Ask HN: What is a product you wish was sold in your country but isnt?
Bonus points for non-food answers. Japanese-style microvans: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microvan Here in Germany cars are getting bigger and bigger, almost 50 % of newly registered cars are SUVs that weigh more than 2 tons. They clog up cities like Berlin and take more and more space. They're also completely useless as no one actually needs a 4x4 or extra-elevated car, it's pure marketing and ego stroking. Japanese cities and places like Okinawa use public space so much more efficiently, you see tiny cars and Microvans everywhere. For urban settings they're really the perfect choice of vehicle IMHO, so it's quite sad you can't buy them here. I think the main reason those exist in Japan is the special tax category for small vehicles: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vehicle_size_class#Japan In Germany such legislation would probably be opposed by the local automotive industry, who would be behind overseas competitors in this space. Microvan is great but the K-car restriction is too hard. (car manufacturers make effort to build great cars even the restriction) It restricts car width max to 1480mm, it's very hard and not very sense even in Japan. I wish it was expanded to around 1600mm and engine to 1000cc. It should also make it easier to export K-car to overseas. Packaged lifestyles: For a reasonable monthly fee I want a company to handle all the necessities like housing, food, clothing, laundry and other cleaning, vacations and so on. At some level there should be some choice, but my life could become like one big all expenses paid vacation or cruise. Insurance and accounting requirements would be open for my inspection and review but always be default handled up front by someone else who has a budget planned out with my priorities in mind. Everything you listed is already available if you just strike out “reasonable” in you opening sentence. Reasonable is subjective to the amount being earned and the extent of how hands off the service needs to be. This is very much achievable around $700 - $1.5k/month, does not include the cost of food itself and supplies. This is reasonable spending for a household making +$225k if this is the bulk of their "f you" spend kind of budget. I would pay this sum if such a service existed. Hire a VA to hire out and manage the services they select to achieve this. Makes sense, nomads would rise again. :) Definitely want the same. 1) Turkish Kebab / street food like I could find in Melbourne OZ 2) "chips" or "wedges" like I could find in Melbourne OZ 3) Effective (real) chipper-shredders for lawn care. The number of times I've tried to rent one and had to hire someone for $200-300 to turn trees on my property into mulch is beyond frustrating. Heck, even if I needed to get training and take a test for a license I would do it. I think the US took a bit of a harsh stance on these devices for common consumers after it was widely publicized that Saddam Hussein used these devices to turn his political dissidents into "fodder". I'll second you on 3. I've been trying to find ways to turn Amazon boxes into either something more compostable or something that consumes less space in my recycling bin. I ended up with a paper shredder that will shred cardboard, but it's still a pain in the ass to tear up the boxes. I would kill for something like a mulcher than I can just chuck whole boxes into and let it deal with. I should probably order less stuff online, I know, but the recycling around here sucks. They only pick up recycling every 2 weeks, and the bin is smaller than my trash bin. Despite the fact that I generate a lot more recycleables than I do genuine trash. I've also been looking for a decent cardboard shredder that does not require tearing the boxes into smaller pieces and sells for a reasonable price. The only thing I've found is industrial shredders which start at $1500 and go up fast from there. https://www.amazon.com/HSM-Profipack-Single-Layer-Converter/... They can't be much more than a motor and some heavy duty shearing cutting disks, but they are really expensive! There seems to be nothing in the price range between office paper shredders (which require tearing cardboard into small pieces) and industrial shredders (which are designed for extensive heavy duty use, much more than a home owner would need.) Most places allow you to break the boxes down and put them out in 2'x3' stacks tied with twine. "I think the US took a bit of a harsh stance on these devices for common consumers" What makes you say that? I don't see any laws about owning these. The good ones are just really expensive. Renting one would probably run you about the price that you mentioned ($200-300). I've been looking at used ones on craigslist, but haven't found the right one yet. I was talking to a guy I rented one from and he pretty much said "yeah, you used to be able to buy these at sears pretty much up until the year 2000". He mentioned that in order to rent them in the state of Texas you actually need a heavy machinery license (the same necessary for excavators, bobcats and bulldozers). This guy was great though, he also helped out with my 30th birthday where my friends and I went out to a friend's ranch and just "played" with heavy machinery for a weekend. 