It is the Japanese spirit
My second rice cooker is small and perfect for travel, like a playhouse cooker from the Showa era. My favorite rice cooker for travel doesn’t have an inner lid, just a glass lid, but it cooks delicious rice.
As someone who works in motorsports, I spend my days from spring to the end of autumn driving my beloved car around Europe reporting on races.
Each circuit has a media center (also called a press room), a large room where media personnel such as writers and photographers like us, as well as the public relations departments of each car manufacturer and press agencies, work.Some circuits provide hot meals and snacks, but most outside of Germany only provide water and coffee.
With the recent terrible yen depreciation and rising prices, eating my favorite food at a restaurant every day after work is like a dream. Furthermore, after walking around the circuit for over 20,000 steps a day, I’m exhausted and don’t even bother to go to a restaurant. To be honest, I just want to get back to my hotel, take a shower, and lie down.
So this year I bought a rice cooker! It’s a super-single function rice cooker that can cook 1.5 cups of rice, full of Showa-era retro feel. I actually owned the same one before, but unfortunately it stopped working before this year’s Le Mans 24 Hours race week, so I bought the same one after returning to Germany. It’s very light and small, and I love it.
You can also make rice balls and Japanese-style bento lunches.
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[1] The chicken cutlet at the 2024 DTM Hockenheim was so delicious that I had seconds. [2] The food at the media center at the Daytona 24 Hours, which I visited for the first time in 2024, was also amazing. [3] At the Daytona media center, I also had a sweet, typically American cupcake as a snack. [4] The food at the media center at the opening round of the WEC in Qatar was also delicious.
The world-famous 24 Hours of Le Mans is no exception, with the media center only having water and coffee, so unless you’re a respectable person invited by an automaker, you have to buy your own food to get through the long race week. So, many media personnel come to work in the media center carrying a large amount of groceries and drinks in eco-bags from the supermarket, and I’m one of them.
My usual accommodation at Le Mans these days is a lovely house owned by a French woman, which has a kitchen and is very convenient. During this year’s Le Mans race week, my rice cooker suddenly broke, so I quickly made rice in a pot and got through it.
For long races like the Le Mans or Spa 24 Hours, if I have time in the morning I sometimes make rice balls or Japanese-style bento boxes, but at some races, including the Nürburgring 24 Hours, the media center has excellent catering, so I’m always grateful for the hot meals I can get, and it’s great that I hardly ever have to cook in the rice cooker or kettle at the hotel. And I really look forward to mealtimes. In reality, I don’t have time to eat slowly, so I end up eating quickly, gobbling down my food (laughs).
There are no convenient convenience stores
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[1] A standard midnight snack at the Nürburgring 24h: goulash and currywurst. [2] A standard hamburger steak and schnitzel (pork cutlet) at the Nürburgring 24h. [3] A standard frankfurter sausage and gratin at the Nürburgring 24h. [4] When walking around the paddock, I sometimes receive gifts from team members. [5] Lunch box one day during race week: I no longer feel embarrassed in front of Europeans.
In the trunk of my car, I always carry a kettle, a rice cooker (rice divided into 0.6 cup portions), rice accompaniments like furikake (rice seasoning) and nori (seaweed), and ready-to-eat meals I received as souvenirs. I know this sounds cheap, but that’s the reality! It would be nice if the accommodation had a refrigerator or microwave, but these Japanese-style services are only available in very high-end hotels, so on the way back to the hotel from the circuit, I buy pre-packaged salads, cheese, salami, etc. to use as side dishes, and sometimes I buy extra side dishes to put in my lunch box the next day.
Supermarkets in France, Belgium and Italy have a wide selection of hot, homemade prepared foods, which I find very useful, but due to the nature of my reporting, I often can’t make it in time for the supermarkets to close. Of course, there are no convenient convenience stores like those in Japan, and based on past experiences where I could end up starving for dinner, I make it a rule to keep everything I need in the trunk of my car just in case.
As an aside, I have been attacked by bedbugs twice while sleeping in hotels in France and Germany, and suffered from incredibly severe itching from my face to my entire body, so I keep everything on hand, including bedbug spray, a mosquito repellent kit for sudden late-night mosquito attacks, and Febreze for when I end up in a room filled with that indescribable European smell. I wish I could buy a minivan for work, but that’s not possible, so my small car is packed full of all these everyday items, and I feel a little embarrassed to open the trunk in public (lol).
