Cultural Shopping Experience

Where I live (Silicon Valley) there is a high population of Asians, so of course there are a number of specialty Asian stores. "Asian" being a very broad category, there are stores to cover all the bases. As I told Lydia (Understand Blue - see my blog roll) who is a big Hello Kitty fan, there are at least 3 "Sanrio" stores in my area - all they sell is Hello Kitty and friends stuff. So today I went into "Daiso" which is a Japanese dollar store to see if I could find some small spice containers. It takes a super long time to shop there if 1) you can't read Japanese 2) have no idea what some of the product does 3) even after looking at the pictures on the packaging still can't figure out what it's for. I will say that the pictures do help out a lot.
I've been on the look out for some "pokey" tools or paper piercers (in the crafting world) so when I found $1.50 pokey tools in the cooking section I was thrilled. Now what would a metal pokey tool be doing in the cooking section? Here's where the pictures on the packaging come in handy. I guess when you want to check and see if your cookies are brown on the bottom, you can gently lift them with the metal pokey tool. Must be serious business because there where at least 5 different styles to choose from. Happy with my find I walked over to the sewing section and to my surprise found something called a "centering tool" which is a pokey tool with a short fat handle. Much better to have a short handle. What a score!!! On my way out I went to art supply section hoping to find some Uni Ball white gel pens. Didn't find those, but I did picked up some "fountain pens" and since I couldn't read most of the packaging, got three different ones to play with. So if you need 100 different ways to mold your rice Daiso has you covered but they don't have any small spice holders.