Rice packs ('tawara')
Origin : Japan
Made of : porcelain - potery
Classification : things / food
Maker : ?
About "tawara - rice packs" (tawara - 俵) :
Tawara is a traditional straw bale (barrel shape pack) used to keep rice. Special tawara bales are partly buried around the sumo dohyō (ring) to mark its limits.
Tawara style bales containing sake sold in a supermarket
About "rice" (kome - 米) :
Nearly every meal in Japan includes rice. Rice is mostly served in a bowl apart from the other dishes with no flavouring or salt added. Cooked rice is called 'Gohan'.
Rice is also used as a flower to make for instance mochi (rice cake). It's also the main ingredient of sake, the Japanese rice alcohol.
The Japanese rice is a special short-grain type and very sticky. The Japanese State aims to be self-sufficient in rice production and controls the market by subsidizing the local growers and taxing heavily the foreign rice.
Rice growing in Japan
Japanese rice fields after the crop
