Tamaki Haiga Short Grain Rice

This is Tamaki Haiga Short Grain Rice.  Haiga-mai is a type of brown rice with the outer bran removed while keeping the nutritious haiga or the germ, intact.  It is also called as half polished rice. 

This is what we currently eat for our rice.  The regular price on this 15 pounds bag is $30.98.  It is on sale at Marukai this week (until this Thursday) for only $20.98.  That's a saving of $10. 

What I like about this rice:

1. It is packaged in 3 bags of 5 pounds each.  I like it this way because it will keep the freshness as we only need to open one bag each time we finished.


2. It is easy to cook with a rice cooker although initial adjustment may be needed. For me, I will add 1 cup of water to 1 cup of rice. If you have brown rice setting on your rice cooker, use that. Or else, like me, I leave the lid ajar when cooking the rice to give air to avoid water bubble overflow.

3.  It is a type of brown rice so the texture is chewy yet fluffy.

Daiso Irvine Opening Hours

You have to love Daiso so much. They offers items as low as $1.50 and these items are so cute and adorable. Most of these items are imported from Japan. You can find household items, ceramic dishes, storage, bento kits, stationery, snacks and more. Daiso Irvine is located in Heritage Plaza, Walnut and Culver.
 

Opening hours:

Mon - Sat: 10am to 9pm

Sun: 10am to 8pm

On their opening day, they gave out raffle tickets for the first 250 customers. My number didn't come up as a winner, may be yours did. Check out the list here for the winning raffle tickets.

Grand Opening Daiso Irvine

Arrived at Heritage Plaza at 9:45am and there was a long line along the sidewalk up to the CVS Pharmacy. I joined the line at the end, but I wasn't the last because no longer than 1 minute later, more people came to join the que.



This was the line to enter Daiso Japan new store in Irvine. There were 200 giveaways available for the first 200 customers who bought something. And there was a raffle as well, prizes include a bit 40" TV, iPad2 and more. A couple of customers in front of me asked a security guard how long the line was. He replied that they were probably between the 240-250 customers. I think I will have a chance to grab a giveaway. My tactic would be going in, grab 1 item and go line up to pay.

By the time I got in to the store, it wasn't crowded at all. I couldn't imagine there was more than 200 people inside. There was a long line to pay. Quickly, I grabbed a two compartment container and went to the line to pay. After paying, I walked out the store and a girl passed me a bag filled with food goodies after she scribbled my receipt. It felt like Halloween in spring. Here are the stuff found in the bag.
 

Will have to return to the store tomorrow to find out the winner for the raffle.