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!

No, I’m exaggerating. My apartment is very reasonably sized for what I’m paying (about $600 a month) and is fine for one person. In total it is 7.5 mats-mats being a tatami mat, a traditional floor covering, which are 90×180cm (or about 1.62 square meters) in size each-or around 120 square feet total. At least this is what they told me before I moved in. I think its probably larger than that, because the main room itself seems like a 10×12ft room, with the bathroom and kitchen area combined probably another 10×12ft room. The shower/tub room is really big and I was pleasantly surprised to find that I can actually take a shower while standing up!

When I moved in, the place was absolutely filthy. My first weekend here I spent hours scrubbing the floors to get them clean. I had to buy sheets, pillows, hangers, towels, chopsticks, pots and pans, dishes, and on and on and on. And then there was the problem with my balcony. The night I moved in it was pouring rain outside. This wouldn’t normally be a problem except the rain was flooding my balcony to the point that I couldn’t even open the door. Turns out there is an emergency hatch on the roof above my balcony, and the water was just flooding down from every edge of it. In the following days it also started to flood when it wasn’t raining, so my only theory is that whoever lives above me is running their washing machine and its draining down onto my balcony. I’ve already informed my landlord about it in email, twice, so hopefully that gets resolved soon! He (the landlord) does seem rather responsive and did bring me a pillow, blanket, and a set of plates and a pan to use.

Anyway, any issues this apartment have are essentially negated by the fact that its a 20 second walk to the nearest train station, and is only 3 stops away on the same subway line as the consulate. Total commute time: ~13 minutes.

Onward to photos:

The bedroom/main room as viewed from the doorway to the kitchen area:

Looking back towards the entrance to the main room you can see my bed on one side, fridge with microwave on top and door to balcony on the other:

Looking towards my doorway, and a picture of my minuscule kitchen. When I clean dishes I have to put a towel onto the floor and rest them there, because there is no counter space at all. Cooking food is pretty difficult too in such a confined space. It pretty much sucks:

Opposite the kitchen is this door. Hmm, where does it lead? Well to the bathroom of course! Its separated into three rooms. In the main area is the sink and vanity. There are doors on the left and right sides:

On the left side is the toilet. Thats all thats in there, just a toilet all by its lonesome. On the right is this folding door…

…which leads to the combo shower and bathtub room. See what you’re supposed to do is shower yourself off while sitting on a little stool, then stepping into your bathtub which is full of hot water. Except baths really aren’t my thing especially when its hot and humid outside all day. Oh well, at least I have a lot of space:

Because I am a very smart graduate student, I arrived in Osaka about 12 hours before I was expected to start working at the consulate. No worries, spending the night without sheets or pillows coupled with jet lag meant I was awake at 5am anyway. Of course it was pouring rain and I didn’t have an umbrella, or any food in my apartment to eat for breakfast, but that was quickly remedied by the Family Mart convenience store just around the corner from my apartment. The rental agency also didn’t lie about the apartment being an all of 20 second walk to the Miyakojima subway station. I was also very pleasantly surprised to find the station I needed to go to was all of 3 stops and less than a 10 minute ride away from my apartment.

When I arrived at Higashi Umeda station on the Tanimachi line, I esentially guessed which exit I needed to take and started walking in the direction I thought the consulate was based on the map I had printed out in the States. I walked a ways down what I was sure was the correct street, but when I reached a river that was past the consulate, I had to turn around and go back. Turns out I was just on the wrong side of the street. The consulate turned out to be a rather boring looking building about 10 stories tall, but what set it apart were the police on every corner and stationed at the door. Police vehicles also sat parked on the street in front of the consulate, along with a stacked pile of what looked like riot shields.

When I approached the door one of the guards asked me something about a visa, and on reflex I just answered ‘hai’ to him, so he ushered me over to a table outside the building. When I finally found my passport buried in my purse, he seemed surprised and then asked me “Nikki-san desu ka?” Apparently even the guards had been told I was arriving! He showed me inside where I exchanged my passport for a visitor’s badge and was escorted up to the 7th floor to meet my new boss and coworkers.

I’m writing this about a week after it actually happened and honestly I’m pretty fuzzy on the details now. I was extremely jet lagged and hadn’t eaten in some 16 hours or so (and didn’t get to eat what I picked up from the conbini until after a meeting got out around 10:30am), so I was feeling fairly terrible as I was escorted from floor to floor meeting everyone and learning the names of everyone that I would ultimately forget two minutes after shaking their hand. Eventually I went out to lunch with my boss and ate all of a half a bowl of soup while I attempted not to stare into space too obviously. Actually my boss turned out to be a very friendly woman and I have gotten along with her very well since meeting her. At lunch she told me about all the places she had been stationed at before working the Osaka-Kobe consulate. She told me that yes, I was an intern, but half of the reason for being here was to learn more about public affairs and public diplomacy as it applied to the responsibilities of overseas consulates and embassies. I was glad for this because frankly I don’t have a clue about what consulates do (outside of issuing visas) and have never had any experience working in public affairs or public diplomacy.

