Pets and Candy

Okashi Land is a chain of stores in Hong Kong where you can buy Japanese candy with random Pokemon-sounding names Meltykiss, Xylish and Collon. Each store is so colourful and packed to the ceiling with a mind-boggling array of junk food that when you go in, you tend to buy the first thing you see and hurry away before you pass out from sensory overload. Then when you get home, you try it for the first time and feel a bit like you're in an episode of Steve, Don't Eat It!

Some people make a point of buying you bad confectionery. I'll never forget the first time I was given a monster pack of wasabi tuna, the lollies not the movie. I wasn't sure whether they were fit for human consumption so I tried offering one to a starving homeless person. He took one look at it and spat at me in disgust. After I washed the vagrant spit out of my clothes, the wasabi tuna went into the deepest darkest corner under the bed. It has since been joined by several cans of abalone flavoured macadamia nuts (same giver), which are so lethal that there is only one known instance of someone having survived after eating them. You see, I don't dare throw them away because such things are probably cursed - I know they will turn up again and exact revenge on me by cramming themselves down my throat while I sleep.

That's about all I will say about bad candy for today because there's already a website that documents such crimes against tastebuds. What I really wanted to tell you about was one of Okashi Land's current promotions. Right now, whenever you buy something from there, you can pay an extra HK$10 and get a stuffed toy. These are not just any stuffed toys because their backsides can be used to clean computer screens.

How versatile are they? Not only do they fulfil the need to have something small, cute and hygienically sound in your life but they also help with the housekeeping. I bought Piggy because it's a palmful of cuteness that looks vaguely like a pig in a permanent star jump position. On the other hand, there is no way in hell that Froggy even remotely resembles a frog. Its eyes are more uneven than Paris Hilton's and it's got a bloody tooth even!

This is my second pet computer screen cleaner (the last one was a blue anatomically correct frog I that bought from a different store for HK$8). I can tell that you are really envious of my collection so far, especially those of you who are living outside Asia. In the spirit of generosity, I've found some websites which sell similar toys but they cost almost 10 times more than in Hong Kong. Y'all are getting ripped off but that's the price you have to pay for keeping up with the in crowd.