Grocery Shopping in Dei Mall

Today, I decided to go to the Dei Mall (spelling may be incorrect). I went to the grocery store. Of course, everything they had was quite expensive, but buying food at a grocery store is way cheaper than dining in. I easily got 2 days worth of Japanese food and snacks for less than 20 bucks. As soon as I walk in, people standing by the door say, "Irashimasen" which means welcome. All the employees say it. Even the stocking guys, so you are constantly reminded that you are welcome in their store. I loaded up on a Sushi platter, pork buns (sho pow), candy, frozen dumplings and shrimp-and-corn pizza. I wanted to buy everything! But I had a limit on the amount of yen I was willing to spend. Checking out was easy. I didn't even need to know how to speak Japanese. The lady scanned the barcodes on the items and the price was rung up automatically. I handed her 2000 yen and she punched the amount into a machine and another machine spit out the exact change. Really neat. She handed me a couple of bags and chopsticks. I walked on over to the bagging section and bagged my own groceries. Nobody really buys as much groceries as Americans do. There's no American sized shopping carts. Instead there are carts which you can place your shopping basket on and wheel that around. When you're done shopping, load up your groceries on to your bicycle and go. No wonder why Japanese stores are always packed! They have to keep coming back for more groceries! And you can't really buy too much groceries, because Japanese refrigerators are a little bit shorter and skinnier than American refrigerators. But you get used to it, I guess.


Japanese Shopping Carts