How does your rice taste? A new Japanese dictionary is cooking up a wealth of words for the country’s revered staple
- Is there a standard, simpler way of describing ‘rice that has a sweet aroma, is fluffy yet firm with a strong umami flavour’? There will be soon
- A research centre and a private company in Japan are working on a rice terminology dictionary. They have about 100 words and are in the process of defining them
It is said that the Inuit have dozens of words to describe snow. In Japan, it is the same for rice. Now, a collaborative effort is under way to refine and define the terminology used to describe the nation’s dietary staple.
A national research centre and a private company are working together to think up definitions for a rice terminology dictionary to accurately and descriptively catalogue the words that define rice’s taste, aroma and texture in the Japanese language.
In January, at the National Agriculture and Food Research Organisation (Naro) in Tsukuba, Ibaraki prefecture, food researcher Fumiyo Hayakawa and others were engaged in heated discussions over freshly cooked rice.
They tried to define terminology that describes differences in rice firmness or graininess, for instance. Hayakawa’s team is partnering with Itochu Food Sales and Marketing, a subsidiary of major trading house Itochu Corporation, to create the dictionary.