Day 9

6-21-08

Today we went to Costco. (And yes, I'm sure there were many other important and interesting things that I did yesterday, like go to school and go to Noriko's band practice, but I would simply like to talk about the Experience of going to Costco). First off, let me express my surprise at finding out that there were Costcos in Japan at all. (It was probably equal to the surprise of my host family at finding out there were "Costocos" in America). Anyhow, my host mom said that we were going to an "American" supermarket, so I spent the very lengthy car ride there worried that the only reason we were going was to get "American" food for me. It didn't make sense, I had eaten the tuna and mayo and egg salad sandwich for breakfast, and the yogurt and the mysterious mushrooms and the grapefruit and everything else that I normally would have politely declined. I had shown no signs of wishing I could have some good ol' American food.

Luckily, my fears were relieved when my host family bought a frillion cases of sparkling water for the 7-Eleven they own, and never once asked me what food they should buy that I would actually eat. However, being in the store was seriously trippy, because it was exactly the same as back home. And I do mean exactly. Everything was located in the exact same place as it is in the Costco by my house, from the location of the entrance right down to how the food on the menu was arranged. Talk about Time/Space Continuum Warp. Not only do I hate going to big empty soulless box-stacky places like Costco normally, but after spending near a week in Japan, it made me both really homesick and full of dislike for anything American. (Except for ya’ll, of course. I’m merely discussing food here). All I wanted to do was get out as quickly as possible. I came to look fondly on the bowl of sour yogurt and the fishcake.

Sadly, I left my camera at home before we went out for dinner, so no fishcake pictures for you.