Oh the dollar store. As a kid, I would walk to the one on the corner to get all my Christmas gifts: creepy porcelain cats, a woven basket with a hole in the bottom, a pencil case.

I thought my dollar days were over until my sister made me go to Daiso, a Japanese-franchised dollar store in the “ID” (Psst, International District) here in Seattle. It’s other places too, so if you see one stop in and take a look around.

First off – there’s the whole look and feel. It’s bright. Everything is arranged nicely – no plastic bins filled with broken pencils and opened packages of expired crackers. It doesn’t even smell like a dollar store, meaning it doesn’t smell like someone peed in the corner and then misted the air with bad cologne.

Not only is everything gloriously cheap, oh-so-cheap, it’s useful. There are cool cooking items, including a green onion knife that cuts green onions into ribbons. Cherry blossom stickers.  Beauty masks. Sure, the instructions and ingredients are in Japanese, but that makes it only more fun. Continue reading →