There are so many restaurants that talk about using the best rice in Japan.

On asking them where it comes from and it's always either local to the restaurant, or to the prefecture the owner grew up in.

There's a lot of local patriotism for rice in Japan, I even find it admirable most of the time.

Rice price is obviously important and probably linked pretty highly with inflation numbers in Japan. It's price is currently being artificially manipulated higher by JA, and that sucks. But I think ultimately most of these articles and even the local discourse with other Japanese is just a socially acceptable topic to grumble about.

I think it's only Aeon that is pushing imported rice. While I see them prop up everywhere lately, indeed if none in the area I guess it's not readily available. Where it is though it doesn't seem unpopular, at least it isn't stuck on shelves. When I first saw it disappear, I thought it may have been a failed experiment but was happy to see it restocked.

> Also as an East Asian I can somewhat understand reluctance to change rice

I have deep Thai roots, and I don't think the same thing really exists there. Rice is just rice, and there are both old[0] and new[1] types of popular rice that are substantially different from the "standard" steamed white rice.

Maybe someone who’s Thai-Thai could chime in

0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glutinous_rice

1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Riceberry

You don't even need to consider an ally being a bad actor. When Ukraine was invaded, wheat prices (to name one) in Europe shot up. England in particular has fairly significant food security challenges.

As mentioned, I've done taste tests across various options and I can definitely tell the difference, which is why I pay more.

But as I also said, I can afford to pay more. I don't think the average Japanese is going to be effected. But as I mentioned, if you're budget conscious, not even considering non-Japanese rice is ridiculous.

I'm not sure tarrifs have a huge impact; Japan is Australia's largest buyer of rice, importing $63.8MUSD worth in 2023 per the OEC: https://oec.world/en/profile/bilateral-product/rice/reporter.... That's a lot of rice to buy, if it's more expensive and less desirable then domestic rice.

I see cal-rose for shy above 3000 yen. While I didn't grasp the details, I saw a news report which made it seems they've set up a quota (xx tons or something) of rice to be imported with almost no tariffs.

just in case people dont understand, the dry weight of rice is what gets measured.

There is this whole "It is not a proper meal unless there is a bowl of rice" kind of thinking. So you get rice with the potatoes that come with your Nikujaga, the mashed potatoes, steak and fried potatoes, etc. But then there is that completely arbitrary line that you do not get a bowl of rice with your noodles (unless it is for dunking into the leftover soup of your Ramen or Tsukemen), pasta, burger, etc.

I love Japanese food culture to bits, but figuring out when a bowl of rice is vital for a meal to even be considered a meal and when it is not is still a mystery to me after observing my wife and in-laws for more than a decade. Having been taught the "food pyramid" [1] line of thinking as a child, it just makes no sense to this gaijin how we can not substitute one source of carbohydrates with another, but I suppose that is what culture is for you.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Food_Guide_Pyramid

I am not Japanese, and don’t eat a lot of rice (twice a week maybe), but I don’t think it’s madness.

If you told me to eat rice instead of bread I would probably be just as horrified

Yeah, I've seen a fair amount of "but what will we eat?!" Netsuke-clutching and like... Y'all already have a trend towards bread for breakfast and you love your wafu pasta. Do that a couple of times a week.

But it's Japan, so I imagine there's plenty of Showa who think all change is to be valiently fought and that not eating rice prevents you from being "proper" Japanese.

But yakisoba is pasta/noodles right? Or is that a dish more tailored to Western? I've never been to Japan, I'm just wondering.

I recall watching a video on YouTube from the creator Paolo in Tokyo, and he mentioned that bread is now more popular than rice as a breakfast staple in Japan. Not sure how true it is though.

does it have the same sticky/wet/chewy texture that Japanese rice is famous for ?

the rice demand in Japan is extremely inelastic, they would rather eat less than consume foreign brands, and a lot of this comes from the trust they have in their industries.

hardly something to ridicule Japan or suggest they depart from their cultural values.

Maybe this is my millennial spoiled-for-choice nature, but that seems very strange to me. Though certainly it was (is?) similar in older generations here (overheard in the 80s: "pasta? no, no, we don't eat that foreign muck, it's meat and two veg in my house").

But if I lived somewhere where there are noticeable varieties of rice with local characters, it seems more fun to at least be open to trying them rather than stick with one for my life. Same with fresh pasta variations, olives etc in Italy, say.

Even for things like bread and coffee, I'll usually buy different kinds just to mix things up. Sourdough and Columbian today, rye and Ethiopian next week. I don't really have a "usual" of anything much that I'd be disturbed by changing to an alternative. Sometimes you get hits and occasionally misses, but that just means the you appreciate the hits more!

> I'm curious if anyone has noticed a significant taste difference between Japonica rice and those imported from China, Korea, or Vietnam.

Yes, but it's like somewhere between mineral water and coffee. That is, most can tell the difference when directly compared, and may even prefer one over the other, but in many cases they are interchangeable.

> Is one generally considered better tasting than the others?

IMHO, no, but you tend to prefer the type you eat most often. Going back to the coffee analogy, most people have a roast / style they prefer, but few would claim that it's better.

my mum once bought "japanese rice" from the supermarket that tasted noticeably different (and worse). had to check the label, turns out it was made in Vietnam.

But to put that in perspective, 10k tons is still only around the consumption for around 2.3m people, or less than 2% of the population.

