When I lived in Japan the first time, one of the things that JCMU provided for all the dorm-dwellers was a rice cooker in every room. While I thought it was broken for the first few uses (turns out I was using the wrong button, easy to do when they are in Japanese and you didn’t get an instruction manual), once I finally got the hang of it it became an invaluable tool that I probably used almost every day. I mean, its Japan, rice is cheap, and making food is pretty hard when all the ingredients are unfamiliar. I even started eating rice for breakfast (albeit very infrequently) when I figured out how to set the rice cooker to have the rice done and ready for me when I woke up in the morning.

So when I got back to the states, I wanted to get a rice cooker of my own. I waffled back and forth for a while on what model I should get, but eventually I just drove down to a chinese grocery near my house and picked one up for $30. Well, you get what you pay for because it sucks. It has one button, you push it down to turn it on, and it pops up when the rice is done cooking. It has a warming function too, and that is the extent of its abilities. It really can’t cook rice worth a damn either, at least not Japanese rice, which was the only thing I was making it in. On and off for a year I thought about importing a Japanese rice cooker, a really nice one. One that has a brain and will sing me a tune when my rice is done and could even have rice made for me when I wake up if I so desired. But I never got around to it……

Fast forward to uh…two weeks ago. I’m in my apartment, with my one pan, 2 cups and a bowl. I have two refrigerators, but no toaster or oven. My one gas burner and miniature sink plus lack of counter space makes cooking anything requiring more than boiling water rather difficult. Whats a girl to do? Well, buy a rice cooker!

Luckily here in Japan is a chain of stores called Yodobashi Camera. I’m assuming it started out as a small camera store some time ago, but today they are these gigantic stores that carry just about every electronics item ever made, and more. If I could get away with carrying a bunch of crap onto the plane ride back with me, I’d be buying half the store. They had a 107″ flat screen television. One hundred and seven inches. But I digress. After work one day I went with another intern, Andrew, to browse Yodobashi and pick out a rice cooker that I had read a review of online. When we got there though I couldn’t find that specific model, and instead was met with at least 100 others. After perhaps 20 minutes of deliberation, I decided to go with a different model by the same company, which happened to be the current #3 best seller at Yodobashi. That must stand for something.

I brought my little claim slip to the cash register, and paid in cash. The helpful salesman then took the box and secured it with some straps, and used two of them to attach a little handle to the box so that I would have no problem carrying it home!

Look at that cute little elephant. Its the mascot of the brand Zojirushi. ‘Zou’ means elephant in Japanese.

And now lets open the box. Oooh whats in there? Looks like the instructions..

Its so cute! And look at that, theres a clock on it and the time is correct right out of the box! I love it.

Here it is right out of the box.

So 20 minutes later (as you can see from the time) I had attempted to read the instructions, given up, and found instructions in English on Zojirushi’s US website. Going from that I was able to figure out how to start the rice cooker. Actually it turned out to be as easy as plugging it in and pushing one button, because it assumes you are making regular Japanese white rice. If you want to do some other kind of rice, you select it using the menu button (middle on the right side). It can do a bunch of other stuff that I don’t even know yet. You can even use it to bake bread!

Four minutes left until its done!

And the rice is cooked! It automatically then goes onto warming mode, and will keep your rice fresh and hot for I don’t even know how long. It also played a little song when the countdown reached 0.

Mmm, I’m really hungry. Can’t wait to eat it!

Toss that rice into a bowl and top it with some mapo tofu. Sadly I picked up the ready made stuff that was just a packet of sauce and tofu pieces that you heat up, I meant to get the sauce mix and I bought tofu to make it myself. Oh well, next time.. Lets eat!