Micro-Managing Your Dinner

(My college roommate is from Japan, so we try to hunt down the things and foods that she has trouble finding in the US. During our sophomore year, we are in a tiny Asian market and find packets of “furikake” (flavor packets you can add to rice, which often includes dehydrated veggies, etc) in a specific brand she loves. She is so excited, she brings several to take back to the dorms. Our dorms are part of the original college campus built in the late 1800s, so there are a lot of appliances we aren’t allowed to have, and there isn’t a rice maker in the common kitchen. I really wasn’t sure how she planned to use the furikake. We get back to our dorm, and she starts carefully moving everything out of her small closet.)

Roommate: “Ah! Here it is!” *pulls out the smallest rice cooker I’ve ever seen* “Ta dah!”

Me: *surprised* “Have you had that this whole time?”

Roommate: “Un.” *says casual version of “yes” and then dives back into the closet*

(I hear her dragging something heavy across the floor, which turns out to be a 10 lb bag of rice she’d somehow managed to fit into the back of her closet.)

Me: *jaw drops* “Where did that come from?”

Roommate: “I bought it during move-in week!”

(As if everyone keeps a 10 lb bag of rice in their closet. She then pulls out a variety of other Japanese goods she’d apparently been squirreling away.)

Me: “You have a Japanese food Mary Poppins closet!”

(That night we had rice with mushroom furikake, and it was delicious.)