Guess I should have known, coming to Japan, that I shouldn’t try to stand out or make waves. Our kitchen situation has been the topic of some goings-on here at JCMU. Within the past two days we’ve had two different groups of people come in and look at it, with the Japanese group being very understanding and confirming that yes, indeed, the fridge is gross and needs to be replaced, while the American group came in with dubious looks on their faces, questioned us fully about whether the fridge still functions, where its leaking, etc. I was then also given the “official” instructions on how to use the rice cooker, that we should “really wait an hour for it to cook” since waiting 45 minutes produced no results.

-2 hours later-

The rice cooker does indeed work! However, it does take 1 hour to make rice, which sucks. So probably I’ll just be cooking rice the old fashioned way. Oh well.