January 29, 2008

Precautions

- Note the fire enough because this is a combustible material.
- Never use it because foam changes in quality to paints of oily.
- Do not apply it to sunlight for a long time because it is deterirated by ultraviolet rays.
- The guardian must attend it when the child below the elementary school lower grades makes the work.
- Use and wipe the neutral detergent off when you wash off dirt.
- Note the children's eating this.
- According to adandonment division of various place municipality when this is abandoned.

I had a great trip to my local 百円店 (dollar store) after school today. What I noticed most this time was the warning labels. I just didn't know that there was so much danger associated with styrofoam. My favorite is "Note the children's eating this". The accompanying Japanese says literally "Warn small children not to put this in their mouth". I don't really know how the passive "note" came about at all. The last warning occurred in some form on most labels, and it always came out funny. I suppose in English we do see "Dispose in accordance with local laws" or something, but the "abandon" verb used in a lot of these warnings makes the translation pretty odd sometimes.

There were some amazing things. I go to that store pretty often, but I hadn't really gone into the housewares and food section. There's a whole aisle of items to put in boxed lunches. I really wanted to find a use for the adorable tiny containers with animal heads on them, or the flexible straws that were decorated with giraffes. They didn't have any of those make-your-own packaged onigiri wrappers, with the tabs so you can pull it off and have the dry seaweed and the wet rice come together only at the moment of consumption. That was disappointing.