Grocery Store

 Here are some pics from our trip to the grocery store this week.  I was thinking that I hadn't taken you all grocery shopping with me yet, so here we go!  This is a local store, one that we walk to from our apartment.  It take about 15 minutes to walk there.  Needless to say, since we walk there and back, we only buy a few things at a time.

Above, the produce section.  It is small, as the store is pretty small.  Much of the produce is the same, but of course lots of different things too.  I still don't know what 90% of the different stuff is.  I have a lot to learn.  Below, tofu.  Japanese people eat a lot of tofu.  Some eat it in thier dishes, soups, and even plain or just with soy sauce on it.  It comes in the traditional blocks that many of us are used to at home, as well as puffed up fried blocks (the yellow looking things in the picture).

 These are fish patties.  Basically fish meat that is ground up and reformed into patties, balls, cute little sacks with bows, all made out of fish meat.

Fish, squid, more fish.

 The fish in this pic are cut up and deboned but the guts and eyeballs are still included.  Yum...

 Sushi! And (below) steak.  The steak here is marbled.  Notice all the white fat throughout the steak?  That is the norm here.  Steak can be pretty expensive.  These ones are little pieces, cut very thin and they cost the equivalent of about $6.50.  If you want a true, traditional sized steak you're looking at $15 to start, up from there.

 The hot food deli.  Mostly rice with a side of meat and veggies, or tempura veggies.

 The milk section.  Milk only comes in two sizes here, small and smaller.  Here is the small size.  We go through 1-2 of these a day in our house.  You can choose from many different fat contents starting from 0.6% up to 4.5%.

 A mom and her 3 sons  in the bread section.  The two older boys are wearing yochien uniforms - preschool uniforms.  The baby is strapped onto Mom's back.

 Bread is interesting here.  It comes in square loaves that have anywhere from 3-10 slices, with 6 being the most common.  It doesn't matter how many slices you choose, the size of the loaf is the same, just the thickness of the slices changes.  3 and 4 slice loaves mean super thick sandwiches!  We try to get the 8 or 10 slice. (Below) A pic of a loaf of bread next to a soda bottle, so you can see what size the loaves are.

 The candy section!  Usually there is a group of kids crowding this isle. Below is a pic of gummy candies, which are super popular here.  They come in a bunch of flavors but are not like our gummy candies.  The ones here are really soft.

Mayo anyone?  This is what our mayo looks like here.  Also, a small snapshot of the freezer section.  Some weird looking stuff, can't say we've ever tried any of it.

So that's it, our local store.  We go once a week or so.  Between visits when we need something we stop by the conbinie (convenience store) to fill in what's needed.