Even Grocery Shopping Is Exciting In Japan

When you don't speak the language and the characters used in the stores are not even the roman letters, shopping can be quite the experience.  When we first got to Japan, we must have looked so funny to the Japanese people, as we walked around the grocery store with big eyes, yelling across the aisles to each other, and taking pictures of everything. 
 

This is some of our group on taking a tour of the grocery store during training week.  Look at all those cameras snapping pictures of fish!



The  shelves on the left are stocked entirely with ramen noodles all the way down the aisle to where Kris is standing.  The Japanese love them some Cup Noodles!

This vending machine sells hot and cold drinks.  the cold ones have blue below them; the hot ones have red below them.  Grocery stores will also sell hot and cold bottled drinks the same way -- one case will have hot beverages and be heated while the cold case sells cold drinks.

While shopping , we see some pretty interesting things that must be popular here, but I find pretty strange.

These radishes are as tall as my torso (no joke).  By themselves, they don't have much flavor but they're not bad when mixed into stews.

Not exactly the most appetizing name for a sports drink mix.

Who doesn't need some dehydrated whole fish for snacking on?

Mayonaisse sold in tubes on shelves, not refrigerated

Nose Ball Roller...what?????

Some things we find in while shopping are pretty awesome, though.

You know those pens in America that have 3 ink colors in one pen?  Well here they have those...AND they have empty pens and sell tons of ink colors.  So you can pick which colors you want in your pen and change the colors whenever you want!  I LOOOOOOOVE it!



The way Japan does refills is brilliant.  An original bottle of shampoo (pictured above on the left) comes in a normal plastic bottle.  When you run out of that shampoo, instead of buying another plastic bottle, you buy a refill in a plastic bag (above to the right).  It saves you money AND saves another bottle from going to a landfill (and the plastic refill bag is recycled here).  This system is SO brilliant!

Kris would put this in the absurd category, but as a child who suffered many uncomfortable-shampoo-in-the-eyes hairwashings, I think this is brilliant!  you put this on the child's head to keep shampoo and water from going in his or her eyes.  Wish they'd had this when i was a kid!