Written by Dave

Rest day – Supermarket Day

There are so many things in Japan that make us go “huh?” Many are just odd or different, like the gas station attendees and how they guide customers in and out of the station and the clerks at stores that come out and wave at customers as they leave the parking lots. We laugh at the differences and move on. If we lived here we would probably not think twice of them. Other things are odd, but we’d really need to work them out if we were to ever live here. Supermarkets fit directly into this latter category. I’ve been collecting photos from supermarkets to illustrate some of the challenges so that’s what we’re writing about today.

The biggest challenge for me is the language barrier. I have to ask Nancy with everything we look at. She needs to use Google translate on the phone a good amount of the time as well, because they use lots of kanji that she has not yet learned. We expected shopping to take longer for this reason alone, and it has.  Even with Google translate we are sometimes not certain exactly what we are buying.

As for products, I’ll start with an area many Westerners have heard about, the price of fresh fruit and veggies in Japan. Yes, we have found $14 USD cantaloupes and $14 USD bundles of parsley. But then we found nearly normal priced bundles of other herbs and nearly the same price for apples. We get lots of pickled veggies in our meals but not much fresh so I don’ think they’ve worked out how to reduce the prices across the board but there is some progress making fruits and veggies more accessible.

I’ll next move to alcohol, more specifically, beer. The photo below is from one of the bigger super markets and represents their entire beer selection. There is not a single craft beer, none of our favorite IPAs and surprisingly none of the typical international standards, Budweiser and Heineken.  For the record, we don’t drink Bud or Heineken but it wouldn’t matter, you’re not getting it here. As for Aussie wines, nope, not even Yellowtail or Penfolds. They do have a nice selection of sake in milk cartons however (technically not in milk cartons, but that’s what I’m calling them).  We have seen photos of craft beer brewers but have yet to find one anywhere near by us, unfortunately.

We then travel down the spread and cereal aisles. The entire spread section is included in the photo below. There is no peanut butter and no vegemite. Maybe I’m not surprised on the Vegemite but Nancy recalls her Mom bringing over a huge jar of peanut butter in the 1980s when she was an exchange student here. To think no progress has been made to introduce the Japanese to peanut butter –  shocking. As for cereal, the photo below is everything – four types of granola (two with chocolate) and Frosted Flakes. If you like cereal in the morning, adjustments will need to be made.

If you like tea, you’d probably think Japan is a place to come. It might be but not in the supermarket. There are very few choices of bagged tea and almost no caffeine free or herbal tea. We’ve spent countless hours trying to replenish Nancy’s supply of chamomile tea – she likes a cup at night – forget it. The loose leaf section is larger but even that section is considerably smaller than you’d think for a tea drinking culture.  I expect that most tea is purchased through specialty tea shops, rather than at the supermarket.

Fish and seaweed, on the other hand, are prolific. The fresh fish section of most supermarkets is massive. You can get any fish you can imagine, if you can read the Japanese label and then do the Japanese name to English name conversion. Sticking with octopus might make things easier as it looks the same everywhere. Not surprisingly, seaweed is plentiful and in many shapes and sizes. We particularly enjoy the little 5 packs you get with brekkie for your fish and rice. And if you like fish cakes, there you’ll be again spoiled for choice. I’m not sure what’s in a fish cake that makes the white part so white and the pink part so pink but that’s more of a processed foods discussion than one of availability. If you like fish roe, from salmon down to those teeny flying fish eggs, well, you’ll be able to eat it to your hearts’ content.

Soy sauce and tofu are as prolific as you’d expect. You’ll have to figure out which ones you like but with Google translate and your smart phone at least you can work your way through to a solution.

We didn’t think we’d find good bread here and for the most part, in the supermarkets we were correct. There a good number of specialty bakeries now however and getting a bagels or a proper croissant has proved less difficult than we anticipated, though plain white bread proliferates and you will have to search hard to find any whole wheat or sourdough bread. We are now to the point that we don’t even stop at every bakery when riding like we did in South America. There will be another one up the road for sure.

One of the other supermarket oddities has been finding seed packet racks in almost every store right up by the checkout stand. It’s true that most open land is cultivated and many homes have some sort of garden in their yard. I guess folks need to get their seeds from somewhere. Maybe it’s not so odd as it is something we’ve not used to.

Ok, enough of that. We’re not moving here so we only need to get through another couple weeks of supermarket shops. I would like to live here long enough to master cooking some of the fresh fish but for now, we’ll probably just be happy that we found granola today and have what we need for an early start tomorrow.

And finally, once while travelling in Germany, I snapped a photo inside a store and was immediately asked to delete it by a store clerk (some sort of retail espionage thing, I think). I asked permission to take some of the photos in this post and was never refused. I’m not sure it that is Japanese politeness or the fact that I don’t look like an industrial spy. They have rules here, but they are often much less direct in confronting foreigners about them – we are trying to be respectful of this and apologize to any store clerks we may have offended in creating this post.