[Nyororin]

Originally Posted by steven

I think you mean "senmai"


That was funny! I think I noticed I messed that up and thought I caught it in an edit. I laughed the first time, and it's still funny :P. I can't believe I let that slip.

Covering it with senzai would be pretty surprising and definitely a new experience for me too. I think I`d pass on eating it after that...

Actually, though it does depend on the area, it`s usually called "seimai". The in-laws call it senmai, so I am guessing the same thing goes for your area too.

That would be nice to have different styles of rice throughout the week! I haven't heard about keeping it brown until you cook it thing before. I'll have to talk to my girlfriend about that and see if we can't do that the next time we get a bag 'o rice.

Usually the machines offer a bunch of different settings ranging from just taking the outside dustiness off all the way to just leaving the very center. The outer coating tends to be denser than the inside and deal with changes in temperature better. Once you`ve polished it, the rice slowly dries out completely and starts to form little cracks that make it sort of "melt" when you cook it. This is part of the reason that last year`s rice is usually thrown out - it tastes like crap when you cook it.

The seimaiki we have is this one. Ignore their suggested price - it`s insane. You can find it for about 8000~10000 at any normal electronics store (Yamada, Eiden, Joshin, 100man Volt if you`ve got those around there, etc). You can do up to 5 gou at once, and it`s a free adjustment so you can set it however you like.

I definately get what you're saying Nyororin. It's just that the sentiment that it's a "poor persons food" seems to be what Japanese people feel about it whether it's true or not. I talked to my girlfriend about it tonight again and told her that the guy in that article went to Kanazawa to check out the soy sauce there-- which is close by to where we live. She said her dad has a lot of good soy sauce (he likes sashimi a lot) and she mentioned that she had seen some that was made for putting on rice! I'm sure that soy sauce was not cheap at all.

I wasn`t debating whether there were some people out there who did indeed eat rice with soy sauce. I just seriously doubt that the practice came from the eating habits of Japanese during the occupation.
Prior to it being made into a completely liquid sauce (Heian era), there was a form of shoyu (forget the name at this moment) which retained the grain and which was eaten on rice or other things. It was a very high class food.

I was trying to point out that just because people say it isn`t eaten because it feels like a poor person`s food doesn`t mean that it ever WAS eaten as a poor person`s food - which would kind of make the probability of people eating it in the poor years after the war pretty low.