I had never heard of Daiso, a Japanese retail store that is apparently well known on the socials. To be fair, I'm not their target audience, and regardless, last Sunday I found myself driving Lisa, Junie, and two of Junie's friends to check out the place in Kenosha, about 50 minutes south of us.
I was underwhelmed. It's essentially a dollar store, with a few sections of "higher end" items - merchandise you'd expect to pay five bucks for at other places. That's fine, I like Dollar Stores, and I make no effort to hide that.
Two things bothered me. One, other than a very small assortment of Japanese food items, nothing in the place was Japanese. Oh, it may have been from Japan, but if it's all copies of the stuff in the stores to either side, what's the point? I was expecting culture shock, and instead felt right at home.
Two, the only REAL Japanese thing about the place was the pricing. Some items had prices in yens, and you'd look on a chart posted in every aisle and translate that to dollars. Whatever lacked a price - i.e. most of the place - defaulted to $2.25.
So you'd pay $2.25 for scads of items that you know weren't worth it, items you could find for $1.25 at any Dollar Tree, or even a buck or less elsewhere. What a ripoff. But, just as you do whenever you're a tourist, you go and buy it anyway. I spent $33, and while $12 was reasonably spent on a set of bowls, the rest was just me being a sucker.
Sigh.
Afterwards Lisa treated the kids to White Castle before we drove home. The food, the travel, and the company made up for what was, to me, a disappointing trip to Daiso.
