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The Great Japan Potato-Chip Crisis: Panic Buying, $12 Bags (bloomberg.com)
Demand for potato chips has surged in Japan this week, with products on offer for 6 times their retail price online after Japanese snack company Calbee halted the sale of some of its most popular chip brands. From a report: Calbee's pizza-flavored chips were going for about 1,250 yen ($12) on Yahoo Japan Corp.'s auction website Friday. One bag usually sells for less than 200 yen. Photos of near-empty shelves at their local supermarkets were trending on Twitter. The crunch came after Calbee warned on Monday that it will temporarily halt the sale of 15 types of potato chips due to a bad crop in Hokkaido, a key potato-producing region. The northern island was hit by a record number of typhoons last year. Calbee, which has a market value of 507.9 billion yen and is 20 percent-owned by PepsiCo Inc., has a 73 percent market share of potato chips. Potato chips are a big deal in Japan, a country also known for its senbei rice crackers and Pocky sticks. Calbee's potato-snack products were the most and second-most popular snacks in a TV Asahi poll of 10,000 people and 13 confectionery makers last year, and the subject of a primetime show that lasted more than two hours.
Reminds me of the butter crisis in Norway a few years ago, the neighboring country Sweden would have Swedes smuggle butter into Norway and actually sell these for as much as 1.000 NOK (roughly 116 USD) per half kilo. Don't believe it? Well - check out the sources: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... , http://gawker.com/5869463/norw...
What this world is coming to - is for you and me to decide.
and the Asian market across the street from me has no potato chips. Also, the Safeway a couple of blocks from me doesn't either. Seems like the problem is spreading.
I'm just asking.... Are you SURE it's just the X-Pat Americans who are buying chips in Japan?
By the Way... Little Kim Un? Is that you?
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
Let's see:
Japanese potato chips :
Nerd relevant? WTAF?
Matters? huh?
Is this some nerd chip for the Trumpian 300 pounder in some basement?
"The crunch came" --- ah, I see what you did there. :-)
You've gone below this level, often...
World War 1 AND World war 2 both started in and where fought at least partially in Europe.... And that's just the highlights since the 19th Century... Welcome to the gutter with the rest of the "civilized" world.
I rest my case...
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
Little Kim Un.... Is that you playing on one of the 21 computers you have?
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
Haha, suck it, nerds!!!!!
As long as cheeto and dew trees are safe, we don't care.
love is just extroverted narcissism
I'm thinking a couple of containers of Idaho's finest russets are all that is necessary to keep Japan in the chips... Somebody call Idaho and start shipping...
Better yet, call a couple of US based chip fryers and start running those fryers 24/7 until we bury them in chips....
Seriously? People are paying $12/bag? Unless there are some *serious* tariffs on the importation of snack foods and potatoes, I detect a HUGE amount of profit is possible here. Surely somebody has started shipping these things to Japan...
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
World War 1 AND World war 2 both started in and where fought at least partially in Europe.... And that's just the highlights since the 19th Century... Welcome to the gutter with the rest of the "civilized" world.
Don't be fooled by labels - WWI and WW2 are just labels put on times. As the European colonial empires began to fade in the early twentieth century, they wished to re-exert their influence in the world and began a sequence of events that led into what was called WWI, and that sequence has not drawn to a close, with war still continuing today largely over the British partitioning of the Middle East.
Historians are obsessed with weaponry, but just because there were pauses in shooting doesn't mean that the totality of events in every society involved did not continue as a continuous sequence of atrocities and disasters (and of course the shooting starts up again, from time to time).
Wilson and Col. House certainly made things worse, but there was plenty of malfeasance for them to wade into, a consequence of European power mongering.
But those Americans sure like to eat fried food! (and seriously, cut out the sweets, 'murka).
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
Ah, those were the days. Barely lived through that one. =)
The story here, for those fortunate enough to have missed it.
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
Does that mean you are done LOLing at the Europeans over Brexit?
Nerd relevant? WTAF?
When the price of foreign currencies spikes like that, for people holding USD, they're sure going to wish they were holding cryptocurrencies.
TFTFY.
OK, I tried.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
> no potato chips due to a bad crop in Hokkaido, a key potato-producing region. The northern island was hit by a record number of typhoons last year...blah-blah...
