Fall is in the air! With the return of cooler weather, your appetite may be making a comeback too. Luckily, fall is a great time for gourmets to indulge in Japan. There's an abundance of fresh produce in season, and some of the tastiest fish are returning to the colder waters up north. Most of all, it's the time for shin-mai (new-harvest rice). Japanese people can be fanatical when it comes to rice, and the new harvest is eagerly anticipated every year.
When it comes to rice, you can divide people into two camps in Japan. The first camp consists of the "white rice or no rice" people, who insist that the only rice worth eating is pure, unflavored white rice, simply steamed. My stepfather, who's from Aomori prefecture in the Tohoku region, represents this camp. He's adamant that only plain white rice is worth eating, the perfect centerpiece to a meal. He frowns at the idea of, in his mind, adulterating the purity of rice by cooking anything in it.
I belong to the second camp, though, who like to cook rice in different ways occasionally.