RETTO DISCOVERIES · 003
How living in Japan taught me to notice rice in its own right.
By Robin · 25 August 2026
I can remember the meal when rice stopped being something I simply ate with other food.
It was my first home-cooked meal with my future parents-in-law in Japan.
They had cooked shinmai Koshihikari from Minamiuonuma in Niigata — newly harvested rice from that year's crop.
Until then, I had eaten plenty of rice without thinking very much about it. At restaurants. At home. Alongside other dishes.
I had reached my thirties without ever really thinking of rice as something worth tasting in its own right.
Rice was useful. Filling. Something that carried the flavours around it.
Fuel, really.
Then I tasted this rice.
It was warm, glossy and slightly sticky, with a sweetness I had never really noticed in rice before.
I remember simply being surprised by how good it tasted.
For the first time, I thought:
This rice is actually delicious.
That seems like an obvious discovery now.
At the time, it changed something.
Rice has a season
That meal also introduced me to the idea of shinmai.
The word refers to newly harvested rice. In Japan, it is more than an attractive description: rules govern when harvested and processed rice can be labelled shinmai.
I had never considered that rice could have a season that people actually looked forward to.
Of course it could.
Rice is an agricultural crop. It grows somewhere. It is harvested at a particular time. Different places have different water, soil and weather.
But I had eaten it for decades without really connecting the rice in my bowl to any of those things.
Rice fields in Minamiuonuma, Niigata.
The rice at that first meal came from Minamiuonuma.
As I learnt more, I began to understand why the area is so closely associated with Koshihikari. Minamiuonuma is a heavy-snow region, and the city points to its abundant snowmelt water, differences between daytime and night-time temperatures, suitable soils and generations of cultivation knowledge as important parts of its rice-growing environment.
What stayed with me most, though, was simpler.
People were paying attention to where their rice came from.
Until then, it had barely occurred to me that there was something to pay attention to.
From something on the side to something worth noticing
Before living in Japan, most of the rice I cooked in England was basmati, with occasional risotto rice.
There is nothing wrong with either. They have their own qualities.
The difference was how I thought about them.
I mostly thought about what I was going to put with the rice.
In Japan, I started thinking about the rice too.
Its variety. Where it came from. Whether it was new-season rice. How it had been washed and cooked. How much water had been used.
Even having a dedicated rice cooker in an ordinary kitchen told me something. In the homes around me in Japan, it was simply a normal part of cooking rice properly. Back in England, I had barely heard of such a thing.
It wasn't that one food culture cared about food and another didn't.
Living between the two simply taught me to notice different things.
And once I noticed rice, I began seeing how deeply it runs through Japanese food culture — eaten by itself and turned into onigiri, mochi, sake and many other things.
But some of my strongest memories of rice are also the simplest.
The onigiri at kilometre twenty
For years, one of my favourite foods during long training runs in Japan was a simple salted white-rice onigiri from a convenience store.
No elaborate filling.
No sauce.
Just rice and salt.
After twenty kilometres or more, I would genuinely look forward to one.
Part of the appeal was practical. I was hungry, I was running a long way, and rice with salt was exactly the sort of simple food I wanted.
There is something almost elemental about that combination — in the same way that bread and salt can be enough.
A convenience-store onigiri is obviously different from one freshly made with exceptional rice.
But even the convenience-store version taught me something.
Rice did not always need something added to it to become interesting.
Sometimes rice and a little salt were enough.
What the salt reveals
That is what I have been thinking about again while making onigiri here in England.
I tasted some of the warm rice plain first.
There was warmth, softness, a light sweetness and that familiar slightly sticky texture.
Plain onigiri.
Then I tasted it with a small amount of Moshio.
With a small pinch of Moshio.
To me, the rice did not simply become saltier.
It seemed sweeter.
Its flavour felt more pronounced on my tongue, and that sweetness seemed to stay with me a little longer afterwards.
That was simply what I noticed.
But it reminded me of something I had first understood around my future parents-in-law's table years ago.
Sometimes adding something small makes you notice what was already there.
Try the rice twice
There is a very easy way to explore this yourself.
Next time you have freshly cooked rice, don't season the whole bowl immediately.
Take one small spoonful while it is still warm.
Taste it.
Notice the texture. The warmth. Any sweetness you can detect. What remains after you swallow.
Then take another spoonful and add only a small pinch of salt.
Taste it again.
Don't try to find the answer I found.
Just notice what changes.
Does the rice seem sweeter?
Does its flavour become more obvious?
Do you notice the texture differently?
Does the taste remain for longer?
Or does it simply taste saltier?
There is no correct result.
The comparison is the point.
Rice deserves attention
I still eat rice as part of a meal, of course.
But I no longer think of it simply as the neutral thing underneath everything else.
Living in Japan taught me that rice has variety, place, season and character.
Sometimes the thing you add helps you notice what was there all along.
Robin
RETTO — between Japan and England
Sources
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Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries of Japan, 新米の表示の定義を教えてください。 — Definition of the “shinmai” designation.
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Minamiuonuma City, 南魚沼産コシヒカリの美味しさの秘密 — Why Minamiuonuma Koshihikari tastes the way it does.
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Minamiuonuma City, コシヒカリ誕生物語 — The story of Koshihikari.