On Shopping

Tomorrow is the day I carve jack-o-lanterns with my students at one of my schools. It should be a lot of fun and I'm looking forward to it, but I got an e-mail from the English teacher there earlier informing me that we would not only be carving pumpkins, but also engaging in some kind of trick or treat. I was game, but it made a shopping trip necessary, and that was not enjoyable by any measure.

To say that I dislike shopping here in Japan is something of an understatement; I won't say by how much. Instead, let me just describe it to you. If I do my job well, you'll be able to experience the dread, the confusion, the creeping uncertainty from the comfort and safety of your own home. Not only that, but as with all my blog posts, you experience these terrible sensations at absolutely no expense to you, the consumer.

Imagine being in a grocery store. Now imagine that large portions of this grocery store smell like Sea World. Got it? Good, we've taken the first step. As you begin walking through the store, shopping list in hand (you're an organized shopper, after all), you slowly realize that something strange is going on. Nearly all of the recognizable brands have simply vanished. More than that, though; several recognizable foods have vanished as well. All of a sudden, you can't find Pepsi or cheddar cheese. Roast beef is little more than a memory.

The few familiar food items that remain are flanked by a million variations on the noodle, and things that look as though they might fight you if given the chance. What's more, the familiar foods have apparently gone into the witness protection program, perhaps to escape some particularly vicious eggplants. These foods have shed their normal packaging and donned strange new outfits, with labels written in an alien language.

My shopping experience today didn't start off too badly, since I was pretty much just looking for candy. Luckily, mini Kit Kats seem to have made it over here unscathed. A bag of those, and a couple packages of what were obviously some kind of fruit flavored candies and I was nearly ready to go.

It turns out one of my students can't eat foods with artificial flavoring, I guess. I don't know if it's some kind of allergy or what, but it meant I had to find something for her that wasn't really candy but also wasn't completely lame. This can be difficult to do, especially if you don't know anything about Japanese food or the Japanese language. Being unable to read packages or ask for help severely hampered my search. Eventually, I found some raisins and peanuts, which seemed like a good enough idea at the time. I also got these red things that are either large cherries or small tomatoes.

Of course, given what little I do know about Japanese foods, it's also possible that these objects are made entirely of rice.