The Best Souvenir You've Bought that Wasn't from a Souvenir Shop
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Tired of magnets and shot glasses. Looking for the local grocery store find, pharmacy product, or random shop item that ended up being the best thing you brought home from a trip.
I grabbed a bottle of Suncut UV Perfect Essence at a random drugstore because I’d forgotten mine, and it ended up being the thing I was most annoyed I didn’t buy multiples of. It was lightweight, didn’t make me feel greasy in Tokyo humidity, and was so much nicer for everyday use than most of the sunscreens I had back home. Forget the beautifully packaged souvenir cookies—I came home rationing a drugstore sunscreen.
A specific brand of laundry detergent from a Japanese drugstore, and I will die on this hill. Sounds insane, but the scent is unlike anything sold in the US and every time I do laundry I get transported back to that trip for a solid five seconds.
The actual rule I follow now: buy something boring and functional locals use daily, not something "cultural" marketed at tourists. Toothpaste, snack brands, laundry stuff, whatever — it's usually cheap, it's genuinely representative of daily life there, and it doesn't end up as clutter on a shelf because you actually use it.
I agree - magnets go in a drawer and get forgotten. A weird snack or detergent scent gets used and makes you think of the trip every single time, which is the whole point of a souvenir that a shot glass completely misses.
The Best Souvenir You've Bought that Wasn't from a Souvenir Shop
Tired of magnets and shot glasses. Looking for the local grocery store find, pharmacy product, or random shop item that ended up being the best thing you brought home from a trip.
My favorite souvenir from Japan was sunscreen 😂.
I grabbed a bottle of Suncut UV Perfect Essence at a random drugstore because I’d forgotten mine, and it ended up being the thing I was most annoyed I didn’t buy multiples of. It was lightweight, didn’t make me feel greasy in Tokyo humidity, and was so much nicer for everyday use than most of the sunscreens I had back home. Forget the beautifully packaged souvenir cookies—I came home rationing a drugstore sunscreen.
A specific brand of laundry detergent from a Japanese drugstore, and I will die on this hill. Sounds insane, but the scent is unlike anything sold in the US and every time I do laundry I get transported back to that trip for a solid five seconds.
The actual rule I follow now: buy something boring and functional locals use daily, not something "cultural" marketed at tourists. Toothpaste, snack brands, laundry stuff, whatever — it's usually cheap, it's genuinely representative of daily life there, and it doesn't end up as clutter on a shelf because you actually use it.
I agree - magnets go in a drawer and get forgotten. A weird snack or detergent scent gets used and makes you think of the trip every single time, which is the whole point of a souvenir that a shot glass completely misses.