Return home... unexpected surprises

No and they weren't good surprises unfortunately, well except for one :). I managed to leave my rice cooker with a full load of rice which had a good 2 weeks to ferment. I walked into my room wondering "what's that strange smell?" I opened my rice cooker to find really moldy rice with worms running around in the bottom. Yummy, really.

I've so far cleaned out the rice cooker and boiled hot water in it twice to see if I can get rid of the smell. The metal pot doesn't seem affected by the smell. But the rubber rings around the edge seem to have absorbed the smell. I can't seem to lessen the smell at all. It would suck to make a fresh batch of rice just to have it stink. My lungs burn from smelling my rice cooker so many times as I try to see if it stinks less after I boil water in it... I may end up chucking the rice cooker. Ugh that's $50 in damage right there.

I left some Kim chee and some left over sweet beans. Needless to say both needed to be chucked after I got home. Aside from forgetting those 2 in my fridge, the fridge is OK.

Finally, a good chunk of tupperware had to be chucked! Lesson learned, DO NOT seal tupperware after you wash and wipe them, even if you wiped out all the water. Pot the lid back on too soon and the water condenses. Fungus grows and well, need less to say I was assulted by wafts of rancid smelling tupperware after I got back. Most of which had to be chuked (tupper ware can be bought very cheaply in Japan however for $1).

There was a plus side however :) On the flight back to Japan I did manage to meet some nice Japanese tourists on their way back from Taiwan. I was sitting with one of them in front of a blank wall (the separator between Economy class and First class). The annoying part was that we couldn't really see the screen so I decided to have a conversation instead. I think my Japanese is getting better... though I still need work since it is still kind of broken. The converstaion did last for all of the flight back to Japan. I ended up meeting 2 other friends of hers who were exceptionally kind and showed me the way to a cheap train out of Narita to Ueno where I could catch the bullet train back to Sendai. We took a group picture at the train station out of Narita :)

The nice people I met on the airplane :)

Pictures of my journey around Japan and Taiwan to follow later in the week. For now, I need to get myself a new rice cooker, replenish my food, finish some paper work for the University and more. No rest for the wicked eh?