A Japanese Rice Story.

I know that feeling.

You’re standing inside an Asian grocery store, staring at the 5kg bags of Japanese rice, and you’re thinking:

$40? Are you having a laugh? For rice?
Although, the wife does love Japanese rice. I don’t know man, can she tell the difference? Is this just a scam?

Meanwhile, the Thai Jasmine, Californian, Vietnamese long-grain, Taiwanese mixed-grain, Indian Basmati, the local supermarket’s SunRice medium grain, are catcalling you:

Over here honey~ Twice the fun for half the price~
Save the money for that penile sculpture for your bedside table. We all come out the same in the end~ Waddya say?

If you don’t recognise it, you’re probably not ready for it.

If it gives you any consolation, Japanese rice is also expensive in Japan.

The average price for a 5kg bag of rice in Japan is 2118 yen. That is, give or take, 25 Australian dollars. And this data excludes Koshihikari, the Super A grade rice we see in our Asian grocery stores.

If you live near a rice farm like my wife’s family, sure, you can buy freshly harvested rice from a vending machine.

But, say if you’re in the middle of Tokyo, a bag of Super A grade rice from Akita or Yamagata or Toyama or Hokkaido, will also burn 3000 yen (AUD$35) through your pocket.

Not too far off from our prices in Melbourne.

So what’s so ‘Super A’ about these rice?

Ah, behold, the chart.

The chart above is taken from a Japanese website. It is oversimplified, but sufficient to illustrate my 3 points:

1. In Japan, Special A grade rice is judged by its texture and chewiness. Apparently, breakfast rice should be dry and light; dinner rice should be ‘mochi mochi’. For onigiris and fried dishes like tonkatsu/tempura, you should aim for chewy and hard rice. For fish dishes, you should go soft and light; vegetable dishes go well with lighter and harder rice.

2. Most Special A rice leans towards the soft and chewy tangent. I personally think that’s because Japan is made of 70% old people and old people generally have trouble chewing. So they are willing to pay more for softer rice and the cycle repeats itself.

3. The Japanese love their charts. Click here to see all the rice charts to see on Google.

This is eerily similar to those coffee charts you see on the wall of cafes. Dark vs light, bitter vs sweet, floral vs chocolate... I’m translating what I see from the internet and it sounds like 85% bullshit to me.

All I can say is, whatever the reason, expensive stuff is expensive everywhere.

So, should I buy Japanese rice?

I’m not your mother. Decide for yourself.

However, I can offer you a financial persuasion:

2 cups of rice (4 serves) are roughly 300g.
A 5kg $40 bag of rice is roughly 66 serves, bringing the unit cost to $0.60 per serve.

Considering how first-world restaurants are charging you $2 for a (non-Japanese) serve of rice, $4 for takeaway sushi, $5 for coffee, $6 a croissant, $10 a pint of beer, $15 Netflix subscription, $20 bottle of wine, $200 footy pass, $2000 iPhone, I’d say affordability is not an issue.

The issue here is whether (nice) rice is important to you.

Are you really Asian if you spend more money on coffee than rice? Last I check, more Asians are making rice than growing coffee in the world.

Do you aspire to service $1m mortgages, yet don’t have the sensibility to appreciate a life filled with nice, fluffy, ‘mochi mochi’ rice?

Hah, reverse psychology doesn’t work on me!

(But if I do decide to, which one should I buy?)

See the chart again, I’ve also circled four rice brands that I see in (Melbourne) Japanese groceries.

Akita Komachi 秋田こまち, the one in the middle, is constantly available (means fresh), an all-rounder, and usually the least expensive. I think that’s a good start.

Personally, rice from Niigata 新潟 especially the Uonuma Koshihikari 魚沼コシヒカリ has a sentimental engraving on my heart.

It was an early morning in Osaka and I remember buying an onigiri from a tourist-trappy-looking store. I simply couldn’t believe rice could taste so good. So I took a photo of the label and learned its name from the ingredients list.

Yes, Niigata Uonuma popped my Special A grade Japanese rice cherry.

But honestly, we’re talking about really, really, really good rice here.

Think Suntory Hibiki 12 year whiskey, think 9+ marbled wagyu. Even the Japanese don’t eat them all the time.

They’re all good.

The reality is we only buy them when they’re on sale LOL

We have a bag of rice for weekdays and friends, and another for birthdays and … ourselves.

Last I checked the Koshihikari cultivating technique has been exported to America and Australia.

SunRice makes a jumbo manufacturer version for the restaurants - I’ve seen them being delivered to my local Don Don. Woolworths is selling them 750g for $5.

I’ve tried it during the lockdown, it’s good.
But almost as expensive as the Japanese ones.

Try, and decide.

Perhaps the concern is not whether you can appreciate or afford good rice.

It’s whether your rice cooker, your cooking skill can do the rice farmers justice. (Flashback to Chinese uncles and aunties mixing Coke and Sprite with their red wines. Aargh the horror!)

Also, consider the existential crisis when you can’t tell the difference between $5 rice and $40 rice.

Or worse, the fear when you can’t go back to normal rice after tasting the good shit.

Hi there, you’re receiving this because you recently purchased my cookbook. Click below to access the previous newsletters.

Eek!

I realised there’s a whole paragraph missing from the last newsletter. Serves me right to think I’m ready to charge money to do this.