Wednesday, May 7, 2008

Japanese Rice Cycle: Golden Week Planting




The Rice Cycle season has begun.

47 comments:

  1. rice is my main staple..can't live without it

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  2. Shadow - The majority of the world thrives on rice, corn or beans. Did you know that the cyclone in Myanmar that has killed over 22,000 people and left up to a million others homeless has also wiped out the rice crops and fields (making them all salt water I imagine) and has pushed up the price of rice futures on the market?

    No human can live as an island, especially not now. We must all learn to live and work together into the future.

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  3. some of the big retail chain here in the states now have a limit on how much rice you can buy.. I suspect this will not get better soon

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  4. Question.... are you of Asian origin? Were you born in the States? Or have you immigrated there? I'm just wondering because very few "old americans" would say that rice is their main staple.

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  5. I immigrated to the US from south vietnam after the war but naturalized citizen now.. lately I've been eating persian food and I like their rice alot too especially with some butter

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  6. Thank you. I appreciate your reply. Good butter melted on anything usually tastes pretty good. Sometimes after cooking a dish (any dish, even stew or soup), I'll cut a slice of butter and lay it on top of the food while it is sitting on the table. It then melts slowly over the food from the heat and gives an added richer flavour. It has a positive effect on pretty much any food that is hot.

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  7. I usually prefer french butter with a slight salty taste.. put of of that on a some good french bread and toast it..

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  8. Yes, I agree. We only buy salted butter because the cheap butter tastes pretty much like grease which isn't all that tasty. These days butter is no longer available in Japan because of the rapid use of milk and milk products in India and China now. Seriously, we cannot buy butter! But the best butter we have been using for years now comes from a fermented milk product, and it tastes so good you can eat it just by itself. Normal N.A. butter I never liked, and eating it alone? Yuck! But this stuff is exquisite.

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  9. there is one rice thing that I always ask for at the persian food place, when they make the rice there is always the semi-burnt rice the bottom and they will give you a piece of it.. sort of like a rice patty

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  10. Oh, you know what? You can do that yourself, actually. In fact that's one of the delicacies over here in Japan, too. Instead of making your rice in a rice cooker, you can do it the traditional way in a pottery "crock pot" (but not the kind that North Americans think of... you have to think Asian for this, even Korean) made to sit over fire and bubble away slowly. Then when you finally scoop it all out, the bottom layer will be burned, black and stuck to the pottery. You can scrape this out and get the same thing. And do it at home!

    If you go camping, you can buy those "military camp kits". You know the pot that looks like the shape of binoculars, sort of? You can cook your rice in that, and it will do the same thing on the bottom where the aluminum or titanium pot is up against the fire.

    I have to admit that has a lot of really good taste.

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  11. sounds like you're a rice coneisuer.. hehe ok I'm off the network for borg-regeneration.. talk to you later!

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  12. I just love life and all the tastes that go with it!

    I've lived in Asia for two decades... how could one live here that long and NOT come to love the beauty of rice and all the dishes that go with it, eh?

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  13. Hmmm. Cam eating carbs? Isn't rice a carb?

    I used to love the butter that my grandmother would make when she had cows. Loved the fresh milk too. yummmmy! Except we always had to be careful where we let our cows graze because if they got into a milkweed the milk tasted awful! We'd always say it tasted, "blinky."

    Love you Cammy.

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  14. Don't you live in garlic country, too? This year when the locals bring their braided garlic to the farmer market I am going to get my friend to smoke some. Oh yeah, and some salt, too. Seriously Cam, if you know anyone with a smoker have them smoke some garlic for you. I tried it on the Isle of Wight. YUMMY!!!!! A braid of garlic takes about 40 hours to smoke.

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  15. Nothin' like Black beans and rice...a la Cubana.....

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  16. OH OH OH OH OH
    I WILL BE ON FAST INTERNET SOOOOOOOOOONNNN
    I CANT WAIT
    PEEEEEERRRRFECT TIMING
    I CANT CONTAIN MY EXCITEMENT
    IM A PLANTING GEEK

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  17. Nice video, Cam! We get to learn so much about Japan from you!

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  18. Abby - Thank you! I really appreciate your visit.

    TW - Thank you.

    Carrie - Good. Then you can catch up on my 285 videos in your "spare time". HAHAHAHAA

    JI - Nothin' like expelling copious quantities of flatus as well...

