Lots of odds and ends to tell you about today, try and keep up. First off, yesterday I finally broke down and bought a rice cooker. Scoff if you want, but in Japan it’s not as simple as waddling down to the local Walmart and grabbing a $20 box off the shelf. Here, it’s more akin to buying a car. One must first decide what features one wants in said cooker. For me, I’m simple, all I want is something into which I can put water and dry rice, and out of which comes tasty sticky rice. As I found out, there is not a single rice cooker in Japan that *just* cooks rice. At the local Yamada Denki, which is basically a Best Buy with more home appliances, they carry over 30 different models of rice cooker. In fact, if you’re so inclined, they’ll even let you pay upwards of $550 for one. I don’t know what else a $550 rice cooker does besides cook rice, and frankly I don’t want to know, because for that price it better be something naughty or else you’re getting ripped off!
Ultimately I settled for virtually a baseline model that I bought for $50 on discount at the university student’s co-op. Knowing I had just brought home the Yugo of Japanese rice cookers, you can imagine my surprise when I withdrew it from its cute little box and the sucker told me exactly what time it was.
To be honest, I was a little freaked out. If at that moment it had also said “good afternoon, drew” a la HAL 9000 I either would have thrown it right out the window or jumped out myself.
Since then my artificially intelligent friend and I have cooperated to produce tasty sticky rice on 3 occasions without incident. Know this though rice cooker: I’ll be watching you, and one sneaky move and it’s the window for you!
In other less… bizarre news, I spent the better part of this afternoon figuring out my schedule of classes for my 2 years here at APU. I figured some of you might be interested in seeing what I’m taking. You’ll notice that my classes taper off towards the end of my stay here – that’s because I’ll be working on my thesis… and the first two research projects are preparing for my thesis, while the last one is actually writing it, so they have no syllabi to link to…
Masters of Science in International Cooperation Policy – Environmental Policy & Administration
| Fall 2005 Q1 | Fall 2005 Q2 | Spring 2006 Q1 | Spring 2006 Q2 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Research Project II | Research Project II | Research Project I | Research Project I |
| Theories of Environmental Policy and Administration | Development and Conservation | ||
| Introduction to the Asia Pacific Region | GIS and Remote Sensing | ||
| Theories of Sustainable Development | Contemporary Societies of the Asia Pacific | ||
| The Environment and Natural Resources in Monsoon Asia | Fundamentals of Environmental Science | ||
| Fall 2006 Q1 | Fall 2006 Q2 | Spring 2007 Q1 | Spring 2007 Q2 |
| Regionalism and Globalization | Political Trends in the Asia Pacific | Research Project III | Research Project III |
| Ecotourism in the Asia Pacific | International Cooperation Policy |
So that’s that. I hope those of you who were curious found what you were looking for in the syllabuseseses. Other than that, it’s been a very pleasant weekend. Due to a typhoon offshore of Tokyo, us here in the SW reaches of Japan have been utterly blessed with 3 beautiful days of high pressure weather: lots of sun, puffy clouds, and a continuous breeze. (That’s Oita across the bay to the left of the mountain…) In short, it has been wonderful.
My class registration is on Tuesday and tomorrow I have a government health checkup to ensure that I don’t have SARS, hi-five, tuberculosis, or any other serious communicable diseases. I plan to gel my hair up to outrageous proportions as a matter of silent protest against this personal invasion of my person (can you invade someone’s person impersonally?), and yes, there will be pictures of said awesome-do.
As I strolled through campus today and thought about how excited I am about my classes, how much I enjoy the company of my new friends, and how great that gentle mountain breeze felt against my face, I decided once and for all that I am really, truly happy to be here, and knowing that is a great feeling indeed…
PS – I tried to cook my fish tonight. Notice I used the word “tried.” Spartacus, as I decided to name him while he patiently waited in my freezer, and I did our best but in the end it was not to be. All I did was spend 20 minutes or so preparing cat food. And yet I feel no guilt, for while I shall miss my dear friend Spartacus and the nutritional value he would have conveyed upon thee, he only cost 99 yen so I don’t care…