other ingredients. Traditional Japanese sushi consists of rice flavored with vinegar sauce and various raw or cooked ingredients. (also known as , , or ) is a preparation of white, short-grained, Japanese rice mixed with a dressing consisting of rice vinegar, sugar, salt, and occasionally kombu and sake. It must be cooled to room temperature before being used for a sushi filling, or it will get too sticky while seasoned. Traditionally, it is mixed with a hangiri (a round, flat-bottom wooden tub or barrel) and a (a wooden paddle). Sushi rice is prepared with short-grain Japanese rice, which has a consistency that differs from long-grain strains such as those from India, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Thailand, and Vietnam. The essential quality is its stickiness or glutinousness, although the type of rice used for sushi differs from glutinous rice. Freshly harvested rice () typically contains too much water and requires extra time to drain the rice cooker after washing. In some fusion cuisine restaurants, short-grain brown rice and wild rice are also used. There are regional variations in sushi rice, and individual chefs have their methods. Most of the variations are in the rice vinegar dressing: the Kantō region (or East Japan) version of the dressing commonly uses more salt; in Kansai region (or West Japan), the dressing has more sugar. Nori The dark green seaweed wrappers used in are called . Nori is a type of algae traditionally cultivated in the harbors of Japan. Originally, algae was scraped from dock pilings, rolled out into thin, edible sheets, and dried in the sun, similar to making rice paper. Today, the commercial product is farmed, processed, toasted, packaged, and sold in sheets. The size of a nori sheet influences the size of . A full-size sheet produces , and a half produces and . To produce and some other , an appropriately-sized piece of nori is cut from a whole sheet. Nori by itself is an edible snack and is available with salt or flavored with teriyaki sauce. The flavored variety, however, tends to be of lesser quality and is not suitable for sushi. When making , a paper-thin omelette may replace a sheet of nori as the wrapping. The omelette is traditionally made on a rectangular omelette pan, known as a , and used to form the pouch for the rice and fillings. The ingredients used inside sushi are called and are,