At 5-feet-9-inches tall and 150 pounds, Ed Sugimoto is not a big guy, but he’s a heavyweight when it comes to rice.

The wireless manager for Oceanic Time Warner Cable is crazy about the ubiquitous starch. He usually eats two bowls of it for breakfast, lunch and dinner — sometimes as a meal in itself, topped with nori (seaweed), a raw egg and shoyu, or chirimenjako (small dried flavored fish).

"I grew up in Hawaii as a second-generation Japanese-American," Sugimoto said. "I used to eat four bowls of rice at every meal, and I often ate the rice that other family members couldn’t finish. With all the rice I ate, I’m surprised I don’t look like a sumo wrestler!"

Launching a festival celebrating rice was something Sugimoto dreamed of doing for a long time. Dozens of festivals are held statewide every year, and he was surprised that none of them focused on rice.

"Rice is Hawaii’s most important food staple, and it’s consumed in some form or another by virtually all the ethnic groups that make up our melting pot," Sugimoto said. "It deserves to have a day in the spotlight."

A few years ago, he approached his friend Lincoln Jacobe, who owns and operates Hawaii Pacific Entertainment (HPE), a full-service marketing, public relations and event-planning business. "I told him about my idea," Sugimoto said, "and he said, ‘Let’s do it!’ Since September is National Rice Month, it’s the perfect time to hold a rice festival."

Last year’s inaugural Hawaii Rice Fest drew 1,500 people to Aloha Tower Marketplace in downtown Honolulu. Next Sunday, Sugimoto expects more than 5,000 rice lovers to gather at the festival’s larger, new venue — Magic Island in Ala Moana Beach Park.

HPE is again producing the event, which benefits Lanakila Meals on Wheels. Planned are a Spam musubi-eating contest, cooking demonstrations pairing professional chefs with celebrity "sous chefs," and the making and weighing of what hopefully will set the Guinness World Record for the largest Spam musubi in the world. Molded on site with more than 300 cups of rice, the mammoth musubi is expected to tip the scale at 220 pounds.

The festival’s "guest of honor" will be the recently released "The Hawaii Book of Rice: Tales, Trivia and 101 Great Recipes," which was written by this columnist. Participants in the amateur and professional division cook-offs will be preparing the recipes they contributed to the book. A portion of all of the book’s sales goes to the Hawaii Foodbank, and a portion of sales made at the Rice Fest also will benefit Meals on Wheels.

On the judging panel for the cook-offs will be restaurant reviewers John Heckathorn from Honolulu magazine, Nadine Kam from the Honolulu Star-Advertiser, and bloggers Melissa Chang and Mari Taketa from Nonstop Honolulu.

Festival goers can also peruse the offerings of more than 15 vendors, including Kat’s Sushi, known for its ono sushi and bentos; Taste & See Delights, which will be selling coffee, dark cocoa, li hing and macadamia nut puffed rice and other treats; and the Hawaiian Style Chili Co., whose specialties include owner Dayne Rego’s original chili served with "two scoops rice," of course.

"Like Hawaii’s population, the beauty of rice lies in its diversity," Sugimoto said. "You can make so many delicious things with it — even pie, cake and cookies! Kamaaina have wonderful recipes and stories to share about rice. We may not speak the same language or have the same cultural background, but we all love rice — and that’s what the Hawaii Rice Fest is about."

Cheryl Chee Tsutsumi is a Honolulu-based freelance writer whose travel features for the Star-Advertiser have won many Society of American Travel Writers awards.