One day at a restaurant that specializes in tofu, I heard the people at the next table ordering "raisu." "Raisu, hitotsu." I thought I had misunderstood, but eventually I could also read the side-order in katakana on menus in other restaurants. That you can order rice at a Japanese restaurant seems obvious, but that it's called "rice" is one of those things in Japan that has a reason you can only guess. My guess it that the word kome means rice, the grain, and the word gohan means rice, but also refers to food generally. No word for just an extra bowl of rice. So raisu. But, it used to be that if you were eating food (gohan), you were eating rice (gohan).

My grandfather came from the small village of Naegi, now incorporated into the larger city of Nakatsugawa in Gifu Prefecture. His family apparently owned enough land to parcel a portion out to tenants who paid in rice. In those days, rice was legal tender. A large storehouse used to stand where the family turned that rice into sake. My father once speculated that the fall of this family may have came about from drinking that legal tender. Recently the family who since owns and farms the land in Naegi sent us a large sack of rice produced on that very land. Naegi no okome. I washed and cooked several cups of it very carefully in the rice cooker, and we all ate it very carefully, trying at first to taste each grain. It was an odd little ritual like eating your ancestors. Or eating legal tender.

I was born in the year of the rabbit. On evenings with a full moon, I look up to decipher the outline of a rabbit pounding rice into the giant omochi that is, they say, the moon. When I was a child, my grandmother stuck a few grains of rice to the lobes of my ears. I always thought my ears were too big, but my grandmother said big lobes were good luck; if you can stick rice to your lobes, you'll be rich. Kanemochi. The sticky rice knows. Legal tender here.

In Japan, rice must be the sticky sort and also polished white. One eats the purity of it. It doesn't matter if its nutrition is negligible. You can rarely find in stores any other sort of rice or grain for that matter. No brown rice. No barley. No cracked wheat. No corn meal. No long grain. A Brazilian woman explained the difference between the short and long grains: "Japanese rice: Juntos venceremos!/Together we will succeed! Brazilian rice: Sozinho, consigo!/I can do it myself!" But, heaven forbid that the Japanese should eat the long grain rice of Thailand.

Everyone can tell you how Thai rice was introduced into the Japanese market only to be given a bad rep and thrown away by the tons. They complained: It had a funny smell. Someone found a piece of insect in it. It wasn't sticky. It was cheap. It was just a food staple from a poor country. In that sense, it wasn't rice. It wasn't legal tender. Who's eating it now? Probably the Brazilians.

It's the rainy season in Japan. Water fills rice paddies across the countryside. Houses, mini marts and factories encroach upon the planted land, replacing the fields gradually, but nothing yet replaces the reign of rice. Rare in some parts of the country to see plantings of vegetables or fruits. And rarer still: corn, beans, other grains, or cover crops. From the looks of the supermarket offerings, variety and quantity are sacrificed for an almost cloned perfection in the produce. For example, every eggplant looks like every other eggplant in size and shape. The same goes for cucumbers, tomatoes, onions, potatoes, apples, oranges, melons, etc. Someone produced the incredible statistic that Japan throws away imperfect vegetables and fruits in quantities that equal the weight of the total production of rice each year. You pay for this statistic: 1 tomato = $1.00. 1 apple = $1.00. 1 head of lettuce = $2.00. 1/4 head of nappa cabbage = $1.50. 10 kilos/20 lbs rice = $40.00.

Although food (gohan) is rice (gohan), obviously rice is not really food. Certainly it is also sake, nuka, roof thatching, paper, glue, starch, matting, and even in the past, foot gear and raincoats. But beyond these byproducts, its production, its purity, its mythic qualities, its value, define every other thing called food. Everything is measured against it. Legal tender. The stubbornness of rice. The persistence of rice. The gold standard was abolished years ago, but not this rice standard.

Miso-shiru

Bring a pot of water with dashi to boil. Add a scoop of miso paste, and chopped vegetables, seaweed, mushrooms or tofu.

Feijao

Separate the beans from any pebbles or insects. Wash and soak the beans. Cook in pressure cooker until tender. In a separate pan, saut* onions, garlic, salt in oil or fat. Smash a cup of the cooked beans into this mixture to make a thickening paste, then stir everything back into the cooked beans. Add more salt and pepper to taste.

