Japanese rice

For a start, different types have different tastes and textures: you may be familiar with the long, harder-grained Basmati rice used in Indian cooking, and you may have experienced good old English rice pudding which uses short-grained rice. Then there is brown rice, wild / black rice .....

Typical Japanese rice is not like any of these. Although common people often used to eat brown rice or millet, both of which are much healthier, in modern day Japan it is usually polished white - but the grains are quite short, though not as short as pudding rice, and the basic plain boiled roice (gohan) is cooked in a different way, so that the grains tend to stick together slightly. This makes it easier to pick up and eat. But it is not a horrible glutinous mess! Nor is it soft on the outside and crunchy in the middle, if you cook it properly.

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Other dishes include

gomokumeshi - rice boiled with small pieces of vegetable, strictly speaking five, e.g. peas, mushroom, carrot, lotus root, burdock. Some people add small pieces of fish or chicken.

sushi - yes, sushi is rice, not raw fish! It is actually rice with a little rice vinegar added (rice vinegar is lighter and not as sharp as many other types), usually served cold. It is used for a variety of dishes (see the section on sushi) - including the one with raw fish, but there are others.

yaki meshi (fried rice) - not really very common; certainly not as popular as in Chinese cooking

Even rice has health benefits
As well as boosting energy, rice contains anti-cancer protease inhibitors; compared with other seeds, however, rice is the least likely to produce intestinal gas or bowel problems. In fact, boiled rice is used to reduce diarrhoea. It does not contain gluten, so is a useful alternative (e.g. to wheat) for those on a gluten-free diet. It is also thought to help combat high blood pressure and kidney problems. A study by an American professor showed that eating rice (and beans) was linked to low rates of colon, breast and prostate cancer.

Brown rice has additional health benefits, although this is less popular in modern Japan.

How to cook rice