Food in Japan

Most peaches arrive in the heat of midsummer. Yet one Japanese variety beats them all to the table. People call it Himemaruko, a super-early white peach. It ripens in early June, weeks before the usual rush. So it offers the very first taste of peach season. The fruit is small, blushed red, and sweetly fragrant. Himemaruko ひめまるこ early white peach is still rare and new...

Sake owes its very existence to a tiny living thing. That thing is yeast, a microbe you cannot see. So what is yeast in sake brewing? Yeast is the microorganism that turns sugar into alcohol. During fermentation, it also releases carbon dioxide and aroma. Without yeast, sake would stay a sweet, flat liquid. With yeast, that liquid becomes a fragrant alcoholic drink. S...

Open any bottle of premium sake, and you will see a number on the label. It often reads something like 60 percent or 50 percent. That figure points to rice polishing, one of sake’s defining steps. So what is rice polishing in sake brewing? Rice polishing is the milling away of a rice grain’s outer layers before brewing. Brewers do this to reach the clean, starchy hear...

Japan has a long tradition of boxed meals. From simple rice and pickles to carefully arranged multi-dish spreads, bento culture reflects the care Japanese people bring to everyday food. Among all the bento formats available today, (幕の内弁当) stands out as the most ...

Sake begins with a quiet transformation inside a grain of rice. That transformation has a name: koji. So what is koji in sake brewing? Koji is steamed rice grown with a special mold, Aspergillus oryzae. The mold spreads through each grain and releases powerful enzymes. Those enzymes turn hard rice starch into simple sugar. Yeast then feeds on that sugar and makes alco...