Rice-and-beans. Arroz-e-feijao. Inseparable. For Brazilians, the only food that sustains. When the early Japanese immigrants to Brazil arrived on coffee plantations in the twenties, they received a ration of rice, beans, salt, coffee and sugar. Sugar has always been plentiful in Brazil, and in those days the Japanese knew only to add it to the beans. After several weeks of the sweet stuff, the salty fare might have been a pleasant surprise. In any case, rice and beans became an accepted staple, the food that makes the people, the daily blessing, a comida sagrada. If gohan (and probably miso soup) is food to Japanese, arroz-e-feijao is gohan to Brazilians.

Thanks to this cultivation of the Brazilian palette, the first commercial ventures among Brazilians in Japan have been related to the making and sale of Brazilian food. What is it that the food of your homeland, of your mother's kitchen, will provide you? Why do we crave it so badly? Why do our tongues pull us home? Was mom's cooking really that good? When Japanese immigrants got to Brazil, they spent much of their years laboring to make vegetables, tofu, miso, and shoyu. Now, the dekasegi in Japan finance a lucrative network of imports from Brazil, New Zealand, Australia, and the Philippines to eat the stuff that pleases the literal mother tongue: mandioca, Sonho de Valsa, Guaran*, p黍 de queijo, ling殃溝, goiabada, fub*, suco de maracuj*.

In the center of every enclave of Brazilian life in Japan, you find food. Sometimes it is a restaurant; sometimes a cantina and grocery store, or a karaoke bar. Sometimes it is a truck stocked with Brazilian goods making designated stops to the lodgings of factory workers in remote towns. Often it is the obento/marmita lady, the woman who delivers boxed lunches and dinners to factory workers.

The obento lady brings a boxed lunch with the always dependable arroz-e-feijao, a piece of meat, and a side of vegetables. She says the young Brazilian men say that the Japanese lunches don't "sustain." Rice and pickles don't make it. They need food that sticks to your ribs. Some don't care for fish. In the first months that they arrive, they all lose weight quickly. The obento lady also brings news, gossip, motherly advice. Often she's walking social services; she'll give you information about health insurance, your visa, your driver's license. She's been here awhile, started her own business, knows the ropes. Her cell phone rings constantly as she delivers her food. "Carlos, listen, you perforated your lungs once already. Forget the overtime for awhile. Give it a rest. Do you hear me?" "Luis? I heard you moved to Toyota. Of course there's a friend of mine over there who makes obento. Do you want her telephone number?"

Arroz-e-feij黍, the daily blessing, the tie that binds, not just food but a social construct.

Yaki-Niku

Arrange thin slices of file mignon on a plate with a variety of cut vegetables, tofu and mushroom. Cook at the table on a hot plate with a little oil. Serve with rice, beer and sake.

Bife Milanesa

Pound slices of beef flat. Dip them in egg and bread crumbs and fry. Serve with rice and beans.

About seven years ago, a small butcher shop in the town of Yoro in Gifu put out a flyer offering imported meat from Australia at extraordinarily cheap prices. The flyer attracted several Brazilians who came to buy the meat and who also returned on the following Sunday, despite the fact that the offer was for one week only. The Brazilians peered past the counter and asked about some pieces of meat on the block. This was meat cut away from the fine rib-eye or perhaps from the mignon that Japanese customers expected to buy, but the Brazilians offered to take this unwanted meat. Every weekend, the Brazilians returned for more meat, for the side cuts and the tougher meats. Finally, the owner found herself too busy to handle these Brazilians and invited them into the shop to cut away the pieces they wanted: picanha, colch黍 duro, colch黍 mole, ponta de agulha.

In time, Brazilians came by the busloads, set up barbecue pits on the empty lot on the side of the shop, roasted meat, played music, sang and danced. The owners covered the empty lot when it became cold, and the churrasco and the music continued. They gave up trying to sell fancy cuts of fine Hida and Kobe beef at 1,200yen/$12.00 per 100 grams, and transformed the business to provide imported Australian meat cheaply for a more voracious clientele, for Brazilians whose families can be counted on to each buy as much as 10 kilos of meat---beef, chicken, pork, bacon, ham and sausages---per week. Brazilian grocery items were added to the shop. The empty lot turned into a churrascaria restaurant complete with live music and karaoke. It only remained to sponsor a soccer team to turn completely Brazilian. Now there are four other such shops in four other cities in Japan, and they also do a mail order business, shipping meat directly to the homes of individuals in places as far as Okinawa and Hokkaido. For this purpose, 100 tons of meat are shipped from Australia every month.

