More shopping

This post is a bit out of order, since my last one was kind of about our closing dinner. But I wanted to get that one written to make sure I had enough time. I do, so I:ll just write a bit about shopping in Japan. I generally hate shopping. My goal is to have a list, get what I want, and get done with it as quickly as possible. No real surprise, though, that shopping in a different country is an entirely different experience. In a less developed country, one of the most interesting places to go is the market. In an industrialized country like Japan, it:s the stores. Some thoughts.

Presentation. The Japanese really know how to present their goods for sale. Displays are so attractive, never did I see something just thrown out there for sale. This was everywhere, from the fancy department stores to the local shopping area. Food items in particular. We ate a large lunch yesterday, then went to a local grocery market on an excursion and I found my mouth watering even though I was not hungry.

Service. Everyone talks about it and it is true. Retailers give outstanding service. Always pleasant, always happy to answer your questions, never making you feel like you are intruding or pressuring you to buy. I was looking in a sporting goods store yesterday for a Hanshin Tigers hat. I asked a clerk where I could look, he signals me to wait right where I am for a moment and takes off running through the store. Two minutes later he returns and walks me right to the spot.

Stuff. Lots and lots of stuff here. This is definitely a consumer culture. We were walking in a shopping area on a Sunday night and it was packed with shoppers. What a trip. A lot of the stuff is really cool. Fits the Japanese lifestyle of course. For example, Ichiro and Fumiko have a nice refrigerator. It:s taller and more narrow than a typical US refrigerator. Fits into a smaller footprint for a kitchen with less area. There is an entire separate section, probably 30% of the entire appliance dedicated to a separately temperature controlled vegetable crisper. Also, the doors to the main compartment are two double doors that swing out rather than the single, one hinge door we have on our fridge. Makes it easier/possible to open the doors in a narrower kitchen.

I asked Maki if she had the same type of experience going to the supermarket when she first came to the US as we were having going to the supermarket in Japan. Of course she did. A couple of her comments were 1) the size of the steaks. In Japan, though beef is clearly abundant, most of the packages feature thinly sliced pieces, or small, perhaps 4-5 oz max steaks; 2) the size of the shopping carts. This was something that immediately caught my eye. The shopping carts are basically the size of hand carts in the US which you put on a nice wheeled carrier. The carriers will hold two of them, one on the top, one on the bottom. I think it:s a combination of many Japanese doing their shopping multiple times each week as opposed to in the US where many people shop once a week, plus the size of US portions. Maki could not get over the size of, for example, a bag of potato chips in the US