I might have mentioned it before, but back in Sanda there was a bakery I used to visit. I could never work it out, but somehow by buying just two items, I ended up with four bags. It turns out bakery’s aren’t the only places in Japan who have an obsession with packaging.
I’ve had a bit of a cold for the last few weeks, and when I first got it my throat was killing me. So I tried to think what I would do for a sore throat back home, and the first thing I thought of was Vicks Vapodrops, the orange ones of course, the other colors are mere pretenders. So off I went to the supermarket to try and find some. Imagine my surprise when I saw a box that was almost identical to the ones back home.
Quite happy with myself I went home and cracked it open to let the soothing goodness help my throat. Unfortunately it wasn’t that easy, because inside the box I found not the one big bag I expected, but four smaller packages of around 4 lozenges each.
Seriously, they may as well have individually wrapped the lozenges. They do that for enough things here as it is.
If you look very closely at the front of the box (in the lower right corner), it says 20 (5 x 4). Since the symbol that follows the 20 is repeated after the 5, it would be reasonable to assume that the package contains 20 things, with 5 things in 4 something elses (in this case, it most likely means 5 drops in each of 4 packages, all inside the box). But back tot h point, yeah, it does seem like it’s wasting a lot of packaging.
BTW: I never knew Vicks even made sore throat drops. I knew they made cough drops, that gosh aweful tasting throat spray, and the even worse tasting cough syrup, but I’ve never heard of Vicks throat drops. I guess you learn something new every day.
~Quag