rice

A new rice plant has been developed which grows "snorkels" when exposed to floods.

A paper in the journal Nature, describes how the plant elongates rapidly in response to being submerged.

One of the scientists, Motoyaki Ashikari from Nagoya University in Japan, said "the impact is huge".

The popularity of this artwork is increasing. First attempted by the farmers in 1993 - today the patterns created in the rice fields are aided with hi-tech planning.

Yatsuhashi is well known as a product of Kyoto and can be bought at many of the tourist stores around the Temples. Have you tried mikan (orange) yatsuhashi?

One of Tsukiji's oldest food fry shops, and also one of my favorite places for ebi fry and rice.

In a recent scientific achievement, researchers in Japan have found the cause of rice absorbing so much arsenic from the soil. In their report published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, they said they had identified two proteins in rice plants that appeared to transport arsenic from the soil to the grain

This rice scandal really gets out of hand!

followup on the poisoned rice scandal

Rice containing twice the legal limit of methamidophos insecticide was shipped by Mikasa Foods and sold to a local nursery school and a nursing care home for the aged, city officials said, adding that the contaminated rice poses no health risk.

If there is no health risk, then why are legal limits set where they are?

This spring, with some nations close to panic over global rice supplies, Japan confronted a different problem -- huge swathes of paddy fields lying fallow due to a 37-year-old price support policy that limits planting. Now, with the world more anxious about its future food sources than any time since the 1960s, some analysts and politicians say it's time for change.