The lack of good deodorant and the horrors it cause...

No, it's her pretty little...

I've lived in Japan now a little over ten years and over just these ten years life has become much more convenient. Obviously things like e-mail, Facebook, Internet news, bittorrent with easy download of tv-shows and magazines from the home country has made it much easier to stay connected to old friends and the news on what's going on in the old country. Over these ten years Internet shopping has also evolved considerably and since a few years back the Japanese Amazon online shop has plenty of reasonably priced import stuff available through themselves or any of the companies that sell through them. Stuff like Swedish books, newspapers and magazines I can also easily get digitally for the iPad. 

Smaller import shops are also getting much more common and since last year our local import shop of the "Kaldi" chain started selling some popular Swedish brands of food carrying even those pickled red beets that no one but the Swedes (and possibly the Finns and Russians) eat. Just earlier in the year they also started selling Swedish instant mashed potato. So nowadays there are very few things that I can't get my filthy hands on here in Japan. I shudder to think how those people who lived here before the advent of e-mail, Internet and fast and cheap shipments to Japan managed to survive far away from the home country and the news over there... 

However, there is one thing that the Japanese have yet to fully discover... The benefits of using deodorant during the hot summer months... It's practically impossible to get one's hands on a decent can of deodorant here, the few brands that are available through pharmacies mostly seem to be perfume with very little longer term effect against the sweating and stink. Nor has it been particularly easy to find online either and in previous years I have been hoarding up on it during overseas trips only recently found an online shop that carried the brands that I want to use. 

But the real problem isn't me and deodorant, the real problem is the lack of usage overall here in Japan. Particularly the train rides can turn into marathon sessions of armpit stink surrounding me on all fronts and being the only person actually using deodorant gives me little help or comfort... Someone needs to start a serious "armpit odour awareness" week here in Japan... Just a couple of more months I keep telling myself and soon autumn will be here...