Don't buy such cover stories. Last time there was a big potato it shortage happened in nazi Germany. Since they had no domestic mineral oil supplies and the romanian oil fields were lost to soviet invasion by 1944, the lack of kerosene (jet fuel) production meant the mass application of V2 (A4) ballistic missiles suffered a big setback. Germany's solution was to convert the V2 to alcohol-LOX fueling: they simply confiscated over 75% of the entire potato yield in the Reich and in the occupied territories, had it fermented and used the spirit to fuel the V2, of which over 3500 were launched against Belgium, Netherlands and Britain.
Similarly, it is quite likely that the oil-less Japan (they only have coal resources domestically) is now trying to amass potato crop for industrial alcohol production, likely in connection with some aero-space project, quite likely a clandestine military one, else they could simply buy more mineral oil from Russia or the Arabs in public tanker ship exchanges. I think USA, China and Korea better watch out!
AND EAT IT!
*That was a Death Note reference in case you didn't notice.
Kim Il Sung invented the potato chip while leading guerilla war units to fight the Japanese occupiers.
Amazingly, it turns out it was a genius long term plan to bring the morale of imperialist and puppet forces down.
Why the hell would anybody want pizza flavored potato chips, let alone pay money for them? Silly people!
You are an ignorant hypocrite whose stupid attitude sickens the rest of us.
The potato chip (invented by an englishman William Kitchiner) price surge is from Japanese consumers - not American ex-pats.
What country do you live in to be proud of everything your government has done? While Americans certainly don't agree with everything Trump does, he definitely has shown a willingness to stand up to war criminals like Assad. Should the US stand by and let North Korea threaten to nuke the US, South Korea and Japan, its long time friends and allies? Should it stand by while Russia annexes the Baltics, Poland and whoever else in Europe Russia desires?
Make no mistake - the United States is by far the most dangerous enemy to have on this planet in human history. You should be very thankful that it is populated with a basically decent people and a democratically elected government that stood by Europe in its many hours of need.
Never before have I been so certain of a samefag.
All the warmongering fatass Americans living in Japan can't do without their greasy disgusting foods. Perhaps Trump will start a war with North Korea over this. You Americans sicken me.
I'd rather be a fatass American than a poor worthless European piece of trash.
I'm guessing that, in reality, both you and the troll OP you fed to are actually fatass Americans. (^_^)
I live in San Francisco. Numerous Asian grocery stores carry these chips near me. They are much less fattening than normal American chips, like Lays. I eat Calbee chips quite frequently, and I'm a white dude, and they have flavors most Americans wouldn't go near (Sriracha Squid flavored, wasabi and so on). I wouldn't say I'd freak out if my local Asian store stopped carrying them or started charging 12$ a bag, but it's still disappointing.
It's just like when the Hostess union destroyed the company.
People were buying packages of Zingers and Ding-Dongs from the factory store in my town and selling them for stupid money on eBay.
People have been fighting over the Mid-East from roughly 6000 BC until now. The Euros were not the cause of the current problems. The current problems are millenia old. Funny they cannot seem to straighten themselves out after all these years. They even decided to take a new religion, Islam, and use it to create a new fault line.
It used to be the Shi'ites on Bahrain were docile and not overly upset with their Sunni masters. Then they got pissed. Reporters interviewed the proles to see what caused the uprising. One bright young prole said, Google Earth. From Google Earth the Shi'ites could see for the first time where all the whizzy new development was going and how they were getting the shaft. They got pissed. Recently, Iran decided a good Shi'ite revolt was too good to miss and started supporting the proles. The Saudi's, who see an Iranian behind every grain of sand, are supporting the Sunni overloads.
I suspect some version of this is at work in the other Arab lands.
I'll give up the fried food when you stop taking dicks up your ass.
Maybe try popcorn. Nebraska will happily sell Japan all the popcorn they can eat.
Eventually it's rice or wheat. Welcome to the glorious world of climate change destabilized food production, world.
They have the latest operating system and books. MS-DOS 6.21
The dumb fat Americans just can't get enough of their disgusting unhealthy foods. Whether they live in Seattle or in Japan, the American pigs just can't do without their nasty foods. As a European living in Seattle, I'm disgusted by what I see.
Why do those hipsters pretend to be European?
It's almost as bad as those people who claim to be part native American, and the end result is the same: pathetic 23and me pseudo 1/64's are not wanted by the native Americans excapt in their casinos, and pathetic people who fail as Americans are certainly not welcomed by Europeans in any place.
Kim Il Sung invented the potato chip while leading guerilla war units to fight the Japanese occupiers.
