eaten on rice.
The Japanese similarly have about five different kinds of tea which would probably be called “green tea” by the average Westerner but which are all very different.



Rice is Japan's most important crop. It has been cultivated in Japan for over 2000 years. Its fundamental importance to the country and its culture is reflected by the facts that rice was once used as a currency, and that the Japanese word for cooked rice (gohan) also has the general meaning of "meal". The literal meaning of breakfast (asagohan), for example, is "morning rice".
Japanese rice is short grain and becomes sticky when cooked. Most rice is sold as hakumai ("white rice"), with the outer portion of the grains (nuka) polished away. Unpolished rice (gemmai) is considered less delicious by most people, but its popularity has been increasing recently because gemmai is more nutritious and healthier than hakumai.
A second major rice variety used in Japan is mochi rice. Cooked mochi rice is more sticky than conventional Japanese rice, and it is commonly used for sekihan (cooked mochi rice with red beans), or for pounding into rice cakes.
Rice is processed and prepared in many different ways. Some popular processed rice products are listed below, while a list of popular rice dishes can be found here.

Rice Cakes (mochi) Mochi (or omochi) are small rice cakes, produced by pounding mochi rice. They are traditionally eaten on New Year, but have now become available throughout the year. Mochi rice cakes are usually grilled and then served in a soup or wrapped in nori seaweed.

Rice Wine (sake or nihonshu) Rice wine is commonly known as sake, which is actually the general term for "alcohol" in Japanese. The two main ingredients of sake are rice and water.

Rice Flour Rice flour is used in various Japanese sweets (wagashi) and rice crackers (sembei). Daifuku, for example, is sweetened red bean paste wrapped in rice flour dough, while kushi-dango are rice flour dumplings on skewers.

Rice Vinegar Rice is also used to produce vinegar, which in turn can be used as any other type of vinegar, for example, in salads or for preparing sushi rice.