Shopping with Nishinomiya City Rice Vouchers Plus a Look Behind the Scenes at Rice Milling【Nishitsu Collab】

Have your rice vouchers arrived yet?

Rice vouchers seem to have arrived with a list of stores where you can use them

2026年3月1日

As a measure against rising prices, they’ve started being distributed to households around Nishinomiya City, though it seems some places haven’t received them yet

You can use them at rice shops, supermarkets, drugstores, and other places in the city.

But when someone says rice shop, don’t you actually not go to one that often?

Even if you buy rice at the supermarket, I started wondering what a rice shop is really like, so…

I took my rice vouchers and went to a rice shop!

And rice is heavy, isn’t it? Buying 5 or 10 kilos and carrying it home is rough.

So,

Here’s Karunori Rent-a-Car Hyogo Nishinomiya, familiar to Nishitsu readers. Located right by Hanshin-Kokudo Station, this rental car shop is recommended because the longer you rent, the cheaper it gets!

(Photo shows a C-class car)

With that, we were fully prepared to load the rice into the car and headed to Kurakuen!

We visited “増沢 米・酒店” in Kurakuen

This is 増沢 米・酒店, located on Koshikiiwa-suji in Kurakuen.

The shop moved to its current location in 1996, and 2026 marks its 30th anniversary since the move.

Here it is on the map↓

The address is 15-10 Ishibanecho, Nishinomiya City, Hyogo Prefecture.

It’s very close to Kitashukugawa Elementary School.

Inside the shop, of course there’s rice, but also Japanese sake, seasonal produce, and more. It’s the kind of place that makes you feel excited.

We got to see 30 kilos of brown rice being polished

And this time, amazingly, they let us see the rice polishing area behind the shop!

It looks seriously professional. Apparently, this is still considered a small rice polisher

The owner of 増沢 米・酒店 kindly agreed to Sachomi’s sudden interview request.

They’re going to polish 30 kilos of brown rice. It’s Koshihikari rice from Niigata!

Before polishing, the brown rice is this brown. I might be seeing this for the first time!

Thirty kilos is seriously heavy! Rice shop owners are amazing!

Into the rice polisher it goes.

Inside the machine, the brown rice is carried upward,

and separates into “white rice”

and “rice bran”

From 30 kilos of brown rice, you get about 27 kilos of white rice. That’s right! About 3 kilos becomes rice bran