Truth In "Advertising"

Boy howdy, is this shop named appropriately.

There are some types of shops which are omnipresent in Japan and that you encounter with such frequency that they soon fail to be of particular interest. Among the sorts which you see very often are tea and sushi shops as well as a plethora of convenience stores, coffee shops, and noodle counter places. One type of shop which is common yet still tends to hold one's interest are the increasingly ubiquitous 100 yen shops. They consistently hold the interest for those seeking cheap goods made in almost any Asian country besides Japan.

Click the picture to see a very large version to make the shop's contents easier to see.

One of the things you don't tend to see are shops selling kitschy American pop culture junk the likes of which would very likely not fit in the average Japanese person's home with ease and style. While biking around on New Year's Eve, my husband ran across the closed shop pictured above with a very curious collection of items including a Hostess snack cakes display, an American Krispy Kreme sign, and a large plastic soft serve cone.

This sort of junk is the very type of thing one tends to see at flea markets and perhaps even antique shops for bottom feeding collectors back home, but it's rather a rare sight in Japan. I find myself wondering how someone assembles this sort of inventory, considering much of it is promotional and didn't originate in Japan. I figure this person must go on some pretty interesting shopping excursions, comb eBay regularly, or have some good connections.

What I find more curious though, is the thinking of the folks who might want to possess such items. Sure, there's a certain campy appeal if you look at these items in a certain way, but it takes a special sort of person to want to put a Jolly Green Giant in their domicile. Of course, if anyone ever demands the still smiling head of Ronald McDonald on pain of death, you know exactly where to go for your needs without resorting to decapitation.

Booby Trap

Sometimes I see something in Japan that I really can't understand or explain. For instance, when I worked in Shinjuku, there was a used record, video, and movie paraphernalia shop which had a 6 foot rubber and vinyl replica of the nightmarish hideous gooey saliva-dripping monster from Alien. As you stepped off the elevator, you came face to grotesque alien chest with it. At first, it had a sign on it which proudly proclaimed "not for sale", as if any sane person would want to put this thing in their small Japanese home. Later, it had a sign on it offering to let you have it for the grudgingly low price of around a half million yen ($4,600). As time went by, the price dropped to 300,000 yen ($2,760). I'm pretty sure the price at one point fell to something in the 100,000's ($900's). Eventually, it disappeared. While I guess it's possible that it was snapped up by someone who thought it'd be really cool to stick this in the corner of his bedroom so he could scare the hell out of himself when he woke up in the middle of the night and forgot he'd forked over a ton of money for it, I believe it's more likely that it was put out late one night with the rest of the dai gomi (big trash).

Since that time I haven't seen anything so unattractive that I seriously questioned the marketing skills, aesthetic sense, and sanity of someone... until now. If you look at the face at the top of this post, you can probably understand why I'm raising such questions again.


There is a shop named "Booby Trap" which apparently is ran by someone who paid good money to put that grotesque face on the body of a mannequin outside his or her shop. I have to wonder if the proprietor believes that seeing someone dressed like a mad thug who wants to grab your purse and knife you in the belly will attract the fashion-conscious young Japanese person into the store.

Generally, mannequins are meant to model a look that the consumer may want to emulate, but this one looks more like he's part of a campaign to prove foreigners are scary people. Of course, for all I know, the ultimate disposition of that hideous thing will be placement in some government office with a warning. One of these days, I'm guessing it'll eventually end up with a price tag that keeps dropping until the shop manages to unload it just like the Alien statue.

Given a choice, I'd much rather have the Alien alien in my apartment then the guy standing in front of Booby Trap.

Lucky Bag, er, Box

Click any image in this post to see a much larger and more detailed picture.

When I was a kid, my grandmother used to take me along to auctions located some distance from her home. She'd make these trips several times a year to collect gifts for her copious amounts of grandchildren or just to see if she could get a bargain on something she needed. I remember very little about the auctions save for a few things. One was that I was mainly in it for the junk food, particularly the pizza. Two was that most of the items being auctioned off mainly appealed to adults though there were toys on occasion but no adult I ever went with purchased them, much to my chagrin. Three was that my mother once bought two huge boxes of the ugliest shoes known to man in garish blue and red with the idea of "selling" them then left them on our enclosed porch for 3 or 4 years until they got so grubby that she finally tossed them out. And four was that part of the auction included "grab bags".