By the time we were done with lunch, it was getting to be around 1pm Japan time. When we got back to the office, I told my boss and coworkers my apartment woes. They graciously gave me a bunch of paper plates and plastic cutlery, a mug, some pillows that were laying about the office, and (I’m not kidding) some table cloths to use as sheets. Yay for slumming in Japan!

After gifts of sheets I was sent on my way back home, where I told myself I needed to stay awake as long as possible and go to sleep around 10pm if I could so that I could get un-jetlagged. I don’t care what you’ve heard, theres no cure for jet lag and you just have to suffer through it until your sleep schedule has been corrected. Typically it takes me a full two days. When I was in France last year I got over it by the next day, but that was mostly because I managed to stay awake for something ridiculous like 34 hours straight (I just didn’t stop moving or sit down at all, we tackled the Champs-Elysees on my very first day there). Anyway, instead of staying awake I pretty much just laid on my bed for about 4 hours half trying to sleep before I got up enough energy to walk across the street to the grocery store and pick up some cleaning supplies. Oh yeah, did I tell you that not only was my apartment devoid of everything, it was also completely filthy? Like, my white socks I was wearing when I moved in on Wednesday night had turned completely black on the bottom the floors were so dirty? Ew. So I loaded up on cleaning supplies and for food bought (since I had no way of cooking anything at this point): some unagi sashimi, a bundle of bananas, and orange juice. Brought all that back to my apartment and then basically laid around in a stupor for the rest of the night.

And so begins the first day of my summer in Japan. I was driven to Detroit Metropolitan Airport by my mother and sister at the lovely time of 6:30am for my 7:44am departure on an All Nippon Airways (ANA) flight operated by United. This was actually my first time ever flying another besides Northwest out of Detroit, so I was treated to the decaying Smith Terminal as my point of departure. There was some worry that, with the first leg of my trip being purely domestic, United might want to charge me a $100+ fee for checking two bags, but I was able to get my boarding passes and check both bags for free without much hassle at the e-ticket counter.

Once I left the check in desk, I walked towards the security checkpoints for terminal C, only to walk around a corner and find the line goes all the way down a long hall. I follow the line down the hall, only to find it keeps going on and on and on and wraps all the way around the terminal and ends right where I had just checked in! With less than an hour until my flight took off I was starting to feel a bit worried, however the line progressed at a reasonable pace and I made it to the end and through security in less than 30 minutes. I managed to rip off half of a thumbnail while putting my shoes back and, and since I didn’t leave any nail clippers in my carry on bag (I could use them as a weapon!!), I had to restrain myself for the next 20 or so hours from picking at it, chewing it, or ripping it off altogether. Ugh.

The flight from Detroit to Chicago was unremarkable. I can’t even remember if they served us any drinks. I sat there with my eyes closed listening to the chatter between the plane and the ground for most of the ride.

8am-ish and now I’m in Chicago. (Remember there is an hour difference from Ann Arbor time.) My flight for Tokyo doesn’t take off until close to 11, so I kill the next 3 hours by eating some hash browns from McDonald’s, wasting $6.95 to use the airport wifi, and attempting to barter with the ANA people to give me something, anything other than a middle seat. Well 10:30 rolled around and they’re calling (more like butchering the pronunciation of) everyone’s names but mine, so it looks like the next 14 hours will be spent stuck between (please god) quiet, healthy and good-smelling people.

The following 14 hours actually turn out to be one of the best trans-Pacific, or heck one of the best flights I’ve ever been on. I mean yeah, having the middle seat really sucked, but the food-the food was AMAZING. I had eel over rice with a side of cold soba noodles, a plate of raw salmon and an oyster, along with a roll, a fruit plate, and Haagen-Dazs ice cream. And this was only the first meal. Intermediate snack packs, sandwiches, teas (hot or cold), juice, and finally a second meal near the end of the flight, consisting of cheese-filled tortellini topped with mushrooms and tomato sauce, more fruit and a mini pack of Oreos. And of course more of whatever I wanted to drink. Seriously, it was really really good. Besides the food, the plane was amazingly new. Like, motion sensors to turn on the water in the bathrooms new. They also had the awesome ability to relay images of the clouds or the runway on take-off to the personal TV screens because of outside mounted cameras. I encountered this on a JAL domestic flight in Japan several years ago and thought it was just about the coolest thing ever. And of course, the personal TV. I think I watched five films completely. Jumper (hey look its set in Ann Arbor!), I Am Legend, All The President’s Men, P.S. I Love You, and Lions for Lambs which I couldn’t switch off quick enough. The fight attendants were also all young Japanese women, who would don aprons when serving food and were very friendly and smiley through the entire flight, quite the change from any flight to Japan on Northwest.

