logoalt Hacker News

dluanyesterday at 11:33 PM3 repliesview on HN

This has been a fun/interesting ordeal to watch from far away, though I think people in Japan are feeling a lot of pain right now.

In Hawaii we get a lot of imported Japanese rice mainly due to prevalence of Japanese daily groceries here. The typical grocery store (eg donki) carries more than a few strains of rice - koshihikari, hitomebore, nanatsuboshi, hatsushimo, etc. These make a noticeable difference for your spam musubi's, but especially for sushi. We usually rotate between whatever's the cheapest Japanese imported rice, around $30-40 for ~15lbs, but I would say most people here eat Japanese rice.

At the start of the War on Trade, we noticed marginal price increases on Japanese rice, but especially noticed steep discounts on California calrose, like $15 for 25lbs, which to me felt insane. The local specialty rice store just had to issue a price increase notice last week (https://the-rice-factory-honolulu.square.site), though this seems like it's more the rice shortage than tariffs.

Thoughts and prayers though to the Japanese who will have to eat South Korean rice, once the national reserve stock dwindles. Hope they make it through this struggle period.


Replies

daedrdevyesterday at 11:43 PM

Some ammounts of hitomebore and koshihikari are produced in the US, I noticed that in Hmart you see product of USA under the same brand as the Japanese rice sometimes (especially recently) Calrose is a japonica rice though obviously produced mainly in California

show 1 reply
Dylanlaceytoday at 2:41 AM

Delicious, but dealing psychic damage.