1. European-style folders with elastic bands at the open corners (http://www.ldapapeterie.fr/chemise-elast-24x32-cl-5-10e-asso...) 2. 8oz Rip Its 3. Toyota Hilux 4. Small but rugged SUVs (RAV4 Adventure and maybe Jeep Cherokee are the only things even close in the U.S.) 5. Tim Tams. They haven't been available since COVID. I've seen "1. European-style folders with elastic bands at the open corners" used once in the US before. Whether or not it was imported by an individual, a store, etc, I have no idea. I had to google for "Rip Its". Wikipedia says "Rip It drinks average about 160 mg of caffeine from all sources per 16 oz. serving according to product packaging (purchase date: 2020-11-24)". So about 2 espresso shots worth of caffeine. Too much sugar in 16oz. The 8oz is just right. We had them in Iraq but apparently only the giant size is sold in the U.S. Ford just released the new Bronco, and Jeep's got the new Gladiator depending on your definition of 'small'. The Jeep Renegade might count as well. Now sure if they are actually rugged or not, but the marketing certainly paints them that way. The Gladiator has a bizarrely small payload capacity making it a bit of a white elephant. The new Bronco looks _nice_. It’s built on the Australian developed Ford Ranger platform. The Ranger is so popular here it’s unseating the Hilux as the top selling vehicle. We don’t get the Bronco locally, though. A lot of people would love one. The Toyota FJ Cruiser would also fit your bill but it seems like they stopped selling it in the states. Gladiator is a truck with a bed. Bronco is large. Renegade is in the right form factor but not particularly rugged. EDIT: I just checked and apparently they DO make a Trailhawk version of the Renegade, so that might fit the bill. Where are you located? Isn't the Toyota Hilux really just the same thing as the Tacoma? No, the Hilux is available with a 3L turbo Diesel engine that’s much more efficient and torquey than the Tacoma. Also the SW4 Hilux is much nicer overall than the Tacoma IMO. I have been learning Japanese for a while and I am at a level good enough to consume native content. You don't realize how hard it is to buy (mostly digital) Japanese content online. I believe it is due to 20th century pre internet zoning regulations. On several occasions I spent a lot of time trying to buy some stuff legally but it was so hard or impossible that I ended up consuming pirated content. Google apps store does not allow you to buy an app in Japanese from the UK, Amazon.jp requires a different account than amazon.co.uk (which is not the case for amazon.com), Netflix does not provide Japanese subtitles for animes, same for steam, some games are in many languages but not Japanese. 1. Macbooks Airs and Macbook Pro 13's with 16GB's of Ram(You can order them here but not buy on retail) 2. Souvlak's (Greek street food) 3. Firecrackers that have small explosive power(They used to sell them here like 20 years ago) 4. Amazon Prime 5. Electric bikes that go faster then 25km/h 6. More second hand old cheap Japanese pickup trucks Germany: 1. Weed, to be honest. I'm not a heavy consumer, but I'd appreciate a safe, reliable source. 2. Old Dutch BBQ chips 3. Cheese curds Don't bring that evil on me. I had poutine with those curds. Now I get why people get uppity about cultural appropriation. It's a pale imitation, and no amount of Canadian flags will nake it authentic. New Zealand: 1. Jack Wolfskin Berkeley backpack 2. iFixit repair parts (especially MacBook Pro batteries; fake ones killed 3 logic boards last week) 3. Affordable bicycle lights (white lights cost $20 in NZ, 60€ in France, 100 NTD in Taiwan) 4. Apple laptops with keyboard engravings from other regions (there are many Chinese and Koreans in Auckland, not to mention Russian, Arabic, Thai, Japanese, etc). Gardening ? Western USA, far from the coasts Asian vegetables. South Asian, southeast, Asian, east asian, whatever. Bitter gourd, drumsticks, curry leaves, kang kong. I really hate broccoli but it's hard to escape. Having a maid. While common for the middle class in SEA, US labor laws preclude this. This would also help the majority of needs for the commenter seeking a pre-packaged lifestyle for sale. Foreign programming. Sometimes I want to watch a shitty cop drama or the news in french without getting the super duper directv package. Public transportation that runs more frequently than every hour, and fare cards for buses. In Singapore, bus 851 has run every 12 minutes between the north and south of the island for the last 20 years at least. Try getting that level of consistency here. > Having a maid. While common for the middle class in SEA, US labor laws preclude this. I'm curious what you mean by this - there are certainly maids in the USA, but if you are envisioning something that our labor laws preclude... you probably have something else in mind when you say that? I'm