    Robin - I do indeed. There is a big field of it right behind my house. The stalks are about 2ft high now. Pretty soon, when it heats up a bit more, we'll be living in la cucina italiana!

    Sheila - I don't anymore, but I've been here for two decades now and only on EFAs for one. You have to remember I was a carbaholic and even more so as I was an "extreme athlete" with my cycling. I thought I NEEDED carbs for "energy". Oh, how wrong I was....

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  19. Im still waiting on that vid of the "Love Hotel's in Tokyo,

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  20. Kristen - Hmmm... You had better go ask Matt as he might have something "pink" for you! I've only stayed in one once and that was with Mayu on the way back from a friend's wedding in Osaka when it was really late and we didn't want to drive home in the middle of the night. We couldn't find any regular hotels so stayed at a Love Hotel. Damn near froze our behinds off....

    I guess you're supposed to phkkk like bunnies and generate so much heat that they need to keep the A/C cranked on ultra high. Damn, that's the only thing I remember about that night!

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  21. Brrr thats not good, those places are suppose to make sex fun, usually a little heat helps. Although maybe that was the idea you were suppose to generate your own heat. As for this butter dilemma, maybe we need to start sending you some butter care packages I just got some unsalted sweet butter on sale two packages ( 4 sticks each) , it was the store brand, but its good, they even had the Challenge European style butter on sale, thats good too especially for coooking,

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  22. Salted or nothin' for us, baby!

    I think that butter care packages would arrive very greasy, very soggy, very stinky, and very... empty.

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  23. By the way..I am impressed...only 1 minute 49 seconds!!...very good....I really likes this clip. I just wish you would of talked to one of the people doing the planting. It would been a nice personal touch. By the way, get a samll tripod, it would help keeping the camera steady when you're zoomed in all the way..Over all though, very nice job!

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  24. JI - Guess what? This camera doesn't have any threaded holes for tripods. It is the one MAJOR disadvantage to owning it. Thanks for the compliment.

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  25. That's too bad...you sure about that?. isn't there some other way or some other device that is used to make it tripod friendly?. I guess the only recommendation I have for u is don't shoot using the screen. Shoot through the view finder, that way you can hold it steady.

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  26. Thanks. I'll see if that makes it better next time. The model AFTER this model has a tripod mount. I'd have to make a major "jig" to hold this baby as the bottom is C-shaped, plastic, and houses the battery, and SD card.

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  27. What camera is it Cam?...who makes it?...Canon?

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  28. There's always BEANO!!!...that stuff really works!!

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  29. It's a Sanyo, Xacti.. and looking at it now I see there is no viewfinder! Ha! I never even realized that!

    http://us.sanyo.com/entertainment/cameracorder/index.cfm?productID=1455

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  30. Harmaceutical. The Rock Action Hero living in Tokyo.

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  31. Cam What ever happened to your documentery of rice in Japan when you first arrived?? It was mostley harvesting if I remember right.! I grew up making butter from fresh cows milk in a 5 gallon churn. I can remember when I was quite young I stuck my head into the churn and yelled to hear the echo.. The only problem was my ears would not let me get my head back out. Ever hear help echo I did and after a large commotion they held my ears in with kitchen knives and I got my head out!! Last time I did that dumb trick.!!!!

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  32. Just incase you do not remember a 5 gal churn would hold 22.37 ltrs.!!

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  33. Dad - The rice cycle blog I did? That's still waay over on my japannipon.com site here:

    http://japanippon.com/shizen/ricecycle/ricecycle.htm

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  34. It held both but the butter was easier to get out!!!!

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  35. " sounds of crickets", blank look on face "more sounds of crickets" blank look on face continues..............

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  36. Kristen - You're almost there. Just keep trying and the sounds of crickets may bring you to that enlightened stage.... Or just eat a pound of bacon. That might be quicker.

    Dad - How about the other "Dumb Dad Tricks"?

    You should tell them about the time you shot that bag of "sand" which had hardened into cement and how the window behind your head shattered as the bullet ricocheted off of that and bounced back.... Or how about the time you were riding your bike home late at night in the dark and hit that cow, broadside...

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  37. I prefer pork chops in a cider sauce

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  38. Will that be a thick cut? Or a thin one? And will that be lean, or juicy? And would you like a side of pork rind extra crispy to go with that?

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  39. go to my page here and see the Nigella Lawson video and that will tell you the type of chop needed.

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  40. You learn from your own dumb mistakes.. You can't pass them on because other people won't listen..especially if they are related.!!

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