Today’s topic will be what you see at a grocery store. There was another topic that I thought of earlier today but now I can’t remember. Maybe it was the oddity of some keitai and their owners. But for now the grocery store.
Most big grocery stores feel about the same as a Safeway. The aisle aren’t always as big and most people don’t use any push around carts. The fridges here are so small (and often very cute, as is practically everything here) that you really can’t do a really big shop. I just did the biggest shop since arriving and it came to 2900 yen, that’s like 30 bucks. I used to drop like a hundred bucks at Thrifty’s in a night without really thinking much about it. But then that’s why I was able to eat everything in my house without buying any more groceries (just the odd carrot and apple to ward off curvy) for almost a month. When you first enter a produce section you are usually met with these giant fuji apples. They are beautiful and then you realize that everything around you is beautiful. Every single piece of vegetable or fruit are all beautiful and perfect and all pretty much the same size and shape as their neighbour. This is why you will pay 100 yen for an apple. And that really is the going rate for most apples, 100 yen. I am yet to see one for less. I do see them for more, but not any less. Carrots are packaged into threes. They are fat at the top and then get really skinny really fast. They aren’t long and tapered like North American carrots, they’re short and squat. You can imagine I fit right in. Most everything is package already for you. Which seems odd at first because the garbage disposal around here is so high maintenance that you would think everyone would be trying to cut down on packaging. Not so.
There are all sorts of odd shapes to things that you think you recognize from home, but not really. It’s not like you stand around and gape and say "What the heck is that!" It all looks pretty normal, just not usual. Except for the radish. Those I always stare at. They’re white and they aren’t hot like the little red radishes we know, they’re quite mild and even sort of sweet. In restaurants I’ve seen little bowls of ground up white stuff, kind of looks like non-creamy horseradish, but it’s really good and when I find it, I heap it on. It’s not the colour that surprises me, or the non-invasive yumminess of taste of these radishes, it’s the fact that they’re like 3 feet long! Well, okay maybe that’s an exaggeration. I would have to say 2 to 2 and a half feet is closer to the truth. Most are probably about 4-5 centimeters in diameter. I would say they are the vegetable with the most commanding presence in the produce section.
The presence in the meat and seafood section the deserves attention would be, in my opinion, one of two things: the half a squid with its tentacles made to look like pretty little flowers sitting as contentedly as a package of ground beef next to the package of chicken thighs, or the large selection of fish that are all staring at you with an eternally forlorn look. There are all sorts of black and grey and pink and blue, big and little fish to choose from. I wish that I could tell you more than that about the meat section, but truth be told, today is the first day I’ve attempted to buy any sort of meat. My first reason for this is economy. I like tofu and when you can find it on sale at 100 yen for two packages quite readily, I really don’t bother even looking at the animal products. The second reason is fear. I will admit it. All those little eyes staring at me. Fish eyes, prawn eyes, chicken eyes (and feet), shrimp eyes. It freaks me out. And I wouldn’t know the first thing about cooking most of it. Some of the fish look like I could cook something up à-la-Chris French (he once made Heidi and I this wonderful tomato-y, fishy, yummy goodness that was quite possibly the best white fish I’ve ever had. My family knows how I feel about white fish. I railed against the establishment that would force its minions to eat white fish as a teenager...ie. I would throw a childish hissy fit when my mother, in all of her goodness and motherly attentiveness to providing her ungrateful children with the best possible nourishment, would serve any white fish.) But I can never remember all that he put in it and I haven’t ever tried to make stuff on my own for fear that it would taste like what it is, fish. I think I’ll have to get idea basis of the dish off him and put it on line. I think I need a recipe section on my web site.
There aren’t any bulk sections that I have seen yet. Although it is rumored that at the new Aeon at one of the stations close to here there is a bulk candy section with some North American candies. I will have to go check it out. What there is though are bags of dried little goodies. Some have eyes, some I am unsure of what the original product was, whether it was a vegetable or some living creature. I often see packages of beef gerky and I’m about to take some when I realize that I don’t want to go near anything in that aisle for fear that the dried tentacles next to the jerky will reach through the package like some bad alien movie and make me its pet. Jack Handy may get his wish.
There’s always a large selection of bottled beverages, at least half of which are tea. I had no idea there were so many different kinds of ice tea. They come in these 2L square containers. In the arena of beverages is alcohol. So in America you can get beer and often wine in a grocery store. In Canada there is no such thing, the little 0.5 beers are a relatively new-ish thing in grocery stores. It is much like American in this regard, only better. The selection isn’t quite as extensive as the local QFC, but you can get whiskey and rum at any time of day and I’m yet to see anyone be carded. For that matter though, I have yet to see anyone actually purchasing anything. All the booze stores around the area, and there are quite a few, are always completely empty. So today, in honour of having the option, and because I strongly believe in buying a bottle of the cheapest wine I can find when I am somewhere away from home, I bought a bottle of Hanamasa market’s finest. At 298 yen it’s not horrific. Not good by any means, but I think it may be better than the 2 Euro bottles of wine Ryan, Nen and I bought in France.
The cereal aisle in pretty much any North American store is usually just that, an aisle, a whole aisle. You’re lucky if you can find one pack of granola and five kinds of cereal. That’s really about it. But to make it up to breakfast lovers everywhere there are plenty of see-through containers with some sort of gelatinous substance surrounding a fruit of sorts. Sometimes the fruit is distinguishable as mandarin or apple, but more often then not it’s some untold fruit cut into chunks. I had some on the plane over. I really hope that it was just bad plane food as it was rather tasteless gelatinous material that was far harder to chew than I would have ever chosen for myself and that the grocery store versions are better.
There are many other little morsels that are awaiting to be discovered, but due to my lack of Kanji reading skills I don’t know if I’m ever going to really know what’s available because I can’t figure out what most things are. Kanji is the fancy Chinese writing system that Japan adopted so long ago that co-exists with both of Japan’s syllabic writing systems as well, makes reading really fun. At least it’s logical in "spelling", as opposed to English and its blasted words like ‘though’, ‘through’ and ‘trough’ read tho, thru and trawf, try teaching that to an unruly teenager! And so my catalogue of fun Japanese things to find in a grocery store is poorly sadly lacking. The only other thing that I can mention about the environment is the constant bombardment of horrific Japanese musak that is an affront to ears everywhere. Part of the invasion is that it is played so loudly. For a society that’s pretty reserved and quiet, I’m not actually completely convinced that there’s other families that live in my building I think they just visit from time to time, the musak in the grocery store is rather unbecoming to some of their more attractive sensibilities. "More attractive" was in my lesson today. It’s not ‘attractiver’ or ‘expensiver’ as some of the students tried. They are words with more than one syllable therefore they require ‘more’ or ‘most’ in front of them when making the adjective a superlative. And when it’s a one syllable adjective that ends with a vowel and a consonant then you repeat the final consonant before adding the –er ending when spelling the word, such as ‘big’ becomes ‘bigger’. Now try explaining that to High School students who don’t want to be there in the first place and have a difficult time understanding me when I say ‘What’s your name?’ Good times. Good times.
I wish aliens would take over the world and make us their pets because I always wanted a little basket with my name on it –Jack Handy
