Going to Grocery Stores

Since getting to Japan, I've been to grocery stores a couple times. Grocery stores aren't too different than they are in America aside from the fact that the products are a bit different and everything is written in Japanese. I'm sure you could figure it out even if you knew no Japanese at all.

While a grocery store is still a grocery store, not being able to read stuff can prove to be challenging. I'm pretty useless with kanji, I don't know that many words in hiragana, but my saving grace is that I actually bothered to remember some katakana. Katakana is the alphabet used to spell out borrowed words, which means quite a few food items will be spelled out using katakana. For example, when I went to the convenience store yesterday I was able to find orange juice because I could read the katakana (オレンジジュース）. Another example of this is there are a zillion kinds of milk and you can't always tell what it is based on the packaging so you have to attempt to read the labels to figure out what it is. I hope to get some almond milk soon so I'll have to stare at the labels until I see the word almond.

I think I really confuse all the locals with my staring at the labels of things for a really long time, especially if they see me try to speak. Basically I can't speak much of the language but I still pick up things and stare at the back and appear to be reading it. My reading comprehension is much better than my speaking ability, but I still can't read much. By the way, I don't even know where the ingredient label is on Japanese packaging. Then what the heck am I doing, you ask? Basically I'm just scanning the label for the kanji for wheat. Sometimes when you see it it means it contains wheat and other times it means it doesn't. From what I can tell, if it's in a block of other words it means it contains it but if it's in bold down below next to the kanji for egg than it probably means it doesn't contain wheat.

The thing that is probably the most different besides language is the check out process. From what I can tell, it looks like you put your money in a tray or on the counter instead of handing it to the cashier like you would in America. I'm still not entirely sure, but that was my experience today when buying ice cream.