Since moving here to the other side of the planet, I have never ceased wondering what it would be like to live in any number of other places in the world, because it's fascinating that human beings live everywhere. I am entertained by the notion that every little village I can find in my atlas supports communities of people, and that there are most likely people of a similar character there looking at Tokyo in their atlases and wondering what life here is like. I believe that every place in the world is pretty much the same as every other place.
So I sometimes ask my Japanese acquaintances, "If you could live your life anywhere, where would you like to live?" Many Japanese impress me with the wanderlust that they communicate. But so often it happens that they express a longing for Japanese rice as an addendum to their fantasies.
No problem, I say. You can buy any kind of rice at supermarkets in Sydney, or Kansas City, or Nairobi, or Reykjavik, or Bombay. You can even have it delivered.
"But it's not the same as Japanese rice," they reply. "Japanese rice is so delicious."
I don't get it. Rice is rice. By itself it is quite bland, like other grains. The same is true of bread. It is how we prepare the food, what we add to it while cooking etc., that imbues it with taste. Yet the mythology of rice looms so large in Japanese thinking that all I hear is a chorus of, "No, you're wrong." I could be wrong, of course, but naturally I don't think so.
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