Amazingly, it turns out it was a genius long term plan to bring the morale of imperialist and puppet forces down.
His plan failed. My morale goes up with every tasty crunch.
That's nonsensical and false. The Middle East had lots of peaceful periods. Even today a lot of countries in the Middle East are not in a state of war. You can argue, Europe Africa and Asia are in constant war too with a loose enough definition.
Awesome post!
"Trump!!", the new Godwin.
So now I guess this is just another meta-comment on the increasingly sad state of Slashdot? I was really disappointed by the lack of jokes on the rich target, but saddened by the lack of mention of climate or famine. Also not a single comment moderated "insightful", but maybe that's just what passes for truth in advertising these days?
On the official topic, I was actually ahead of the story when I saw it on TV, but I didn't realize what the full story was until later on. In one sense it is kind of funny that this is the leading edge of climate-change-induced famine as manifested by potato-chip panic in an advanced society. For all the other senses, it won't be funny when the famines become more severe even in those so-called advanced societies that have mostly brought it upon themselves. Harvesting the seeds of the climate change they planted, as the religious folk might like to say.
So let's change the topic again with the best joke I've heard this week, as mutated for the topic at hand:
Pepsi: Watch this ad! No, wait. Don't watch that ad!
United: Ha! You call that a PR disaster?
Spicer: Hold my beer (and potato chips).
(#PresidentTweety: Great job, Spicy! That's the way to change the subject! Even better and cheaper than missiles and daisy cutters!)
Freedom = (Meaningful - Coerced) Choice != (Speech | Beer^2), and sad sock puppets' bad mods avail them naught.
I'd rather be a fatass American than a poor worthless European piece of trash.
At least the poor European has real social services to fall on -- the fatass american won't be able to afford healthcare insurance for his heart bypass.
Go eat something healthy for a change. There's no need for this kind of idiocy. We're more civilized in Europe and would never sink to this level.
Oh yeah? What about FRENCH fries!? They are just as calorie laden as potato chips and not nearly as tasty. Why did the French invent them if they are so civilized?
I'm so glad they we call them FREEDOM FRIES now.
> no potato chips due to a bad crop in Hokkaido, a key potato-producing region. The northern island was hit by a record number of typhoons last year...blah-blah...
Don't buy such cover stories. Last time there was a big potato it shortage happened in nazi Germany. Since they had no domestic mineral oil supplies and the romanian oil fields were lost to soviet invasion by 1944, the lack of kerosene (jet fuel) production meant the mass application of V2 (A4) ballistic missiles suffered a big setback. Germany's solution was to convert the V2 to alcohol-LOX fueling: they simply confiscated over 75% of the entire potato yield in the Reich and in the occupied territories, had it fermented and used the spirit to fuel the V2, of which over 3500 were launched against Belgium, Netherlands and Britain.
Similarly, it is quite likely that the oil-less Japan (they only have coal resources domestically) is now trying to amass potato crop for industrial alcohol production, likely in connection with some aero-space project, quite likely a clandestine military one, else they could simply buy more mineral oil from Russia or the Arabs in public tanker ship exchanges. I think USA, China and Korea better watch out!
That is such an unrealistic conspiracy theory.
The real truth is that the Emperor is taking over the country and he's amassing a stockpile of artillery for his potato guns. Everyone knows the destructive power of a potato gun, when I was a kid, one of my friends knocked a can off a fence 100 yards away with one. Yeah, that's right, we measured in yards in those days, the socialist "meter" wasn't even invented. We had plans on building a bigger gun that could hit the moon, but ran out of time before summer ended... plus we found his brother's stash of marijuana.
Historically, the only 'peaceful periods' the Middle East has had were when they were entirely conquered by one empire, and the only organized violence was the regular suppression of rebellions and associated mass executions.
As for right now, there is no nation in the Middle East NOT involved in the fighting.
Syria and Iraq are the primary battle ground, with various sides receiving support from Turkey, Jordan, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Kuwait, and the entire Gulf Council. Saudi Arabia is also fighting in Yemen, too.
Egypt and Israel are the only two not openly involved, and both are strongly suspected of participating in military actions against ISIS in the Sinai.
Again, there is NOWHERE in the Middle East that is not involved in the fighting one way or another.
Has anybody checked the radar at Pearl Harbor? 'cause this is a Japanese national crisis. And everybody knows where the most chips per capita are in the world. That's right, 7-11.
