Wednesday, October 29, 2008

Not what I thought it was...


I thought it just made sense to buy a rice cooker while in Japan. So I looked them up on the trusty Amazon.co.jp site because they are fast and one click away. Never mind that you can't read most of the website. The English part is simply the product name, the description and reviews etc. are in Japanese. So I ordered my rice cooker. I found it under rice cookers. I chose one without any buttons because I remembered a woman who told me she couldn't figure out which buttons to push because it was all in Japanese. I thought I was being smart. I didn't need any bells and whistles, just simply rice. It showed up at my door 2 days later. My parents were visiting at the time and so I gave it a go. Let's make lots o rice. I rinsed my Japanese rice, followed the water to rice ratio I found via google and plugged in the sucker. I expected nice sticky Japanese rice 20 minutes later. Hmm...more like 3 hours later. And it tasted awful. I thought, well maybe that's the way it was supposed to be, maybe I bought the wrong kind of rice. I studied the pictures in the user manual wondering what I could possibly have done wrong. I tried it again a week later. Same. I tried Basmati rice. Same. Gross.

I decided to bring the manual to Connor's preschool today to ask some Japanese moms to explain the directions to me. After a few minutes they looked at me with apologetic eyes and said, "It's not a rice cooker. I've never seen anything like this." I said, "Well, what is it then?" They said, "A rice warmer, for people who make a lot of rice." Ohhhhhh. That explains it. They asked how much I payed for it. 7,000 Yen. Ugh. They felt really sorry for me and said that when I do buy an actual rice cooker, with buttons, that they would come to my house and show me how to work it. So now, I am storing candy corns in the rice cooker,I mean warmer, because the kids would never think to look in there!

3 comments:

ssmurray said...

Good to hear from you again. We missed you at the annual Thiel Brothers Halloween Bash. There was a freakin' fire eater for entertainment! I had scary thoughts of Griff and Nate taking a shot at it next time they get together. Is there Halloween in Japan? Do they at least do something at their school if not all over? Just curious. Send pics of costumes.

ssmurray said...

I forgot to say that I thought your contraption was going to wind up being a portable toilet or something.

ssmurray said...

You and Kate could be matching Harajuku girls for Halloween.