For those who were spared exposure to such things, grab bags were large shopping bags filled with a collection of miscellaneous items. The idea was that the total cost of the items in the bag exceeded the purchase price by a fair margin. Notice that I didn't say "the value of the items exceeded the purchase price." My experience with the grab bags at these auctions was that they tended to be filled with a collection of the junk that wasn't appealing enough to be sold individually for the most part. In fact, I'm pretty sure a pair of those awful shoes my mother bought were in one of the bags my grandmother bought.

In Japan, every year during the New Year they sell the equivalent of these "grab bags". They are called fukubukuro (fuku = lucky, bukuro = bag) and, though I have seen them now for coming up on 18 years, I had never purchased them due to the lessons learned from my childhood auction attending days. That all (kinda) changed yesterday because I read a comment by Ken Y-N on Nihon Hacks (a site devoted to trying to live more cheaply in Japan) about Mr. Donut's fukubukuro. Ken said that the bags cost 1000 yen ($9.20) and included 10 donuts, a calendar, a schedule book, and other various and sundry items. Since the 10 donuts themselves are worth more than 1000 yen, this is a no-lose proposition economically speaking.

Unfortunately, our local Mr. Donut appeared not to have and fukubukuro when I swung by there for a peak. They did have a curious collection of colorful boxes (one of which is pictured at the top of this post). Since I was too timid to inquire about them and too laden down with groceries to carry anything more, my husband dropped by a bit later after his daily swim at a local fitness club and checked out the deal.

The calendar at right was packed on the top. After you remove it, the boxes of items below are revealed.

It seems our local branch of the Mr. Donut chain was selling "lucky boxes" (fukubako) rather than lucky bags (fukubukuro). The boxes cost 2000 yen rather than 1000 and are full of various goodies, almost all of which are leftover freebies from the copious numbers of campaigns Mr. Donut holds all year to encourage frequent patronage. Some of them may also be brand new dishware of the same design that they use in the shop (which sells soup, ramen, fried rice, etc. in addition to donuts), but I have no way of knowing since I never eat in.

Items in the box (from left to right): Large penguin ice fishing motif serving bowl and three smaller bowls (suitable for rice or pickles), very tiny bento box with chopsticks and case, green schedule book, lion head-shaped storage box with two stacking compartments, large soup bowl with wooden spoon, and calendar. Some of this stuff is too cutesy for us but the bowls are quite useful and nice. All of the bowls have "not for sale" stamped on the bottom of them.

Like many fast food establishments back home, Mr. Donut has a stamp card that, when filled out, gets you a bonus. In most cases, that bonus is a dish, cup, tote bag, or storage item. I think the only one of these bonuses we ever collected (and it was many years ago) was a collapsible magazine storage bin since we rarely consume donuts in sufficient quantities in a short period of time to get a card filled in before the campaigns are over.

Coupons good for one donut each.

The donuts you get as part of these grab bags aren't real donuts as no reasonable Japanese person would buy 20 donuts all at once. You get coupons with which you redeem them through time. The main difference in risk between a fukubako (box) and fukubukuro (bag) is that you get 20 donuts as part of the deal instead of 10. This wouldn't be a big deal except that you have to buy those 20 donuts by March 31 as the coupons expire after that date. Still, given that Mr. Donut is raising prices for the first time in a very long time (the average donut is 115 yen/$1.06) and March 31 is a about 12 weeks away, it shouldn't be too difficult to get the most for one's money from this deal. In fact, if you tend to have one or two donuts a week, you ultimately save money with the coupons and you get some nifty items as a bonus.

Hanamasa

The spoils of a trip to Hanamasa.

When my husband and I first arrived in Japan, there was pretty much no such thing as bulk food shopping for the average consumer in Tokyo. There are several reasons why this is the case though I'm not sure which is the primary one. If I had to guess, I'd say it's because the small size of domiciles makes it difficult to store large quantities of items is the biggest reason. Another is that married Japanese women used to be housewives for the most part and they had the time and inclination to shop every day. Finally, the Japanese value freshness and feel uncomfortable buying a lot of something and keeping it around for awhile.

