We have a little thrift shop that is near by that we have found a few treasures at (although I think the only thing we've bought from there is our tatami table). We decided to visit it today because we've been looking for a rice cabinet. This may need some explaining....well rice cabinet may not even be the actual name for what this piece of furniture is. It is basically a cabinet that has an electrical cord to plug in. It also has a few outlets inside the cabinet to plug in your appliances (like rice cooker and microwave). I guess a better name would be microwave stand except for the key feature. Towards the bottom it has a storage space to keep your rice. There are buttons on the front and a drawer on the bottom. You press the button that has the amount of rice you need and the rice falls into the tray at the bottom.
Anyways...Mike and I had searched the rows of "treasures" and couldn't find anything that was close to what we wanted. Mike did find a collapsable papasan chair that looked like it hadn't been used so he went to go ask how much it was as I continued to look around. I stopped at the end of an aisle and what do I find...a rice cabinet! It has 2 outlets - one for a microwave that will fit on the top and one for a rice cooker that goes on the 2nd shelf. The rice storage part isn't usable because there is a metal bar with rust in it (and not exactly bug proof) but we can still put containers in that part to store rice. I was more excited about the fact that it had the storage that we needed (as our counter space is VERY limited) and the plugs so we don't have to use a power strip. Mike tested the plugs and they work :) When we went to check out the older woman who works there gave us a 200 yen discount too so it only cost us 2,500 yen (about $25).
Now my next apartment wish is to get some plastic drawers for our closet and get rid of the dresser we have in our room. I don't know if that will happen anytime soon though because there is no place for the dresser to go! Living in a small apartment gets quite crowded and it's about to get even more crowded in a few months with Jude coming :)