I have been teaching myself how to make sushi these days at home, strictly following the steps explained in Cookbook.

Sushi is rice in vinegar in the traditional Japanese cuisine. It is usually topped with other ingredients, such as fish, meats, and vegetables. And a kind of seaweed called laver is often used. Sushi should be distinct from sashimi, which is the raw fish component, not the rice component. The word of sushi comes from an outdated grammatical form of a word that is no longer used in other contexts, which literally means “sour”.

There are various types of sushi: makizushi or rolls, nigirizushi, inarizushi, and chirashi-zushi etc. The recipe is so complicated and I spent an hour to learn the method of making the most basic type of sushi—Oshizushi, which is a pressed sushi made with the use of a wooden mold, called an oshibako. Anyway, the result is not bad, and I had a wonderful grand banquet of sushi with my roommates. What a life!