I now realize that my old panasonic rice cooker might be chinese?

I know that panasonic is japanese, and lot of stuff on it seems to be in Japanese too, I see phrases engraved in the metal with kanji and hiragana and the manual is primarily in japanese but I kept seeing weird stuff with Kanji I already knew but couldn’t understand.

For example, when it keeps the rice heated it will say “1 小時” for example. That seems to be chinese. Or the kanji for for the warm button is 溫 instead of 温 in 保溫 which i assume means to keep warm. But other button phrases seem to be regular japanese, like 開始 for start.

3 Likes

保温 means “retaining warmth”. So I agree that your rice cooker might be Chinese.

Ever go to the asian foods aisle and turn over every “SUPER TASTE OF JAPAN AUTHENTIC JAPANESE JAPAN FOOD YES” wrapper that’s slathered in hiragana, to see where it was made? At least 60% will say Taiwan, China, SK or California lol. But you’ll be fine, as long as you don’t buy any seaweed snacks with SK origin :nauseated_face:

As for your secretly Chinese, per-NAFTA (lol) rice cooker, it’s really interesting if it uses both languages together. There could be a variety of reasons I’d think of and I hope you share if you figure out why. Where did you buy it from?

1 Like

It’s a Panasonic sr-cm051, I got it from an online shop in Europe. It’s a good rice cooker don’t get me wrong :smiley: But after googling it just now it looks like its a product that was meant to be sold in Hong Kong markets.

1 Like

As a Chinese speaker, I’ll just confirm that all those phrases are Chinese. 開始 is a Chinese word that means ‘start’ in Chinese as well (both as a noun and as a verb). The kanji used are Traditional Chinese characters. 小時 means ‘hour’ (literally ‘little time’). I think the reason it’s called that is because there used to be a unit called 時辰 (shíchen) in Chinese, which was roughly two hours. There were twelve per day. You don’t see that unit outside of Chinese period dramas though (unless the context involves traditional Chinese culture… not sure if Buddhist/Taoist temples still use the unit).

4 Likes

What is wrong with seaweed snacks from South Korea, in your opinion?

1 Like

OK, I’ll bite: what’s wrong with South Korean seaweed (I ask while glancing nervously at the bag of Wang brand nori on my kitchen counter)?

haha cool thanks! I was googling the phrases and mostly getting chinese results, good to have confirmation

1 Like

This topic was automatically closed 365 days after the last reply. New replies are no longer allowed.