I went shopping for a few last-minute items for the chicken I plan on roasting sometime over the next few days. I took my usual route down the beer and carbonated-beer-flavored-beverage (発泡酒: happoushu) aisle and found to my delight that my favorite beer was a whole fifteen yen cheaper than normal. That's about 12 cents.
You may scoff, but this is a huge deal. As any foreign beer-drinker living in Japan will lament, real beer is very expensive and not particularly tasty here. You see, there's a specific tax on barley, making beer far more expensive compared to other alcoholic beverages. I've also never seen more than a 5 yen price difference between stores, and beer absolutely never goes on sale. If you prefer beer, you're screwed and stuck paying the equivalent of $45 for a case of not very good beer. Your other option is the above-mentioned 発泡酒 that is priced like beer back home but tastes much much worse.
So maybe in time for the New Year, in which everyone gets together with their families and drinks and eats a lot, the beer price (at least in giant-ass bottle format) dropped. I was so happy I bought two bottles to save for a future occasion. Huzzah!
It's the small things in life. o(^-^)o