I'm asking how much. We have a ring-fenced dairy sector and ring fenced apple sector in Australia, biosecurity typically defines the protectionism. We don't pay this level of excess for milk, cheese and apples.

You could give direct income support to rice farmers and not recover it by insane pricing for Japanese rice.

If memory serves, the whale meat was virtually given away but by no means cost nothing to hunt, flense and store.

Defensive domestic meat production can't work without other defensive measures. Otherwise, meat producers will just import cost-effective feed from other places, which will shrivel up once geopolitical instability hits.

I don't think just producing meat is enough to stabilize the price of food anywhere.

It helps, reducing most of the need for government intervention, but it doesn't seem to be enough.

Also, it's wasteful, at least from some point of view. You stabilize the price by consuming the excess, but you would still need to survive an eventual shortage. It may not be a huge problem worldwide, but Japan in particular doesn't have a lot of excess capacity.

The previous minister was fired after they admitted they didn't have to experience the expensive rice because they were given free rice by farms in Japan

> now-unpopular legacy of deregulating and wrecking the Japanese postal service

Unpopular with who? In hindsight, the post office was a bandaid that needed to be ripped off before it became the next JNR. If he didn't do that, the tax payer would be on the hook for its final implosion, which is happening right now.

California does make good rice. Japan is just hyper protectionist with extremely high import taxes on rice. They don't get imported because of this tax. The US produces both lower quality and high quality rice, as you might expect of an enormous country that exports half its rice. This is why prices remain high. Do you think someone who is poor would not buy cheaper rice that had 90% the quality if they could?

In fact the US produces plenty of Japanese rice (Japonica)

Yeah, as someone who started with Costco rice and slowly moved up the quality chain, there is a clear difference in taste between even average Japanese rice and most Costco rice. It would be interesting to see a price/quality comparison between the U.S. and Japanese Costcos though.

Costco sells a few varieties, this is the one we buy: https://www.costcobusinessdelivery.com/kokuho-rose-us-%231-e...

It's sushi rice, grown in CA, and it's very good. Same stuff we used to buy from our local Japanese grocery store in CA.

I can't remember how much I paid, but I was able to buy 10KG of grown-in-Japan short grain rice at Costco in Canada within the last year.

Speculating from online comments around it and from looking at bags of Calrose rice, they seem to be few decades behind in cultivation techniques and selective breeding improvements. The grains look smaller, less shiny and more yellowy. but technically they should be of the same strain.

Snobs will tell you yes, but Kokuho Rose is a California grown sushi rice that's good enough to be served over imported Japanese rice at Japanese restaurants. Really disappointing that the farm is closing up shop.

Japanese rice variety I think is called Japonica. I'm not sure if costco sells it.

Looking at the closest one to me, $9/5lb (surely much less per pound in a bigger bag)

Doesn't matter, its a whole other country

Because the poster's tone implies that American Calrose rice is inedible vs the superior Japanese rice. That's simply not true, and a bit reductionist.

Premium Tamanishiki (a type of premium sushi rice) is grown in the US and Japan, the US just produces a lot of types of rice. Japonica is a category of rice that includes Calrose for example which is grown primarily in California and is definitely an "American" rice given that it founded the California rice industry

I found a TikTok which showed rice in a Japanese Costco. A calrose variety American grown rice (Legrande Family rice) in the Japanese Costco was 2998 yen for 5KG. Must be tariffs causing the price to be so high.

Japan has very high rice tariffs to protect its domestic rice production. It is not peoples choice, it is not available at a cheaper price.

People who eat mostly rice are picky about the rice they eat.

Golden Rice 2 was on the market for about five years in the Philippines before it got banned. If anybody had wanted to grow it or eat it it could have been a different story. I was talking to a genetic engineer a few weeks ago who said that the sensory qualities weren't that great. Nothing would have stopped advocates in the US from planting a few acres and selling bags of it (it's approved and all) but had they done so it would have put the lie to the idea that the developers were being persecuted like Prometheus. I don't think it was anywhere near the threat that its opponents said it was but it was nowhere near the boon that its promoters said it was.

The study is a British joke? What are you talking about?

It seems to work with all rice, just with varying effectiveness.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S004896972...

Why do you think the study is targeting Japan? And why would the Brits joke about it?

Do you think I am? It's just good, general info. Arsenic in rice is problem, and getting worse.

I wonder why you would claim something like this, which literally can save lives, is false?

> Regulatory status

The use of rBGH is approved in the United States. However, many grocery store chains don’t carry milk from cows treated with rBGH. A United States Department of Agriculture survey conducted in 2014 found that fewer than 1 in 6 cows (15%) were being injected with rBGH.

https://www.cancer.org/cancer/risk-prevention/chemicals/reco...

The correct answer is zero. It’s the difference between opt out and opt in. I don’t and can’t shop at your supermarket.

Your comments in this subthread are against the guidelines. Issues of food safety and environmental externalities are important, and thus need to be discussed in a respectful and earnest way, not an inflammatory and combative one. Please read the guidelines and make an effort to observe them in future, notably these ones:

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I would say the downvotes are primarily because you are inferring a political purpose to the OP that isn't in evidence, and railing against it in a way that appears simply off topic.

"So, if I may be editorial as a Canadian: No." is a strange, nonsensical way to respond to a post titled "Price of rice in Japan falls below ¥4k per 5kg".

Complaining about it and sarcastically ascribing ideological positions to downvoters is probably not helping, either.