This is the kind of thing I really dislike when I come up against it: seasonal sales that don’t last the season. Recently, I’ve been having cold feet. No, it’s not that I’m ditching something out of fear, I literally have cold feet at night. So I figured that I’d do the logical thing: go buy an electric blanket.

So I went to the local store to buy one–only to be told that I couldn’t. The store was out, and was not getting any more in. Why not order more, I asked the shopkeeper, only to be told that the manufacturer had shut down for the season. I guess I just don’t understand the logic of that, because it sounds real dumb to me. After all, it was the first day of February, and there were at least a few more cold months in store. How could they be out? The shop guy explained that it was a colder winter than usual, but that still didn’t sound right to me. I mean, how long does it take to produce an electric blanket? From raw materials to shipped product, does it really take two months? I would guess more like a matter of days, if the factory was geared up right. So why would a factory shut down before they knew whether they had produced enough, or too much for that matter? However, I’d run into this kind of thing before. I ride a scooter in to work, and the wind chill can get fierce. So I go to the store to buy long johns. It’s December. And they’re sold out. Wha??

Besides which, I just don’t like being told that I can’t do something. A week before, I’d decided to start eating apples. I’d have liked a peeler/corer/slicer, the kind sold commonly in the U.S., but I’d settle for just a peeler. Now, in Japan, everyone peels their apples. I don’t know if it’s just a preference (almost all fruit here is eaten without skin in Japan, including grapes, by the way) or if it’s because of stronger pesticides used here, but I didn’t want to chance it, so I want to eat my apples sans peel. Problem is, most Japanese people peel their apples with a knife. For me, that’s simply too laborious and slow. Not worth it. So I assumed that since Americans eat apples with skins more often and apple peelers are not too hard to find, then in Japan, where everyone eats apples peeled, apple peelers must be a dime a dozen. Not so, apparently. I had told a Japanese friend that I wanted to buy an apple peeler, and they said that they simply don’t exist here, that someone they knew had looked and couldn’t find one. But since I don’t like being told I can’t do something, I went and looked anyway. And I found one. Just one, mind you, at the one store most likely to carry that kind of thing (Tokyu Hands). But I was stubborn, and I got what I wanted.

So when the guy at my local store said I couldn’t get an electric blanket, I was stubborn then, too. So I went to another larger store, a department store in a nearby town. They didn’t have them. So I went to a more specific big store, an electronics store (the kind I’d been told was most likely to have electric blankets). They didn’t have them. I asked if they could order one. Nope, they said. All out. No one has them. The factory shut down for the season.

Again, this just seems dumb to me. How can an industry simply shut down and have its product off the shelves for months in peak season when people out there want to buy them? So I went to the big, big stores, the electronic superstores in Shinjuku, and the second store I went to had a few.

So now I have toasty feet. Mmmmmm. It works great, too. But it still makes me wonder what these people are thinking. It’s not like a shop running out of umbrellas when a big storm hits–we’re talking about weeks and months of lead time to get more product out.

This is just one of those situations where you can’t be sure if there’s actually a good reason for something or if they really are just being dumb.

I vote for dumb, though.