The knife may be less than a buck, but it can hold an amazingly sharp edge if you’re willing to spring for a nice whetstone.

Like a lot of people in Japan, after I moved into an apartment of my own my first stop was the nearest branch of Daiso, the country’s most popular chain of 100 yen shops. With a wide selection of products, Daiso is a great place to pick up things to outfit your new home, all for just 100 yen (US$0.89) each, and I even picked up some kitchen knives, which were a great value and worked fine for my basic cooking needs.

But it turns out that despite their humble price point, Daiso cooking knives can be honed to razor-sharpness, as shown in an amazing video from Japanese YouTube channel Attoteki Fushinsha no Kiwami. The video starts with the unboxing of a brand-new Galaxy kitchen knife, a Daiso store-brand line of cutlery. The demonstrator then performs a few quick performance tests, using the blade to saw through a hand towel and sponge, the first taking 32.9 seconds and the latter 10, as shown where the video below starts.

Now that he’s got a baseline established, the demonstrator brings out a series of ceramic whetstones, each more expensive than the last, and starts sharpening and polishing the 100-yen knife. The last segment involves a whetstone priced at 31,000 yen, which makes its appearance at the video’s 6:39 mark (queued up below).

After a few minutes of diligent grinding, the knife looks totally different, with a dramatic sheen to its new edge.

So just how sharp is the knife after being upgraded with the whetstone? Well, it’s sharp enough that the demonstrator can gently lay a tissue on the edge, then slice through it simply by blowing on the paper, which you can see in the video below.

The knife has also gained the power to easily slice slivers of tomato so thin that they’re translucent. And as for chopping cucumbers? The demonstrator can pretty much let gravity do the work; leaving the knife with its blade facing upwards, all he has to do is drop the cucumber across the edge for it to separate cleanly into two chunks.

▼ Both feats can be seen here

The video concludes by repeating the towel and sponge tests using the newly sharpened knife, which requires far less sawing than the original edge did.

So in the end, it turns out that Daiso’s knives are the real-world equivalent of video game joke weapons/characters that become incredibly powerful once you level them up to their maximum potential. We suppose that also makes them the Magikarp of 100-yen items, and also the perfect choice should you need to cut up a Magikarp taiyaki cake to share with friends.

Source: YouTube/! 圧倒的不審者の極み via IT Media
Images: YouTube/! 圧倒的不審者の極み