99% of the time I et my rice as plain as it comes out of the cooker, and I have to fight off grimaces when I see westerners reach for the soy sauce.

But I do have a guilty pleasure along those lines. One day a week the buffet near my office serves gyoza. But they only have two versions of rice - fried and what looks like plain white. But the plain rice is actually buttered, sprinkled with parsely and a bit under cooked. The owner is chinese, but I don't think the cook is! So I put a layer of it in the to-go box and pile on the goyza. When I get back to the office it all gets soaked in ponzu. This indulgeance is as must to make the rice palatable as it is to curb my urge to drink ponzu straight from the bottle. :eek: Since I am not fond of tamari, I can't explain my addiction to ponzu; I just try to control it.

Sure...sounds like we have similar tastes...

Funny. Despite how close the Chinese and Japanese are, their cultures are so radically different ^.^ If you were being hosted in Taiwan, and you didn't pour sauce and all kinds of stuff on your rice, they'd be thoroughly insulted XD (I'm exaggerating a bit)

I've actually taken to the korean way of eating white rice,

egg
hot pepper paste. =D

Can't eat rice without pepper paste now. XD

I eat rice with brown sugar....

I've never tried it with anything else, since I'm so picky =P

That actually sounds pretty good. Brown sugar beats white cane sugar in many ways, this is one of them ;]

When I was younger I used to love eating rice, microwaved with butter and salt >< It was like my favorite midnight snack.

Just as you would never put butter or brown sugar on rice in Japan, pouring soy sauce on top is a no-no. Acceptable things are furikake, egg, green tea, seaweed bits...and yes there are pour people in Japan. You will find the culturally traditional rice toppings (though surely 95% of people eat it just plain most of time) are far from expensive.

Most of the time I eat white rice plain or with furikake, unless baachan isn't around. =D Then I either pour massive amounts of ketchup on it or butter.

I only have ketchup with fried rice XD It's good though. That or sweet and spicy sauce.