RICE as the main

It took me a while to get used to the Japanese concept of rice as the main dish. As you can see, this tea house I dined at was particularly generous in its serving of 16-grain glutinous rice.

In my family, I was always told that I ate too much rice and that instead, I should eat more meat, fish, and veggies. When I visited China, we often went 'sans' rice because it was a pity to fill up our stomachs with cheap rice.

Rice in Japan is expensive and considered one of the most essential if not THE essential part of one's meal. During WWII and its subsequent years, Japanese people had to mix rice with barley, a sign of meager times. Now it has become trendy among younger Japanese to eat rice with other grains (esp. barley) though older people tend to turn their noses up at it, still remembering barley+rice's symbolic past.