Grocery Shopping...

When entering a grocery store in Japan for the first time, it can either be exciting or completely overwhelming. After a short time on-base for an American military family, off-base grocery shopping tends to be exciting. For example, the majority of meats and vegetables on-base are shipped from the US, and are either frozen, or expire quickly. When you get to a Japanese grocery store you are usually greated by a wonderful variety of fresh fruits and vegetables. Here is one trip's return...

Notice most of it is pre-bagged, so it is a bit difficult to pick the exact quantity you want. Here is what I got on "Fresh Sunday" at another local store here...

There is also always a wonderful selection of fresh fish and seafood. Most stores have shrimp and octopus on the shelves next to the fish. Fish is often sold whole, uncut, or filletted into small pieces, often sushi size to make your own sushi. These are 2 of the largest pieces I could find...

This is dinner one night with tuna I "seared" at my husband's request. The kids loved the salmon.

Of course always a wonderful selection of sushi. Here's some we had fun eating...

Our children were begging to try the fish eggs. So we let them. The yellow oil you'll see on them is from them touching the fish eggs then their faces...

And believe it or not, they kept begging for more. Their fascination made us try it when we weren't previously interested. It was okay, but they sure loved it.

There is a wide variety of juices and teas in these 1-1.5 L containers...

These are our favorites. Japanese apple juice and Lemon Tea. The apple juice is wonderful as it is made from excellent quality apples. It really tastes like great concentrated Fuji apples. I find it funny that they also sell American apple juice for a much higher price. You must make sure you see the 100%, however, because they do also sell drinks that are as little as 5% juice.

There are very few frozen packaged meals compared to American stores. I think this is excellent as it promotes healthier cooking. Most stores do also sell ham or pork, chicken, and some beef. They have packaged foods like noodles, rice, jello, and seasonings, and lots of white bread. The bread is a bit surprising to me; we haven't seen whole wheat bread, except in the base commissary.

Finally, an important note: the grocery stores do not hand out bags. So, customers must bring reusable bags to get food home. Thank you Japan for that environmental solution!