Wash and cook the rice. Use shortgrain.
Heat water to 67C before adding the grain and slowly mix in the rice until no longer clumped together. Mash at 65C for 60 mins from start to finish. If sparging, make sure the water temp is close to 65C to ensure there is no burnt flavour.
Do the boil for 60 mins. Near the end of boil (10 mins before) add a half teaspoon of yeast nutrient. Cool wort immediately and try to get it as low as 18C before transferring the wort to a fermenter.
The recommendation for Novalager pitching is to pitch dry while the wort is being transferred, to ensure it is mixed in and oxigenated.
Novalager can be fermented at lower (12 Celcius) or higher (18-20C) temperatures. It should ferment quickly at 18 degrees, thus the choice to do that here.
If everything goes well, the beer should ferment fairly dry. When I did this recipe, my starting gravity was fairly high, so it finished higher at 1.016. It still tasted much like Sapporo. Cheers (or kampai!)