Japanese Food

When I was getting ready to come to Japan, one of the tings I looked forward to most was the food. I'm not a fan of sashimi, and haven't been brave enough yet to try natto, but pretty much everything I've eaten here has been, if not delicious, then at least not bad. One thing I didn't think about enough was cooking for myself. Sure I knew I'd be doing it, but I just kinda assumed that it wouldn't be any different than back home. Well I come from a small town in the backwoods that has not very many options for ingredients, and to me that wasn't strange, then I got here and had so much more at my disposal, so I didn't even know where to start! Not to mention everything is written in Japanese on the food packages themselves. (When I'm lucky it's katakana which I can sort of read and sort of sounds like English when said out loud, with guesswork... Ugh)

So on to my food adventures, I'm a poor college student so I started with a bag of rice. 2 kilos 500 grams (I'm American I have no clue the equivalence for that in pounds it feels like about 4-5) for 1900 yen. Easy enough. Here's a fun fact almost nobody in Japan knows how to cook rice on a stove! So I've one-uped them in that way at least (when you don't think that I really can't use a Japanese rice cooker cause all the buttons are written with kanji).

Japanese (Short Grained) Rice - Recipe

It doesn't matter if the cup you're using is American or Japanese because the amounts in the two measures are different, just make sure you don't measure part of the recipe with one and part with the other.

1cup rice, rinsed so the water is mostly clear (Japanese people say this is important, I don't know why)
1 cup water
Saucepan with lid that fits (to keep steam in)

Bring water to boil, pour in rinsed and drained rice, give it a stir.
Turn heat down to low, set timer for 20 min, put on lid.
Do not remove lid until timer is up unless you want al-dente rice.

Want more rice? 2 cups rice = 2 cups water etc.
Using long grained rice? 1 cup rice = 2 cups water
And that's it. Simple enough.