While most families still don't shop for items they can purchase in bulk, restaurants do need to get supplies somewhere and that is where Hanamasa supermarket seems to have gotten its start. Back when we first encountered it, part of the advertising indicated that it was focused on (possibly small) restaurant supply. Given the huge quantities you could buy in one package, this made sense.

The origins of Hanamasa are in meat sales (it began with a butcher shop) and that's reflected in the selections they offer. At the picture at the top of this post, you'll see smoked chicken, sliced ham (named "Winning Ham"), and two kinds of sausage. "Meister Rudolf's" is Hanamasa's brand designed to imitate German-made meat products and a lot of the sausage is pretty fatty. When we cook it, we usually drain off as much as possible and blot them on paper towels. For meat, the prices are relatively economical. Five hundred grams (about 1 lb.) of hot sausage is ¥418 ($3.72) and 2.2 lbs. (1 kg.) of "bologna sausage" is ¥1,080 ($9.66). The only down side to the large portions is that it's too much to eat before it spoils so you really need to repackage and freeze portions.

In addition to their own brand-name products, they carry a constant supply of imports including cheese. Pictured above are mozzarella, Gouda (both from Australia), and red cheddar (from New Zealand). The prices recently went up from 100 yen (89 cents) per 100 grams (3.5 oz.) to 130 yen ($1.16) per 100 grams, but it's still cheaper than imported cheese in most markets in Japan. The blocks above are 1 kg. (2.2 lbs.) each and most cheese is sold in these large portions, but it keeps exceptionally well if you re-seal it in the same wrapping that it comes in. Cheese isn't supposed to be kept in plastic wrap and will get moldy faster if it can't breath.

While Hanamasa does carry fresh fruit and vegetables, they aren't a great deal cheaper than other outlets. I've also found that some of the fruit seems a bit past its prime, but I can't say that I've shopped for such items at Hanamasa often enough to say that that is consistently the case.


Finally, imported goodies are available sporadically. If you find something you like at Hanamasa, you have to stock up because there's every chance that they won't be around next time you visit.

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As an aside, the day my husband shopped at Hanamasa, one of his students gave him the South Park tote bag pictured above. Somehow, it seems appropriate that a bag talking about Salisbury Steak day was given to him on the day he went to a place that specializes in meat. It also came in pretty handy for carrying some of the items he bought back home.

Consumables and Comestibles

I've mentioned in previous posts on Costco that those of us living in Japan who don't have cars (which is a far greater than the number of foreigners who do) can use a delivery service to ship large quantities of items to our apartments. Each box costs ¥600 ($5.40) to ship and they can be quite huge. In fact, the boxes pictured above take up a little less than half of the available floor space in our kitchen. Of course, that's just as much a reflection of the size of our apartment as the boxes themselves.


My husband's most recent sojourn to Costco yielded one of the largest collections of food and household items we've ever amassed at any given time. Unpacking these boxes and finding a place to put things literally takes a couple of hours and the contents are expected to last months in many cases. If we load up enough items, he can wait 4 months between trips and that saves both time and money (because of train fare).


This trip included much more "entertainment food" than usual because of the upcoming holidays and the total for everything came to around ¥75,000 ($675). While that may sound like a tremendous amount of money, it's not that huge when you consider the cost of living in Tokyo and that the items will last a long time. Some of the things we buy will take up to a year to consume. We have to look at the one-time big tab as a way of saving money over a long period of time. For instance, the big case of paper towels is about half the cost of Japanese paper towels and will probably last 8 months. Liquid laundry detergent which costs about twice the cost of a very small box of Japanese powdered laundry soap will last a year and won't cake up in the humid summer. The Japanese powder would last about 2 months.

In fact, one of the best ways to appreciate the savings is to compare the small Japanese jar of Skippy on the left to the big American one on the right. The small jar contains 12 oz. (340 g.) of peanut butter and the large one 64 oz. (1.8. kg.). The larger one only costs about twice the small one, but has six times the quantity. Please note that my husband and I aren't huge consumers of peanut butter and normally we wouldn't want this much peanut butter on hand. However, with Christmas coming, I expect to be making up about a hundred or so peanut butter cookies to include as part of gift bags for both my husband's and my students. Each batch of cookies takes one cup of peanut butter or an entire Japanese size jar. I'll probably need to use 1/2-2/3 of that huge American jar just for Christmas cookies.

