My rice cooker makes me feel inadequet -_-

One of the toughest things for me to find in Japan has been whole grains. White rice is pretty much the golden standard here, so I quickly gave up hope of ever finding affordable brown rice in Tokyo.

And then I found it at Seiyu last week. Go figure. Remember the Japanese store owned by Walmart? Now I can buy all the Great Value brand brown rice I need to keep me well-stocked in whole grains. Huzzah!

Usually, I make rice on the stove and let it cook while I prepare the rest of my meal. But with only one burner, things aren't that easy. So today I broke down and bought a Japanese rice cooker. Though it looks ridiculously high-tech, it was the cheapest one available at Seiyuu (~$60).

I spent about 45 min reading the instruction manual (with the aid of a dictionary), but in the end I had to enlist the help of a friend who has never not used an Asian rice cooker ^^. With her expertise, we were able to determine the (hopefully) correct water-to-rice ratio and let the cooker do it's thing.

Fortunately, the rice came out wonderful. Soft, fluffy, and delicious. Much better than my stove top variety. And that is how I lost to a rice cooker >_<.

I also had some green tea and wagashi, a traditional Japanese confection, for an afternoon snack. The wagashi I had today was daifuku: mochi (glutinous rice paste) stuffed with anko (sweet red bean paste). I know it doesn't sound delicious, but trust me, it is. The mochi paste is lightly sweetened, and the core of the mochi is usually filled with sweet red bean paste or white bean paste. The one I had (shown here) is made from green tea flavored mochi and the inside is red bean paste. Wagashi are usually served with tea, especially matcha to help balance the bitterness of the powered tea, and can be molded into many different shapes. The most common shapes I've seen are flowers, fruits, and animals like rabbits and cats.

As much as I miss Ben & Jerry's, I gotta say these Japanese sweets are growing on me. At first I thought it was silly to eat a "sweet" that wasn't very sweet at all, but now that I've been removed from American-style desserts for four months, Japanese confections taste more like sweet treats to me. I think I will miss them very much when I return to the States. But until then, I'll enjoy them to the best of my ability ^_^.