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!