As we all know now, the Coronavirus is severely effecting panic buying and while masks are still not available in Japan, toilet papers seem to be the second thing to be disappearing off the shelves. In third place is tissues. The centre of Tokyo is very, very difficult to toilet paper and even countryside areas have shortage.
Why does the new Coronavirus effect toilet papers shortage? I don’t know!!! People panic, buy toilet roll and then SNS their friend and they panic buy and suddenly the whole country panics and leaves the elderly or less able people to be able to get toilet roll. Meanwhile the government are saying “hey, its all good, we have plenty of stock” NO YOU DON’T! No one is trusting the government now and I cannot blame them.
In Japan no one is really freaking out and the toilet paper situation calmed down and then the Olympics were cancelled and BANG suddenly there are a lot of coronavirus cases in japan and everyone freaks the fu** out and panic buys AGAIN. On top of that the head of Tokyo tells everyone to stay inside for the weekend and again what happens….. PANIC BUYING!! STOP IT, it just fu“s everything. Now Germany have called Japan out by saying you are lying about how many people have the virus and they are right. Of course, the government were making it SO DIFFICULT to get a test done because they want to hold the Olympics for MONEY. Then it is cancelled, and you know the rest.
I went to Costco because last time I went for masks it was very easy to get them, very organised and I even wrote about it on this site https://oddjapan.com/2020/02/03/corona-virus-and-masks-in-japan/ but this time the q started IN THE car parking place!!! Now I can sort of understand this as the amount of people was INSANE BUT, they still allowed cars to park on that level and asking people to move when cars moving around. That was beyond STUPID. I waited around 30 – 45 minutes before getting into Costco. Everyone was waiting for toilet papers! It’s crazy but we need toilet papers! They had a rule which was one pack of roll per card not per family but then it changed to per family. People were pretending they didn’t know each other so they could get two packs. Now you would
think the card would ping when swiped saying its already been used to get a pack of toilet rolls but nope.