Rice Cooker

Posted November 16th, 2009 in Ume's Interests 4 Comments »

While in Jakarta we tried to buy a rice cooker.  You must think “can you buy it in Perth?”, but what we’re looking for was a Japanese microcomputer rice cooker with a screen, and with some functions.  

Most of rice cookers I see in shops in Perth are very simple ones, which have just 1 button.  Moving the button upward = “cook rice”, and downward = “keep warm”. We wanted more functions on our rice cooker!  Like the one I was using in my house in Japan.  I know there’re microcomputer rice cookers available in some shops around Perth, but the model is very limited.  So we thought we could buy one from Jakarta.  If we could buy from Japan it’d be easy, but the problem is the voltage: Japan is 110W, and Australia is 240W.  We chose to shop in Jakarta because the voltage is same there (240W).

As I mentioned before there are many Japanese products available in Jakarta, so it was not difficult to find Japanese rice cookers at electronic shops.  Zojirushi, Hitachi, Panasonic …  The prices were ok, and we were so excited to buy one of those…. until we talked to a sales person!

After going to several electronic shops around Jakarta and considering all the functions and prices, we decided to buy either Panasonic or Philips from Best Denki (an electronic shop) in a mall.  Philips is not a Japanese brand, but the rice cooker is microcomputer built and the price was cheap.  We walked between these rice cookers many times thinking which one we should buy.  Panasonic is Japanese and well-known brand, but little too big (18L) for us.  Philips is not Japanese brand and I don’t know if it’s as good as Panasonic, but the size was perfect.  

We asked a sales person all the questions we had, (meanwhile she kept pushing us to buy more expensive rice cooker) and in the end we decided to buy Philips.  Then, suddenly the staff told us that they only have the display one – no more stock!  We didn’t want to buy a display because it looked dirty.  The logo of “Philips” was almost faded. :p  She kept talking and told us there’s no Panasonic either!  Whatttttt!!  She knew we were considering between those two for few hours, she could mention it to us earlier.

Then, she said Zojirushi and Hitachi is 15 % off at the time.  We didn’t even consider those two brand before because they’re expensive.  We knew she was just trying to get us buy an expensive one.  But, well, Panasonic and Philips are not available, so might as well why don’t we have a look at those expensive ones.  

She told us she can give us another 5% off (total 20% off) on Hitachi if we pay by cash.  We calculated it, and the price was not too bad after all!  We started to excite again.  We can’t buy Zojirushi and Hitachi brand in Perth, and they got nice features and functions.  And, the size was perfect.  

When she saw our face, she brought up a new large size Hitachi rice cooker from the back.  She opened up the box and showed us inside.  We told her we want to buy it, but in smaller size. (the cheapest one in the brand)  Then, she told us ” sorry we do not have the small one in stock.  Only the display one.  Why don’t you buy this big one, we have this in stock.”

We were so disappointed, and so angry!  Obviously she was just trying to get a bigger sales. We didn’t want to buy anything anymore, and left the shop…

Excuse me for writing so long story, it’s just a story of me getting a doggy service 🙁

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