Shopping Adventures in J-Land

Japan is famous for many things, including sumo, karate and samurai, but one thing you may or may not be familiar with (depending on if you have been here or know someone who has) is the concept of 100 Yen Shops. We do have Dollar Stores in America, yes, but they don't even compare to these "housewives' wonderlands." You can seriously buy ANYTHING at these places and I know many-an-expat that has gotten pretty far in furnishing their apartments through these places. I mean, at 100 Yen (about 95 cents) a pop, how can you go wrong? I personally get a lot of small necessities at these stores (especially great for class materials), but I sometimes just wander around them to take in all the eye candy and check out the wacky stuff you can't find in America. And, lucky me, one of the biggest and best chains, DAISO, just happens to have a branch in Takasago, near my school.

So today was one of those days when I stopped at the grocery store to grab a quick dinner before catching my train home and decided to pop into DAISO to grab something for my mom. I wandered around for a little while... and then this caught my eye:

Yes, ladies and gentlemen, it is a drag queen mask. I know these weren't around for Halloween a few weeks ago, but they now have a full display full of different clear masks with 'facial accessories' painted on them. If you zoom in on the packaging... it really does read, "You can be a Drag Queen!"

This was my other favorite:


Random. Thought about getting a couple to bring to my friends doing November (see previous post about Movember, the mustache-growing fundraiser), but this is basically what keeps me entertained. Notice they got the vocab wrong (there's one word for 'stash and beard here and they used the latter), but not bad.

After playing around for a little while, I decided I really did need to get home, so I hopped a train back to my little village of Nishi Futami on the outskirts of Akashi. As usual, I cut through the beast of a "supermarket" (really a small mall and also my next door neighbor) and noticed a few funky things along my path....

First of all, this next shop is one of my favorite stores in Japan. It's sort of like Urban Outfitters style-wise, but doesn't carry aparrel or books. It's called FRANC FRANC:

Pretty stylish. You think they've got it down, right?

So I am still lazily trying to get to the other door and back to my apartment, but decide to make a detour through the bath and candles sections to see if there is anything I could get my secret santa.... and I found this:
Read it again. UREA. Yes, the stuff Urine is made of. I actually smelled the tester to see what it was like, and the bath salts seriously reeked of bathroom cleaner (maybe that is where the "deep forest" part comes in??). I don' t know. I just thought I would share since finding the UREA bath salts at this place was pretty much like finding it at the Gap.

Moving on...

I made my way past the makeup departments and as I was about to pass the grocery story (see, Ito Yokado is like a little mall....), I noticed all the holiday displays and gift boxes were out, so i walked over to take a peek. And what did I see?

CHRISTMAS CAKE IS BACK!

For only $45 or so, you can buy your sweetheart the cutest little romantic cake ever! Ugh. My students still don't believe that we don't celebrate Christmas with Christmas Cake in the US. I am glad we don't, but I'm probably biased because I'm almost over 25, and well.... yeah.

I only spent a few minutes on the cakes and then decided to go over and peek at the boxes. I have, however, noticed that my reaction to the cake is tamer than last year... so maybe it shouldn't be that surprising that I have also become softer and less sticker-shocked to see that people are still readily willing to pay $5 or more per apple or pear (heck, maybe even a banana) because it comes in a pretty box. Some of these boxes of pears were like $80.

And if you want to talk about fruit being pricey... check out the beer selection for gifts:

Doesn't $45 seem like a lot for a case of local beer (and this is the cheap stuff you can get at the konbini for $1.20 a can)?! Heck, I would rather just buy 24 cans (or better yet, bottles) put them in a box or basket myself, throw a bow on it and call it Christmas. It was the marketing same story with both Asahi and Kirin, the two major brewing companies, so I seriously bet this is the benchmark price on these sorts of gifts this year. You could get a better deal with foreign lagers doing it yourself... oh, Japan. Why are presents and packaging so important?!

Before I make too big of a fuss about this stuff, though, I should mention Ito Yokado did carry 'normal' gift boxes too:

I just hope I never get one of these as a gift for Christmas. I don't appreciate it enough to not think it silly to spend 200% or more of the actual cost of this stuff for a box. But anyways, on that note, I am going to conclude our little shopping adventure for the day. I hope you've enjoyed this little glimpse into the Japanese retail world and Happy Holidays ya'll... goes to show the season is officially upon us!


PS - Happy "Cyber Monday" otherwise known as the busiest (online) shopping day of the year! In contrast to "Black Friday" (the day after Thanksgiving), it seems the pop culture powers that be have recently identified this phenomenon and decided to brand it with a name. The cyber holiday might be a Monday... but at least you can do all your shopping in your PJs!