Adventures in Japan

Non Ironic Wordy

Carla mentioned in a post a while back that the rice here is way overpriced. Well, we finally found a place that sells it for cheap. Found it a while ago actually. But that meant we have to find a cheap rice cooker. Microwavable. It seems the Japanese don't put much stock in microwavable rice cookers because it's been weeks and we only ever found one and it cost too much. For a country that eats rice at almost every single meal, everything that had to do with the preparation of said meals seems overpriced. Here is where I should mention that we did find a cheap, one dollar in price, quasi microwave rice cooker and have been using it for a couple weeks. Now that would seem to contradict most of what I have just been talking about, but when we got this thing home and read the instructions we discovered that it was not to be used in the microwave. We've been using anyway. It made a sticky mess every time we used it.

But now (Monday the 8th of November) we have an actual, real, official microwave cooker. And a pot that will boil enough water for two. We had to make a special shopping trip, but it was worth it. Shinsaibashi is one of Osaka's many, many shopping districts. All sorts of stores charging all kinds of prices for all kinds of things of all kinds of varying quality. We didn't go into any of the hoity toity places, but we did poke around the Tokyu Hands on David's recommendation. Thanks David. Tokyu Hands is a five story combination of a whole bunch of different stores. One floor is mainly lights and lighting type stuff, one is all about pillows and bedding and so on. With more of an emphasis on craft goods. Lots of neat stuff. Including a decent selection of microwavable rice cookers.


The other thing that Shinsaibashi has is a Shakey's. As in Shakey's Pizza. I had never eaten at a Shakey's pizza but had heard of it. What's more, this Shakey's pizza was all Viking style. In Japan, Viking means buffet/smörgåsbord/all-you-can-eat. And we ate a lot. A lot a Japanese pizza. Pizza like tuna fish and corn. Or squid and pork. Plus some regular type pizzas. It was delicious.


And every table had a bottle of Tabasco on it because pizza without Tabasco is like most things without Tabasco, much less spicy. The only bad part of the meal was some of the music. I heard that damn Ambercrombie and Fitch song that became inexplicably popular years ago, I thought I'd never have to hear that blasted song ever again. And Mambo Number 5. Which I never thought I'd hear outside of a wedding reception. Or Panago commercials.


Shinsaibashi at night is even more neon-y than Den Den town. And with way more giant mechanical crabs. And a giant neon Glico Man. There were a lot of neon signs. And people. Interesting looking people. I did a fair bit of people watching as Carla stopped in at every store that might possibly sell a purse. Shinsaibashi has a lot of stores with purses in them. And a lot of Japanese people with fake tans and overly bleached hair. They look fake. And scary. Also scary are Japanese people all duded up like cowboys. That just ain't right.