a free gift, or a disguised punishment?

Haven't updated in a while, sorry! Partly due to a lack of interesting stuff to post about, and partly due to my own laziness. But, something interesting happened today that I thought I would share.

Some local ALTs here in Hida are having our own Thanksgiving dinner tonight, and I've been chosen to make the sweet potatoes. I've never made sweet potatoes before, and I don't have an oven. But, based on my success with apple pie, I figure I'll be ok.

Anyway, I had to go to the store and get the ingredients (sweet potatoes, mostly), where I was greeted by "Merry Christmas!" signs everywhere and "It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas" on the speakers, hahaha

But the really crazy thing, what surprised me more than all the obnoxious xmas-ing, was what happened at the check-out. My first year here all the supermarkets in Takayama instituted a new policy of charging for plastic bags, to encourage people to bring re-usable eco-bags. Usually I have one in my car, but today I forgot it at home and had to buy a plastic one. 15 yen, no big deal; it's not the price so much that makes me not want the plastic bags, I hate them more because once I get my stuff home and unpacked I then have to add it to the plastics bin...

So I get the bag, and along with it comes:

A pack of 3 boxes of natto >.<
For those of you too lazy to follow the wikipedia link, I'll copy some of the info for you here:
Nattō (なっとう or 納豆) is a traditional Japanese food made from soybeans fermented with Bacillus subtilis. It is popular especially as a breakfast food. As a rich source of protein, nattō and the soybean paste miso formed a vital source of nutrition in feudal Japan. Nattō can be an acquired taste because of its powerful smell, strong flavor, and sticky consistency.

"Can be an acquired taste" is kind of misleading. In my experience everyone, foreigners and Japanese alike, fall into two, very distinct camps with respect to natto. You either love it or you hate it. I'm in the latter group, hahaha, natto is definitely one of the grossest things I have ever had the misfortune to try. Unsurprisingly, that experience has only been thrust upon me during school lunch. One particularly horrific experience was the infamous shishamo-natto double-whammy lunch last year. *shudder*


So I find it unsurprising that, in the event you forget to bring your own bag to the supermarket, not only do you have to pay 15 yen for a plastic one, you now also get three boxes of natto as a "gift". I'm thinking the person behind this particular marketing campaign must also fall into the camp of natto haters.