Knowing all of the savings over the long run doesn't necessarily stop me from cringing when we fork over a large amount of money all at once though. It's still rather painful to consider blowing that much money on consumables and comestibles.

Deep Discount DVD Supersale

A display for rental of Season 6 episodes of "24". If you wanted to buy Season 6 of "24" in Japan, it'd cost $167 (¥18,648) for the Japanese box set. If you wanted to buy it in the U.S., it'd cost $38.99. (Both are Amazon prices for Amazon Japan and Amazon U.S. respectively.)

In the past, I've recommended Americans and others who are from Region 1 countries who want to buy DVDs consider buying a cheap (about ¥8,000) region-free multi-system DVD player from the Foreign Buyer's Club and purchasing DVDs from the U.S. This idea not only seems to suit foreign people but also Japanese studying English. My husband has a student who has chosen to buy his discs from Amazon U.S. because the prices are so much lower compared to Japan. (See the caption on the picture above for an example price comparison.)

While you can get some cheap DVDs in Japan, they're usually older movies stripped of any of the sort of extras that you find on official releases. Most of the newer ones, and the T.V. show sets in particular, can be very, very expensive. It gives you a good idea of why region codes were set up in the first place. Japan very much would prefer to protect its (Region 2) market of overpriced DVDs by making those from far cheaper Region 1 distributors incompatible with the basic players most Japanese people own.

Last year around this time, Deep Discount DVD held a 20% off sale on all DVDs. This year, they're holding a sale at pretty much the exact same time. It's a very good time to pick up some of the bigger box sets at an appreciable discount or even just a bunch of cheaper movies for a few bucks off. It's also a good time to consider buying some books along with them if you're in the market for cheaper books than you can get via various outlets in Japan. While there is no discount on books, the shipping rate policies at Deep Discount DVD make it far more worthwhile to order from them than Amazon. At Amazon, you are charged postage by the book. At Deep Discount, you are charged according to the total amount of money you spend. Adding in heavier books to an order rapidly shoots up the shipping costs at Amazon but has no effect at Deep Discount as long as you stay under the spending caps. For example, an order totaling up to $249 carries a shipping cost of $17 regardless of whether it is composed of books, DVDs, or CDs. The shipping rates for various size orders can be accessed on the help page under "shipping and delivery" for "International orders".

My husband and I usually allow ourselves a big order of DVDs and books as a Christmas gift to ourselves around this time of year so we put in a huge order the day before yesterday. One thing we noticed was that, if you plan on spending more than $249, it's better to make two separate orders than one to save on shipping as it costs $17 for up to $249 and $40 for over $249.

The sale ends in about a week so you have to get an order going soon. If you want to get the discount, you have to type in the code SUPERSALE in the code box when you view your shopping cart. If you take too long to shop, you'll have to re-apply the code if it vanishes from your total. Bear in mind that shipping costs are applied before the discounted price is applied.

Amazon Vine Revisited

In September, I posted that I had been invited into the Amazon Vine program but found that it was impossible to be a participant due to some difficulties with the process of acquiring items for review. Since that time, the Vine program has made some changes that allow better access for all participants and my husband and I were able to finally get a book for review (pictured above).

My research into why the program was causing some to get no items and others to get a plethora yielded some results that reflected naivete or short-sightedness on the part of those at Amazon behind the program. In the first few months, participants were allowed to request up to three items and then to request more items once they had submitted a review for items reviewed. The result of this way of conducting the program was that people "gamed" the system in order to gobble up as many freebies as possible. To do this, they would request items and then submit reviews before they had actually received them in order to make them eligible to request even more items. Since the entire purpose of the Vine program is to get credible reviews for items that have not yet been released, this was clearly not in Amazon's best interest nor a reflection of their intent in creating the program.

To their credit, Amazon worked out what was going on based on the fact that reviews were submitted before delivery could possibly have been completed and changed their system. The current system allows each person to request one item per month until everyone has had a chance to choose something. Leftover items may then be requested the following month or later in the same month (depending on how things work out and what Amazon believes is best and fair).

