The Night He Came Back from the Travel Expo, He Asked Me How Japanese 2H2D Differs from Everything Else on the Shelf

The weekend after Ah-Hong got back from Tokyo, he spread his suitcase open on the living room floor and pulled things out one by one. The paper bag from the drugstore had been squashed at the very bottom under his clothes, and by the time he dug it out it was crumpled into a ball. His wife, Mei-Hui, was sitting on the sofa folding laundry. Out of the corner of her eye she caught sight of the bag, but she didn't say anything—her hands just paused for a moment mid-fold.

Inside the bag were three boxes with different packaging, all of which he'd spent more than ten minutes in front of the same shelf deciding on. He told me later that he could only recognize about half the characters on that shelf. The ingredients, intended users, and warnings on the packaging were a jumble of Japanese kanji and katakana, and he could only guess at the meaning from the kanji. A store clerk was restocking nearby, and he felt too embarrassed to keep asking questions, so in the end he took photos of the backs of all three boxes with his phone and looked at them slowly back at the hotel.

The problem was, even with the photos, he couldn't necessarily understand them. After returning to Taiwan, he sent me the pictures and asked what exactly the differences were. I told him I wasn't an expert either, but we could look up whatever information we could find together. That night we chatted online for almost two hours, going from packaging labels to origin labeling, and then to how these kinds of products might be classified differently in Taiwan and Japan.

Mei-Hui joined the conversation later. Her questions were completely different from Ah-Hong's. What Ah-Hong cared about was "how is this one different from that one." What Mei-Hui cared about was "why did you buy this." She said she wasn't opposed—she just wanted to know if something had happened recently that made him feel he needed it. Ah-Hong was silent for a few seconds, then said nothing special had happened; he'd just seen so many varieties on the shelf and suddenly felt like he knew nothing about this area and wanted to understand it.

That sentence loosened the mood a little. Mei-Hui said, "Then you could ask me." Ah-Hong said, "How do you even bring something like that up?" Mei-Hui said, "You just ask. I'm not going to laugh at you." The two of them ended up talking until midnight, and what they actually talked about wasn't the products—it was how they'd both been too busy these past few years and had skipped over a lot of things they should have said.

A few days later Ah-Hong came to ask me again. He said he'd seen people online comparing Japanese 2H2D with other similar products, but he couldn't quite understand what the comparisons were focusing on. I told him, don't worry about how others compare them for now—first look at what you yourself care about. If what you care about is whether the labeling is clear, then look at whether the ingredients section, usage section, and warning section are complete. If what you care about is the source, then look at which channel it came from and whether there's Chinese labeling. These are all things you can check yourself.

He dug out the photos of the three boxes' packaging again and went through them one by one. Some labels were more detailed; others had only a few short lines. He realized that things he'd originally assumed were "all about the same" actually differed noticeably just in how complete their labeling was. He also noticed that the intended users listed on some packaging didn't quite match his understanding. These discoveries didn't help him figure out which one was "better," but they did make him clearer about how much he still didn't know.

Mei-Hui later suggested that instead of the two of them guessing, they should find a chance to ask a professional. She said that when she accompanied her mother to a follow-up appointment, there were pharmacists outside the consultation room you could ask without registering. At first Ah-Hong felt it would be awkward to ask a pharmacist about something like this. Mei-Hui said, "You ask store clerks when you buy things—what's so awkward about asking a pharmacist?" He thought about it and figured she had a point.

They really did go to a nearby pharmacy one weekend afternoon. Ah-Hong brought the photos of the three boxes and all the information he'd looked up on his phone. After looking them over, the pharmacist said that these kinds of products aren't necessarily classified the same way in Taiwan as in Japan—some might count as medicines in Taiwan, others as foods, depending on the actual labeling and import method. The pharmacist also reminded him that if he regularly takes other things, it's best to bring the whole list along rather than asking about a single product.

On the way home, Ah-Hong told Mei-Hui that he'd originally thought looking into something like this just meant searching online and seeing what others said. It turned out that the truly useful information was the words on the packaging, the explanations from the channel, and those few minutes a professional was willing to spend talking with you. He'd still read comparison articles online, but now he knew they were just one reference among many.

This later became a small habit in their household. Ah-Hong started keeping the packaging of health-related products they'd bought at home, and Mei-Hui put both of their lists in the same folder. They said that way, next time they needed to ask about something, they wouldn't have to rely on memory. Ah-Hong also said that now when he sees all those dazzling products on the shelf, he no longer feels like he knows nothing—at least he knows where to start looking.

I thought about it afterward: whether those three boxes Ah-Hong brought back from Japan ever got used, or how, wasn't really the point of this story. The point was that the trip made him realize there were things he couldn't bring himself to say, and it made Mei-Hui realize he just wanted to understand. The two of them went from each thinking on their own to being willing to look things up and ask together. That shift mattered more than any words on any packaging.