Rice!

Rice is central to Japanese life. Even so here in Okinawa, where it's too hot to grow rice (and it takes so much water that it's not realistic to cultivate much rice here).

How central?

The word for rice is the same word for meal. That's how important.

Wanna know what rice looks like when it's harvested?

and it smells AWESOME! It's sweet and kinda nutty smelling.

My labmate recently visited her family in Tokyo and participated in a harvest there, so I have had the pleasure of learning more about rice.


Here's what rice looks like before it's, I dunno, husked? Then the rice is polished until it is super white. I prefer the less refined brown rice 玄前(genmae) but it is more expensive because so many rice distributors manufacture the highly-polished white rice (which is necessary for ritual life here in Japan).

Wanna see what happens when the American military occupies (I mean protects) your island for over 60 years?

You get delicious Taco Rice!

Taco rice is basically a taco from taco bell unfurled from it's shell onto a bed of rice. When I read that before I came to Okinawa I thought, "Really?" as in, "Really, people will eat that?" But I am now a convert: taco rice is oishii (delicious).

Particularly from this place in Onna - Kijimuna きじむな where they have letters patent on taco rice.