The variety of items Amazon is offering has been diversified since the first newsletter which only contained CDs and books. The last few mailings have included keyboards, mice, software, DVDs, and vibrating chair pads. Presently, getting anything other than books is pretty impossible unless you make it a point to log into the Vine page and find out what items can be requested the instant they are made available. This is because the same greed that compelled people to cheat the system has them pouncing like a starving cat on a juicy mouse at the sight of any electronic items or items of higher value than a book. I'm wondering how many of those types of items end up on eBay or sold off to acquaintances at reduced rates at the end of the day as they have some re-sale value.

Personally, I'd never request electronics items anyway since international shipping costs still apply to anything I buy and there's no way a keyboard or electronic item is going to be worthwhile considering shipping rates to Japan. I'm happy to get a crack at a book for the sake of experiencing something new and submitting a review. In all honesty, I really looked at the invitation to the program as a means by which I could compel myself to be exposed to new things, particularly in terms of reading books I may not normally read. The items I get end up costing me $15 or more in shipping so they aren't actually free anyway. I knew this going in.

I'm pleased to say that Amazon took the problems in hand and fixed them and they deserve credit for that. I'm far less pleased to say that my previous post revealed a lot of the ugly nature of people when getting something free is at stake and they want to diminish the competition so they can have more for themselves. If you read the comments on my previous Amazon Vine post, you'll see people accused me of the following:

1. Misrepresenting myself as living in the U.S. to Amazon in order to be eligible for the Vine program
2. Failing to pay import taxes on items I receive.
3. Violating the "items cannot be exported" prohibition on Amazon.
   
4. Being generally rather stupid for heeding what Amazon said regarding newsletters being the conduit for requesting items rather than checking the web site and hammering the reload button at the scheduled posting time.
   

None of these accusations had a base in anything besides the imagination of my greedy and unsophisticated accusers. To spare you from going back to read the comments, I can say that:

1. I cannot hide my residence from Amazon as they have both my Japanese billing and shipping addresses. They knew where I lived when they invited me. I certainly never mislead them in any fashion nor did I request to join the program.
2. I cannot avoid import taxes as packages are randomly searched and custom tags denoting the value of the contents are attached on the outside. Amazon and the Japanese postal service have all the control over what I pay, if anything. However, the types of goods that Amazon ships are generally not the sort import taxes are placed on. For what its worth, clothing and shoes are the only goods I've ever had to pay taxes on. I think leather goods in particular are taxed based on my past experiences.
3. I cannot be an "exporter" if I don't resell the goods I receive. Besides that, the sample book I got is an advance release book. I can't even get credit for it at a used bookstore (should I choose to do so), let alone sell it to anyone.
4. I took Amazon at their word when they said you should wait for a newsletter and request items from it. Some people set their clocks for the wee hours of the morning to be first in line (the time that the items are posted has since been changed so that it's no longer necessary to do this), but I'm not that desperate and I seriously doubt that anyone in the Vine program is so incredibly poor that they need to be so hawkish about freebies.

As a final word, I'd hope that Amazon would prefer people who aren't so petty and greedy and who are interested in genuinely assessing the given products. Unfortunately, it appears they are ill-equipped to evaluate the tendencies of participants. Of course, a more cynical evaluation of the situation would be that all people will take as much as they can and knock over anyone who gets in their way if it's free.

Catering to the Minority Customer

As a relatively frequently shopper at Amazon Japan, I get plenty of ads from them via e-mail. This doesn't trouble me because I don't regard it as spam when I've surrendered my e-mail information willingly to a vendor. In the past, all of the messages have been in Japanese and tended to focus on just a few products such as a new book or CD release. I can honestly say that I paid as much attention to the Japanese ones as I do the English ones. That is to say that I give them a quick once over and see if there's anything of interest without reading any details besides the price.

Click this small version to see a version large enough to read.

Today, I received a message which struck me as strangely different than the usual announcements from Amazon Japan. I couldn't put my finger on it at first but then I realized that it was different because it was entirely in English. There's an odd feeling associated with seeing an interface (the tabbed bar across the top) you've only seen in a foreign language suddenly perfectly rendered in your own language.

This is an interesting move on the part of Amazon Japan and I can't say it's unwelcome. Though we don't have too much trouble navigating their Japanese site, this does make the chances that we'll browse certain products casually more likely as opposed to hunting down only specific products of interest. It's also a bit curious because they are making an effort to accommodate customers who are in the minority in a fashion that you don't often see in Japan.