referring to cost. A maid in Singapore will run on the order of $10-20k per year. Cost depends on standard of living and the maids country of origin, with discounts given if there is an elderly dependent in the household. This is an amount of money well within the ability of US dual income households to afford. I'd go so far as to say that economically it's a no brainer if such an option were available. You're considering low-paid workers a product? It's not economically a no brainer to the worker. It also wouldn't be legal to pay someone less based off of their country of origin. You may have immigrated to the wrong country. I think the last sentence of this comment is a bit uncalled for. You’re sticking up for the person who wants to pay someone $27/day to be their personal servant? Just to be clear, that’s what they are advocating for. I don’t think telling them they moved to the wrong country is out of line, move to SEA if you want live-in help for a pittance. Netherlands: Proper (Chinese, Indian, Japanese) green tea. The green tea in our supermarket is almost undrinkable. You can get proper green tea at any toko which are plentiful. Pixel Phones in the Netherlands. Why does Google sell stadia here but not pixels? They could just allow shipping from the German store. I don't understand their strategy of limiting where you can buy a device. It's so incredibly frustrating. You’re not missing out much with the pixels. I’ve been using google phones since the Nexus 4 and everything after that one has had some weird bugs come up sooner or later. In most of them, the camera bugs that come up when you need the camera the most and you miss the moment because you just got a black screen, or “the device is not ready” because the flashlight was on, or slowness after an update, random reboots, etc. I got used to them and figured out the workarounds, but I realized that they were not normal after I convinced my aunt to get a pixel and I had to hear her complaints. I’ve jumped to iPhones and I don’t think I’m looking back. It’s not WOAH at all, it’s still just a phone, but I haven’t had to compromise or get used to any weirdness. Suzuki Jimny. What an awesome little SUV. Not available in the US. Looks somewhat like the old Samurai. Pretty cool. Someday I hope to have a samurai for a while. There's a fair amount of them out there in my rural area. Better quality fruits in the US. A single Mango at whole foods costs around $2.50 in my city but has no smell and tastes like cardboard. I've never had this problem. The better food stores have good quality fruits (Wegmans, etc). Even the places like Walmart have some decent fresh fruit and have good frozen stuff. If you live outside the tropics can you expect decent fresh mangos? Mangos shipped from Mexico. Find them at ethnic latino, mexican, thai-laos, chinese or indian stores. Taste varies by season. Drugs, free (as in freedom) devices, pawpaws ointment, hardware wallets / cryptographic identity tokens. 1. A door that converts into table tennis 2. A door that doubles as an ironing board 3. A foldable door that doubles as a passageway. Affordable reverse-osmosis water purifier like sold in the US. In Japan, it's around x4-x10 expensive (maybe due to lower demand thanks to water supply). I want to import the purifier with pump, but it seems that it's hard to find a product that supports 100V/50Hz power. Buckfast, I really like it and so far I’ve found nothing quite the same in the US.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buckfast_Tonic_Wine 1. Sheridan's Coffee Liqueur 2. Vero Mango Lollipops 3. Kanelbullar -Japanese Furikake rice seasonings, also Nori seeweed wraps, Edamame -Seafood is very different in tropical countries from temperate countries.. Temperate fish like cod are not usually available in canned/dried form. -The russian non alcoholic drink "Mors", also birchwater. -Persimmons -Cashew Apples -Exotic citrous like Pomellos -Durians Those seem like interesting combinations. Where are you? Ah, non-food... I just listed all the foods.. I wish I could not be restricted by geography, and freely and conveniently browse everything that's on offer from everywhere in the world, and have it delivered for only a small additional fee, in a weeks time or so. Traubensaft. It's a non-alcoholic sparkling apple juice that they sell (or sold) in German-speaking Switzerland. In my opinion, it was better than the Martinelli's that you can get in the US. You mean Apfelschorle? "Trauben" means grapes and I think that's probably not what you meant if you're writing about apples. It's been over 30 years. But yes, come to think of it, I think it was grape. And in reply to tetris11: Yes, there's grape juice everywhere, but not like this. This wasn't Welch's. If this stuff had been alcoholic, I would have been in trouble... The alcoholic version of this in Europe is Federweisser (or Sturm in Austria) My advice, find a local winery and see if they sell grape juice. My local wineries sell amazing grape juices that are nothing like welchs in wine bottles in Northern Ohio, I assume they're similar to the kind you're looking for.
