Better quality will encourage more to 'buy Chinese'

I never thought choosing an electric rice cooker could be so complicated, until I tried buying one recently in Sapporo, in a Bic Camera store, the Japanese consumer electronics retail chain.

I had to choose a material for the inner cooking bowl: copper, iron, stainless steel, or ceramic. Then which variety of rice I wanted to cook: chewy, tender and soft, or ever traditional clay-pot-cooked. The choices seemed endless.

Japan-made rice cookers were top of almost every "must-buy" list my friends recommended to me before I left for my week-long vacation on the country's Hokkaido island in July.