Worst Buys...So Far

One invariably makes some dodgy purchases when arriving in a new country, especially when you only have a partial understanding of the language (you try working out which cleaning product cleans what with only a name and fragrance to go by). However, sometimes the language barrier isn’t to blame. So here’s a quick rundown of them things I regret parting my cash over during the past couple of weeks (Blogger for some reason is being a big smelly uploading pics, so they are via ImageShack and poorly aligned).

APPLES
Finding fresh fruit and veg in Japan isn’t a problem – paying for it is. One apple can set you back around 200 yen (£1); a pack of grapes up to 500 yen. I did it multi-pack style, buying a bag of five giant apples for 400 yen. The thing is, they’re just too big, as if they were compensating for being so pricey. I don’t think I was buying them from the giant greengrocer’s section, but I can barely manage half of one. I’ve still got three left in my fridge a fortnight on. And chopping them up is a pain (see below).



KNIFE
The Daiso is a chain of 100 yen shops in which you can pretty much stock up for life. One such essential purchase was to be a knife for cutting up my brand new apples. I spurn the 100 yen knives on display in favour of a 315 yen model that looks the business. Wooden handle, made in Japan and it’s got kanji…on…the blade! Hell, it’s three times the price of the other knives, it has gotta be good. Wrong, wrong, wrong. No fancy way of saying it – it’s just plain crap. The wooden handle is splinter city and the blade itself struggles through the aforementioned apples – elephantine, they may be, but it has trouble piercing even the fruit’s very skin. And the less said about the carrot peeling fiasco, the better.



PIZZA
Now this might be a problem with my understanding of the inner workings of my toaster/microwave (I bought chips expecting to be able to cook them in some foil as the picture on the packet showed, but then I confirmed it was indeed a microwave, not toaster/oven, which scuppered my fries). But I bung in one of these frozen pizzas for the allotted time using the pizza setting on the device, and out comes a melty-topped burned-bottom pizza-pie for being to sup upon. However, every bite alternates between being ‘quite not bad’ to ‘vomit bread nastiness’. I finish the whole thing, but I wish I’d stuck to my poorly-chopped carrots (see above). I still have 2 remaining, but they’re going to be gathering frost for a while yet.

Coming soon – my Best Buys so far!