Recently we went "back to school" shopping as the kids have just started school...
again (usually we only do this
once on home assignment). I was reminded again of how inexpensive things are here comparred to Japan. So, of course we made sure to buy some extras to put in our almost full bins to take back with us.
Some of those cherished and cheap items are: textbook covers, mechanical pencils, a ruler (that has metric
and standard measurements - since all the ones in Japan only have metric), big pink earasers and folders. The standard paper and notebook size in Japan is smaller than the U.S. so we will have to buy that back in Japan. We'll also try to squeeze in some bottles of hand sanitizer as I havn't found that in Japan yet.
(Confession: I am a bit of a germ-aphobic so I make my poor-but relativily healthy!! kids carry a little bottle of that powerful stuff around everywhere...not that they use it, but at least I feel a bit better imagining them using it.)
Another thing we've bought for Brenton and Chad are backpacks. After going through several cheapy backpacks that we had bought in Japan, we finally wised up and bought Joel a
JanSport brand backpack. These have a lifetime guarantee! I've also heard this is true with backpacks from
LandsEnd. You just send the backpack back to the company (no receipt needed) and they fix it and send it back to you - yes, for free. We have already had Joel's hard-used-for 4 years-backpack's zipper fixed. They are worth the extra money since they hold up so well and last for the long haul.