Edit: just noticed that you wanted sparkling, this may not apply Or use a soda stream. You might try some of these, the pomegranate-blueberry is excellent!: https://nonalcoholicwinesonline.com/collections/st-julian-sp... Grapejuice can be found everywhere Classic rock from outside the US and UK. Really hard to buy music from bands that were popular in their countries but not in the US. BladeRF, it's a SDR and Nuand won't sell it to Europe. Apple M1. I get it, but they're all backordered & ship from Asia right now, so it's like insult to injury.. Japanese vending machines everywhere selling hot beverages in winter, including hot soups. Good, cheap, takeway food. I imagine that e.g. vietnam has it, germany doesn't. edit: sorry, food... In Poland, I wish I could buy really soft toilet paper, that’s readily available in the United States. As an aside, last time I went to Poland (2014 maybe?) I couldn’t find _non_-perfumated anything, everything had a heavy scent to it. Including toilet paper. interestingly, here in the US, toilet paper is often explicitly marked "unscented", but I've never seen scented tp, although, admittedly, I've never purposely searched for it. 1. Japanese Toilets 2. American Chicken Tenders 3. Danish Chocolate (Pålægschokolade) 4. Japanese Ready-to-go Meals in Stores 5. Netherlandish Shrooms If you are in the States, You can probably find a Toto distributor that will sell you a Japanese toilet. https://www.totousa.com/find-a-showroom Also probably depending on region but the Costco by me has Toto washlet seat replacements for standard toilets. around $300. Japanese toilet seats as well. There's a distributor for Australia, but they're hilariously expensive given that it's basically a small heater and a water pump with some trivial controller. (Starting at $1.4k ‽) Stripe Indonesia In Europe: Japanese Fender guitars and basses. Cheetos. They're banned in Europe :( You're not searching enough. I found Cheetos in two local stores in Europe. US made Cheetos are banned in the UK due to some ingredients they contain. They're knockoffs or a variant of the original recipe. 1. Dutch liquorice
2. French baguette (fresh!) We will never buy bread ever again from a shop. Covid lockdowns has taught us to bake fresh baguettes at home that beats every bakery in the world. > bake fresh baguettes at home that beats every bakery in the world. No it doesn't, unless you have a bread oven and a lot of experience. A good recipe is not enough to make a great bread, let alone "beat every bakery in the world". https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kXV8mayG3W0 There is absolutely nothing special you need. This is a professional chef teaching how to make bread, its not baguette but you get the point. Also, bread is way better when it is warm out of the oven. This you cannot if you purchase it at the bakery and bring it home. What recipe do you use? Never could get close to what a typical French baguette tastes like. Tiny EV cars that cost under $10,000. Sunscreen with Mexoryl (encamsule) Not available in the US? I’m out of the country and I could get some what are the benefits? Yaris GR I'll second this as a rally fan. Canada, Wyze products Ordered them off American Amazon to the UK. Didn't take that long. Obviously the USB ones as anything with a American plug is a bit pointless here Melatonin in the UK Eero (wifi mesh system). Sudafed. StarLink. Algiers, Algeria. Weetabix India 1. Dual flush toilets There's a lot of these. Almost all new ones are this type. Okay. Have to buy one. india self cleaning cat litter box Long List lol Covid-19 vaccine. ( India ) 1. new rifles with selective fire 2. lawn darts 3. scanners that can receive 824 to 849 MHz and 869 to 894 MHz 4. acetic anhydride 5. phosphorus 6. Moon rocks 7. good pesticides: DDT, diazinon, endosulfan, chlorpyrifos, etc. 8. gasoline cans that work properly (old-style ones) Look at Eagle gas cans. They work well. You can also buy the old style spouts for the plastic cans (I guess they just can't sell them with the can). SDRs can recieve in those ranges. You forgot to mention lead- and radium beauty creams. Are you ok?