Not completely sure I can tell you how to make it easier – basically, you’ll just get a feel for it eventually. One possible option may be to look at actual Japanese recipes. http://cookpad.com/ is a good site, but sadly there’s no easy way to find the English equivalent – the English version of the website used to link directly back to the original Japanese recipes, but when they threw open their doors to any international slob who wanted to upload a recipe (in the process burying all the Japanese recipes I liked the site for under endless generic American recipes) they also removed the link to the untranslated version.

As it so happens, though, I just bought a dual-language Japanese/English cookbook a few weeks ago. =)

So, “rice” has different words depending on what state it’s in. Rice plant = 稲 (いね）, raw rice = 米 (こめ), cooked rice = ごはん, cooked rice served with Western dishes = ライス (らいす).

To heat = 熱する (ねっする)

To mix = 混ぜる (まぜる)

To cut = 切る (きる)

Sauce = ソース （そーす) – side note, soy sauce = しょうゆ

Potato = じゃがいも – this one’s a tiny bit complex, because they’ve got a lot of potato varieties over there (if it ends with いも, it’s a type of potato), but じゃがいも is what we think of when we hear the word “potato”. It’s also written as ポテト (ぽてと), though I think that’s largely only in the context of potato chips or fried potatoes.

Bread = パン (ぱん) – comes from Portuguese

To add (to the pot) = 入れる (いれる), to add (to other ingredients) = 加える (くわえる)