🌾 お米

Named after a legendary beauty, this rice quietly powers Japan's convenience-store onigiri empire

22 consecutive years of Japan's top rating -- Yamagata's best-kept secret that locals refused to share

Japan's ultimate all-rounder -- born from cold-weather disaster, built to pair with absolutely anything

Koshihikari was born in Fukui, not Niigata -- 60 years later, the birthplace strikes back with its own masterpiece

Western Japan's quiet queen -- a silk-white, heat-resistant rice steadily capturing market share in a warming world

The undisputed king of Japanese rice — one variety that still dominates a third of the nation's paddies after 70 years

Born from a government super-project, this laboratory-engineered rice pushes stickiness to its absolute limit

The rice with Japan's most playful name scored the nation's highest flavor rating -- Kumamoto's forest bear bites back

Hokkaido's most-eaten rice -- a versatile workhorse that handles sushi, fried rice, and bento with equal ease

A heat-fighting heavyweight from Kyushu -- plump grains, deep sweetness, and a smile-inducing name

Akita's next-generation flagship -- 38 years after Akitakomachi, 120,000 candidates distilled into one

Once Koshihikari's equal rival, this clean-finishing rice is the one sushi masters still swear by

Aomori's thunderbolt debut -- the rice that shattered the myth that Japan's apple country could not grow great grain

Niigata's bold answer to climate change -- a large-grained newcomer built for the next 100 years of rice

Yamagata's decade-long quest for perfection -- a rice so lustrous they named it 'the Shining Princess'

Tsuyahime's tough younger brother -- a chewy, grain-forward rice built to stand up to steak and curry

The rice that rewrote Hokkaido's reputation -- blending an Ainu word for 'beautiful' with a half-century dream