Visiting the Grocery Store

As I was going through my old pictures to create the last posting I realized I never wrote about our tour of a Japanese grocery store. (And by "our" I mean mine and Audrey's visit because of course Giff and Erik had no interest in this tour).

The tour was offered through the base but we all met at the grocery store. The store is called Jusco and lots of people say it's like the Japanese version of Wal-Mart. I think it's a little classier than Wal-Mart though and it's HUGE! The store is two floors and is like a little mall inside. They have an entire grocery store on the first floor and also a lot of food vendors selling everything from donuts, tea leaves, coffee beans, ice cream and crepes to bento boxes (very popular for lunchtime - it's a prepared meal that comes in a box) and bubble tea (tea with tapioca balls in it - actually very delicious - they have fruit flavors too). On the second floor they have a food court and a few restaurants, clothing shops and then different departments where they sell electronics, sheets, drapes, household furniture, clothing, etc. - almost like Sears or something.

A woman named Ayano ran the tour and she was so sweet. Basically we just walked through the entire grocery store and we asked "what is this? what is that? what does this say? what do you use this for?" etc. There were 7 of us on the tour and it lasted about 3 hours! Once in a while Ayano would point something out to us, but most of the time we just asked her lots of questions. She was such a sweetheart and so patient with us. She also gave us a handout with the word and kanji for many typical things we might want to buy - like milk, chicken, beef, pork, lots of fruits and vegetables etc. It was really nice and I'm sure will come in handy on future trips to the grocery store!

Most people on the tour just bought a couple of things but of course Audrey and I felt the need to buy anything we saw that looked interesting or delicious. We bought about $50 worth of stuff just so we could try it but how can you pass up vegetable cereal or a healthy oatmeal drink? We thought it was so cool but I think most people on the tour thought we were crazy! Haha.

This picture shows a lot of the things we bought on the tour. Look at how little the Coke cans are! In case you can't tell from the photo, check out the picture of Erik drinking out of the can - haha. Besides for all of the snacks we bought to try, we also bought the ingredients to make our own miso soup - and an instant miso soup mix in case we completely mess up our own. Haha.

There is one thing that isn't in the photo and that's a goya salad. Goya is a bitter melon that is used in savory dishes here. It is super healthy but a lot of people don't like it because when I say it's bitter I mean it's REALLY bitter. Audrey and I have been dying to try it since we get excited about super healthy foods so we bought this salad that had goya, scrambled eggs and a mystery meat that we now think was rotten spam. Apparently Okinawans love spam because I've seen more spam here in just over a month than I have in my whole life! Audrey tried the meat first and immediately spit it out because as she says "it tasted exactly the way dog poop smells". She really wanted me to try it so of course I did - hahahaha. Sure enough I also spit it out immediately because she was right - it tasted like dog poop. After that we couldn't eat the salad so we threw it out.

We were determined to give goya another chance though. I really want to like it since it's so healthy so we've both ordered it at restaurants since then. It's definitely an acquired taste but we both liked it more the second time. I'm going to start buying it to prepare once in a while because it's so good for you. I don't know how crazy Giff will be about this idea because I purposely haven't told him yet......I don't think he's as determined to like it as I am. He hasn't even tried it yet.

This picture is of goya champuru which is what Audrey and I have ordered at restaurants. It is prepared with tofu and eggs and sometimes spam (mine came with it but I didn't eat it) and bean sprouts.

Most of the stuff we bought on the tour was pretty good though. We had this delicious sweet roll with a coffee filling. We also bought sweet potato chips. Okinawan cuisine uses a lot of sweet potato but their sweet potato is different than ours. It is native to the island and purple! The chips were really good and the sweet potato ice cream is even better - YUM! Another one of our crazy purchases was vegetable cereal! Audrey loves cereal too so we were really excited about trying it. Believe it or not it's actually pretty tasty. It's sort of sweet too but I'm not sure how since I can't exactly read the ingredients list but the picture shows carrots, tomatoes, squash, asparagus and you can even see them in the cereal! We offered some of the delicious cereal to Giff and Erik but they didn't want to try it for some strange reason - haha.

Oh yeah the grocery store also has little TVs all over the place that show commercials for the products surrounding it!

One other funny thing is that I asked Ayano if this certain canned juice was like V8 juice because it has pictures of vegetables all over it and I've seen similar cans in the vending machines. She said yes but then looked more closely and said NO NO this is alcoholic! So it was like a bloody mary in a can! She showed us all the symbol on it that meant it was alcoholic so we don't buy it by accident. It was pretty funny.