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RICE is to the Japanese what bread is to the Americans. No meal is complete without it, and the rice paddies which spring endlessly throughout the small country see to it that every meal is complete.

Servicemen never partake of a Japanese meal without downing huge piles of the white and fluffy food. It is gohan, the food of the masses. It goes especially well with sukiyaki, the delicious cooked beef that tantalizes tourists. Also tantalizing is sake, a very popular and potent wine made from rice. It is heated and drunk from tiny cups. When drunk from large cups, it tends to get one stinko (brother, you've had it!").

Rice also has a special fascination for the foreigner when he watches the Japanese eat it out of a bowl with chopsticks. The Japanese diner holds the rice-filled bowl just below his mouth and sends the chopsticks whirling from bowl to mouth with amazing speed. In no time at all, the bowl is emptied and the diner's tummy is filled. 

Rice, flavored with soy sauce, soon becomes a "must" on the serviceman's menu. And when he gets back home, he still likes to have it available in large quantities.

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