See openRawResource. Something like this should work:
InputStream is = getResources().openRawResource(R.raw.json_file);
Writer writer = new StringWriter();
char[] buffer = new char[1024];
try {
Reader reader = new BufferedReader(new InputStreamReader(is, "UTF-8"));
int n;
while ((n = reader.read(buffer)) != -1) {
writer.write(buffer, 0, n);
}
} finally {
is.close();
}
String jsonString = writer.toString();