Sadly I cannot sleep on planes. Ever. I’ve really tried every trick there is. Don’t sleep the night before. Take Nyquil or something stronger that contains Codeine. Drink some alcohol mid-flight. Nope. So when I finally arrived at Narita International Airport in Tokyo around 1:30pm local time, I had been awake for about 20 hours, and still had another four before my connecting flight to Osaka would take off. I changed all of my travelers checks at the currency exchange counter, rechecked my bags with ANA (but not before finally being able to cut off that offending finger nail! Relief!) and then wandered my way over to the ANA ‘lounge’ which was really just some seats grouped together near their check-in counters. Turned on the laptop and prepared to pay more money to waste on airport wifi, but they actually provided it for free! Got to chat with the few people still awake at that hour in the US, sent out a few emails, and played some blockles. Eventually I decided to head through security and sit at my gate, and hopefully catch a few zzz’s.

We ended up boarding the plane somewhat later than when we were scheduled to take off, and I was starting to regret my decision to wait until I was in Osaka to seek out some kind of food for dinner. On the upside, I ended up sitting in business class for the hour or so long flight! Its too bad my gaijin-sized body was too big for the seat when it folded out into a bed, but its not likely that I would have been able to sleep mid-flight anyway.

Luckily (sadly?) the flight was over almost as soon as it began, and after waiting forever for my luggage to show up, I was standing outside Osaka Itami airport buying a bus ticket to Umeda station. Now around 8:30pm, I was dropped off behind some hotel near the station and had to ask someone where a phone might be located. I was lucky to be able to call someone from the apartment rental agency who would pick me up and drive me to my apartment that was located in some region of Osaka that I was completely ignorant about. I passed the time in the car talking to the driver in Japanese about American films while listening to his CD of American music that I wondered if he could even understand the words of.

It didn’t take very long to get to the apartment building, which I found to have a cafe occupying the first floor. To get to my apartment we had to walk up a few stairs, unlock a door, and continue up the stairs to the second floor. My apartment turned out to be the very first one on the second floor. When I walked in, I did a quick survey to find it to be just about what I expected: one main room with a bed, TV, a couple book cases, a table with two chairs and a refrigerator in the corner with a microwave on top of it. To get to the main space you walked through the kitchen and the bathroom area, which was seperated from the rest of the space with a door. If you open the main door, in front of you is the sink and a mirror. To your left is another door, leading to a small room with just a toilet, and to the right are a fold-in door to the shower/bathtub room. Actually I was pretty impressed with the bathroom area, its practically as large as the main room. But I was disappointed with the kitchen. I have a whole one gas burner and sink, together they aren’t even a meter long. And there is no counter space to speak of at all. But hey, I do have a total of two refrigerators. But no plates, pans, cutlery, sheets, pillows, towels, trashcans or anything else besides the bare furniture. But hey, at least there is cable and internet!

The lease-signing and explanation of seemed to take forever because my driver could barely speak English, and while we had heartily conversed in Japanese on the way over to the apartment, he apparently didn’t feel comfortable enough attempting to answer any of my questions about the lease himself and instead called, at least a half dozen times, <em>his</em> boss, who I had been originally emailing back and forth before coming to Japan and who spoke pretty good English. He left at one point to photo copy my passport, which made me a bit nervous, but when he came back he informed me that the gas hadn’t yet been turned on. That meant, no hot water. After 24+ hours of traveling and having to show up for work the following morning, not having any hot water available was pretty much unacceptable. Luckily the driver was able to call the gas company and negotiate for them to send someone out and turn it on TONIGHT! I’m pretty sure theres no way any utilities company in the US would send someone out at 10 o’clock at night to turn on someone’s gas, but sure enough, someone showed up about 15 minutes later and had the unfortunate pleasure of having to step out onto my balcony to turn on the gas, which for some inexplicable reason was being almost flooded with water coming down from the roof above. But thats a story for another post….

Once the gas man had left and I handed over the cash for the first month’s rent and deposit, I was left alone in my new apartment with no sheets or pillows, but luckily one towel brought for home which allowed me to at least take a shower before going to sleep on the questionably clean covering to my mattress-with-legs bed.

Maison Sunshine #205
2-16-11 Miyakojima-hondori
Miyakojima-ku, Osaka City
534-0021 JAPAN

Wanna send me mail? Awesome. This is how you do it. I guarantee to reply to everything I get with a cool postcard or stationary and maybe a surprise?

What to expect from this blog:

-Overly long posts that I haven’t bothered to proofread, because they are long
-Lots of pictures because I like taking them
-Possible use of Japanese words that you have never heard before (like gaijin, conbini, etc)
-Artificially backdated posts because it might take me a week to write about going to shrine X and I like to look back at the blog later and know the specific date I did something
-?????

Just so you know.

Also if you’d like to read my old Japan blog, where I wrote a novel (literally it was about 115,000 words and I’m proofreading it now so I can make it into a book) go here: http://tokyo-tofu.com/japan/