MAKING SUSHI 🍣🇯🇵

Today as it is our second to last Japanese lesson for the term we made rice balls. Rice balls are a traditional Japanese food; they are made from rice, beef or chicken or fish, and is typically accompanied by soy sauce or mayonnaise, or other seasoning. 

We had newspaper on the table as we did this. This was to prevent making a mess in Mr William's (almost) new room. We also used glad wrap as opposed to using water on our hands just for hygiene purposes. 

First of all we were all allocated a bowl of sticky white rice. We then put in a seasoning of some sort - it smelled like vinegar, and apparently it was supposed to make the rice stick together better. I doubt we needed it, it was so sticky already.
Next of all we were handed out some seaweed snacks. Although not specifically Japanese (they were Korean) it is very traditional for seaweed to be used in Japanese sushi dishes. We crumbled the seaweed up and mixed it with the rice for extra flavour. I didn't like the taste of it by itself, however. Jay, who takes spicy food very well, failed to mention that they were wasabi flavoured seaweed snacks. Thanks Jay. 


Next we rolled the glad wrap, kind of moulding the rice into a ball. I found difficulty in the seaweed and sushi not sticking together because the pieces were so big. I had to wrap it really tight to get the desired ball.

Lastly, after our ball was moulded we topped it off with mayonnaise or soy sauce. I LOVE soy sauce (like, I'm obsessed with it) so I obviously used that. However I don't like Mayonnaise so I avoided that.

Before eating, we said a traditional Japanse prayer that schoolchildren typically say before eating. "Itadakimasu". We did this with our hands together to be respectful. 

My rice ball was kind of good. I don't typically go for rice balls because I prefer sushi rolls but this one was good for my first time trying it. I would have preferred it with meat or chicken inside but we didn't have access to that, other than that the rice was cooked well and the seaweed didn't taste quite as painful as it did by itself. I didn't get any photos of mine but I've linked some of Chloe and and Rheanna's!