Can luxury toilet paper really be worth the exorbitant price tag? Mr. Sato orders some of the finest on the market to try it out.
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Billionaire Yusuke Maezawa has purchased a Stradivarius violin. His promise to send it around the globe has netizens humming, but not in a good way.
This glittering mask made of solid gold is now on display at the GINZA TANAKA jewelry shop in Ginza.
With the advent of cellphones, wristwatches have become less and less common, meaning makers have had to get more and more creative capture the attention of customers. One perfect example is this Japanese watch company that has started selling watches that use transforming metal kanji characters to tell the time!
Celebrities are no strangers to lavish and extremely costly weddings. They’ve been known to spend upwards of millions of dollars on the venue, dress and jewels, and then their wedding photos get plastered all over celebrity and gossip magazines. As the wedding season wound itself down, there was still time for a few October weddings, which included the exceptionally extravagant affair celebrating the nuptials of Angelababy and Huang Xiaoming. They spent around $31 million for their nuptials! Imma let you finish, but that is more than Kim Kardashian-West and Kanye West’s wedding in 2014 and that was the best wedding of all time. Of all time!
How do you picture being transported to your fantasy vacation spot? A giant cruise ship? A seat in the first-class section of a jumbo jet? How about… a bus?
Not quite sure about that last one? Well the Japanese company Isetan Mitsukoshi Travel is trying to change your mind by offering luxury bus rides from Tokyo to all over Japan. And we’re not exaggerating with the use of the word luxury here: each bus seats only 10 people, and the ticket will cost you around 150,000 yen (US$1,211).
Can such a price tag possibly be worth it? Read on to find out!
Sometimes Japan produces things that are totally worth the high asking price if you really want them: like the US$16,000 wood-carved dragon guitar, or the $1.4 million golden Godzilla. But then there are the things that make you laugh out loud when you see the price: like $18 per cup Geisha Starbucks coffee or $100 rainbow-colored tissues.
A set of 30 newly-released candy tins based on the artwork of Andy Warhol definitely falls into the “excuse me what?!” category. Sure they’re beautifully made and come inside lacquered medicine boxes, but you won’t believe how much they asking for them.
Rikishi, oyakata, tokoyama, and Yokozuna. If these Japanese words mean anything to you, then you are likely a super sumo fan. Like any popular sport, it’s expensive to see your favorite athletes compete – and actually meeting and chatting with them seems like a distant dream. This is not so different for Japan’s national sport of sumo, with 13,000 fans at each tournament cheering for their favorites, you are just one in the crowd.
But, of course everyone wants more – more chances to take pictures and more chances to meet your favorite stars. Well, if you have nothing else planned for December, right now is your last chance to sign up for the Grand Sumo Cruise! Just be ready to open up your wallet!
You may remember the limited edition “ice cream shovels” produced last year to solve the problem of too-hard-to-eat frozen treats found at convenience stores. Well now there’s another spoon that’s specially engineered to use the heat from your hands to get you closer to the perfect scoop. An item that’s this well-thought-out is going to have a hefty price tag, but you’ll probably be surprised at just how expensive this ice cream spoon actually is.
Tokyo and its big city cousin to the south, Osaka, are consistently voted among the most expensive places in the world in international polls. Japan in general is notorious for its high prices, prompting many potential visitors to choose a different, more cost-effective destination. Sure, from an outside perspective, prices in Japan are more than most are used to, but what do those who actually live there think? Japanese website, Ameba News, asked 570 working Japanese adults to name any products they felt weren’t priced correctly, whether too expensive or too cheap. The results may surprised you.
Since the 20 September launch of the iPhone5S and iPhone5C some people have already purchased theirs while others remain on waiting lists. All around the world the iPhone5S is in short supply, the gold model in particular proving especially difficult to lay hands on.
So when a gold iPhone5S became available on eBay this week the bidding quickly got out of control, with the price of the phone shooting up to around US$10,000.
The Japanese love their insurance. According to the weekly tabloid Shukan Post, the average household in Japan pays 454,300 yen (approx. US$5,393) a year in life insurance premiums in an effort to feel safe and protect loved ones. Comprising just 2% of the global population, Japan pays 18% of the world’s total insurance premiums, this which works out to average insurance spending of US$3,500 per capita, the highest level in the world.
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