Stay awake tonight, guys.
By that definition every European state and the US is "involved" there too and before that in other conflicts from Vietnam, tons of South American wars, Korea. Learn some history. Most nations have been in some sort of conflict throughout their history.
The US has been in some sort of conflict since WWII. Whether it's proxy warring with the Soviets, doing shit in the Middle East (since at least the 50s when we had to get rid of the communist leader of Iran) and South America (fighting Soviet interference there), Southeast Asia etc.
Meanwhile, unconfirmed reports of potato-hoarding warlords in the north of Hokkaido have emerged as authorities remain unwilling to even estimate the number of deaths the crisis has caused.
Are you paid for this or some sort of "true believer"?
I'm still not used to political wonks in this place despite it being infested with them ever since "social media worker" was a thing.
"...we WANTED to get rid of the communist leader of Iran) and South America (fighting Soviet interference there), Southeast Asia etc."
FTFY. Communism as a form of government is perfectly valid if the people who it governs are cool with it.
You can argue until you're blue in the face that it doesn't work, but that's not the point. They want it.
French fries are actually Belgian
This doesnt mention that you dumb twat
Says the AC...puss
The Belgium invented them.
Yes fries are tasty, you can make them with potatoes, a knife and sunflower oil (e.g.) whereas chips are made in some random huge factory.
You are an ignorant hypocrite whose stupid attitude sickens the rest of us.
The potato chip (invented by an englishman William Kitchiner) price surge is from Japanese consumers - not American ex-pats.
What country do you live in to be proud of everything your government has done? While Americans certainly don't agree with everything Trump does, he definitely has shown a willingness to stand up to war criminals like Assad. Should the US stand by and let North Korea threaten to nuke the US, South Korea and Japan, its long time friends and allies? Should it stand by while Russia annexes the Baltics, Poland and whoever else in Europe Russia desires?
Make no mistake - the United States is by far the most dangerous enemy to have on this planet in human history. You should be very thankful that it is populated with a basically decent people and a democratically elected government that made money off of Europe in its many hours of need.
FTFY
I admit that I do really like those potato chips. You're missing out on something delicious.
I think it just died.
I mean, as in: right now!
I feel so sad.
(Did I break the Haiku rules again? Damn!)
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
Then GTFO?
Why do you write bolocks like this?
Everyone would probably prefere to be fat over being poor.
Putting 'nationalities' in fromt of such statements only shows how uneducated you are ... poor European? By what terms? The moun tof poor and homelss people is in the US much higher than in Europe ... get a clue. In europe only such people are homeless that denie social/public service.
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
Potato chips have a much higher fat to carbs ratio than frensh fies.
Frensh fries were invented by the belgic, btw.
And correctly done frensh fries are made from rather thick potato sticks.
All of the above is mot necessarily unhealthy, if eaten in moderation.
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
You mean both world wars, multiple genocides, chembankrupt countries and forced laws that causes a Country to leave the EU?
How fucking stupid are you?
Not sure about morale but I can confirm it works excellently for the nipples.
Ezekiel 23:20
Go eat something healthy for a change. There's no need for this kind of idiocy. We're more civilized in Europe and would never sink to this level.
Oh yeah? What about FRENCH fries!? They are just as calorie laden as potato chips and not nearly as tasty. Why did the French invent them if they are so civilized?
I'm so glad they we call them FREEDOM FRIES now.
Freedom fries go especially well with coffee from my freedom press.
-chem
Classy. I'll bet you freedom kiss on the first date too.
If only there were a way to move potatoes from areas where they are plentiful (say, Idaho) to areas experiencing a shortage. But, no, it's impossible.
Spotted the hipster. Calbees chips have the same calorie content as American chips.
If you'd read just a tiny little bit about geopolitics then you'd know also how these things work.
Wars aren't started 'to help a people', or 'to spread democracy', or 'to save people from a rude dictator'.
That's only PR and propaganda in order to gain support from the people for a war that only serves the rich in becoming even more rich by fighting for a 400 billion gas reserve between Iran and Qatar. Who ever wins the pipeline (through Syria) wins.
That's the only (plus a few more) reason why 'Assad has to go'. Because he said "no" to Qatar but "yes" to Iran.
The US wants to get rid of the Assad clan already since the sixties, but now they have some financial backers that actually are willing to pay for the war.
Who do you think bought all those Toyotas for ISIS?
"Trump!!", the new Godwin.