Japanese rice is a stuff that comes to the table dense and stuck together and yet comes undone at a touch of the chopsticks, but undone without ever scattering, as if division occurred only to produce still another irreducible cohesion.
Japanese rice is defined by a contradiction of substance; it is at once cohesive and detachable; its substantial destination is the fragment, the clump, the volatile conglomerate; it is the only element of weight in all of Japanese alimentation; it is what sinks, in opposition to what floats