Grocery Store Questions

Grocery stores in Japan are a constant source of amusement and questions for me.

Okay well, that's not entirely true. Most of the time I don't think much about them. What's available at the store is for the most part quite different than what's available in Canada and since I'm not a meat or fish eater my choices are limited since these two foods form a large part of the selection. So I have usual things that I eat and when I go into the store I can pick them up and leave quickly.

But everyone once in a while when I stop to think about things I am amused, or confused, or both.

Today I was buying strawberries, now in season and juicy and ripe. The selection, though not large, was very diverse and I want to know what's the difference between my choices? How are the 498 yen ($1 = ~100 yen) strawberries different from the 598 yen ones, from the 980 yen ones? It looks like the containers are all the same size and there's no obvious difference size of berry or colour. What makes the 980 ones twice the price? And for an extra 100 yen is it worth getting the 598 ones? I'm curious but frankly I couldn't be bothered to spend 2000 yen to get all three and compare. It is a mystery I'm just going to have to live with.

My amusement for the night was the appearance of a new product on the shelf. This grocery store is a bit of a boutique grocery store, kind of like Waitrose. I like it because they have more "foreign" food and since we've already established that my diet is limited in terms of what is readily available here this is a big selling feature for me. It's a relatively small store so I know the sections that I frequent well- produce, dairy, eggs, tofu and the foreign food aisle with such luxuries as pastas and sauce and packaged curries (don't knock 'em till you've tried them). Today on the shelf, nestled amongst the pastas and sauces was packages of enchilada sauce (powdered) mix. Just the one variety and no other items of Mexican food had magically appeared to support this new item- no refried beans, Old El Paso taco kits, salsa,tortillas, nothing. What is one supposed to make with only enchilada mix? I just don't know.

I'm sorry I'll stop with the food stories in a second but I'll just end this by saying that the price of asparagus has dropped - instead of 5 stalks for 300 yen it's now only 3 stalks for 98 yen (and sickly looking stalks at that) and it's now only 250 for a 6 inch zucchini. Happy days.