As for the owners, the husband is Japanese; the wife is Korean. It's one of those Creole situations: Korean Japanese buying Australian meat and selling it in Japan to Brazilians and Peruvians.

Gyoza

Fill gyoza wrappers with a mixture of ground pork and chopped vegetables. Arrange them on a pan, frying them all on one side in a small amount of oil. When browned, spill about a 1/4 cup of water into the pan, lower heat, cover and cook until tender.

Pastel

Fill pastel wrappers with cheese, hearts of palm, tomatoes, or ground beef. Fry until crisp and golden.

I learned from my grandmother that after rice, everything else is okazu. At her house, lunch was always a bowl of rice and every jar of tsukemono, pickled fish, salted squid, she could bring out of the refrigerator. I imagine okazu to be an old term, not used much in Japan today. The Hawaiians still use it; in Hilo, I tried a sushi they call okazu-maki. The Brazilians have a similar term: mistura. Everything after rice and beans is mistura. Gyoza is okazu. Pastel is mistura.

I don't know if anyone has ever done a study of the origins of the pastel in Brazil. I assume the Chinese brought fried wonton to Brazil and adopted it to Brazilian tastes. But it was the Japanese immigrants who also became attached to its production, frying it behind stands at the feiras or open market places. In Brazil, fried wonton became much larger in size. Instead of a pork filling, there is cheese, hearts of palm, tomatoes, or ground beef. The dough is thicker; the secret in the recipe they say is pinga, that most potent of cane brandies. Now pastel is back in Asia, but it is back as pastel. It is not Chinese or Korean or even Japanese; it is Brazilian. And the secret in the dough is pinga. Still, the other day, I ate a fried wonton filled with cheese and omochi.

We visited the very traditional village of Shirakawa where all the houses are 200 years-old and have thatched roofs. Also special to this area is the mountain cooking which includes fern sprouts, bamboo shoots and mushrooms gathered from the mountain side. Curiously we visited a factory that packages these mountain veggies because we had heard that a Brazilian family works in this factory. As it turns out, all the materials---fern sprouts, mushrooms, shoots---for this local specialty are imported from China and Russia, and have been from the last 12 years. To use the local produce would be far too expensive. So there you have it: unknown to thousands of tourists who pass this way, the packages of mountain vegetables bought as omiyage come from China and Russia and are made and packaged by Brazilians.

An Okinawan nutritionist in Yokohama opened a Brazilian restaurant because she noticed that the young Brazilians coming to work in Japan were all losing weight, all seemed to have difficulty eating Japanese food. She wondered about this and went to Brazil to learn to cook Brazilian dishes. A Brazilian cook came to Japan to study Japanese cuisine; now she is the chef at a Brazilian restaurant in Nagoya whose fine food attracts a clientele both Japanese and Brazilian. A nikkei whose family traveled from Okinawa to Bolivia to Brazil to Yokohama recently opened her kitchen in Kawasaki offering both Okinawan and Brazilian dishes. Everybody is making okazu. Everybody is making mistura.

Chawanmushi

Beat eggs and a clear dashi soup together. Place pieces of chicken, ginko nuts, bamboo shoots, mushroom and fish cake in ceramic cups. Pour egg-soup mixture on top. Steam over boiling water until set. Serve hot in cups.

Pudim

Beat eggs, sweetened condensed milk and cream in blender. Pour into a pan lined with sugar caramelized with cinnamon and cloves. Steam over boiling water until set. When cool, turn the pudim over on a plate to serve.

Lately I have been using the chawanmushi cups to make Brazilian pudim. The last time I made pastel, I tried it with cheese and omochi. Using omochi in this way reminded me that some California company makes pizza omochi, garlic-cheese omochi and raisin-cinnamon omochi. Another company specializes in jalepeno and smoked tofu. The other day we received a fancy box of chocolate covered sembei. In Japan, McDonald's has a teriyaki-chicken burger, the pizzas all have corn on them, and curry rice comes with tsukemono. I heard some Brazilian women have used the rice cooker to bake cakes. Nothing is sacred. Your tradition is someone else's originality. It's a big taste adventure. And then again, "raisu, hitotsu." Gochisosamadeshita.