Shopping For Things Japanese and Unique

Diaso Pink Fish Bag/Purse

My son likes many things Japanese and is studying the language to move towards linguistic mastery.  He travels some with his current job and often meets tourists from Japan with whom he can converse to personally test his proficiency.  Someday, he aspires to possibly work with Google Japan where language mastery is required.  Anyway, he currently is into all things Japanese. 

Therefore, when a Daiso store was opened locally, we went to check out shopping for Japanese items.  I was surprised to find they sold more than candy, snacks, and trinkets like the smaller “far east” type stores do under a different name inside shopping malls.  They had lots of home items for the kitchen, as well as storing and organizing!  The variety was surprisingly larger than they offer via the internet. True, they are no Container Store, but they do offer several unique storage and organizing items at reasonable prices. 

There was too much to see in the short time we were there.  We bought some snacks to try, a bubbler, and I got a cute pink fish drawstring bag to store a long strand of pink freshwater pearls in.  Since you are supposed to store real or glass pearls in bags to protect the pearls and string, rather than hanging them which stretches the string prematurely.  I thought choosing a bag the same color as the pearls inside it would make it easy to quickly find the pearls I wanted to wear.  They also had a red fish bag, but I didn’t have red pearls and worried that the color might fade onto anything stored in the bag. The fish bags inside the store came in 2 sizes (priced the same regardless of size) and would be great gift bags for small items like jewelry. The largest fish size is less than 6 inches in diameter.  The store also has finger nail polish and hair accessories that could be good gift items to put in the bag.  The larger bag is may also be used a cosmetic purse or travel jewelry bag – so using it as a gift bag is like giving 2-gifts-in-1.

I plan to drop by again when I am in the area so I can more closely browse the aisles.