Save one for Hachioji!

Yesterday we went to Costco. Yes, the same warehouse salesroom as in the States. This was a fact-finding mission – to actually find he place, sign up and scope it out. Usually when traveling around Japan, I prefer to take the train, but since the whole point of Costco is to buy in bulk, we needed to know how to drive there. We knew it was up by Hachioji somewhere, and the Costco brochure had a rough little map on it. The lady at 7-11 was extremely helpful when we finally stopped for directions, and it turns out we were only a few blocks off. We did nearly run out of gas, though. They had a parking garage (bonus!). The sign up process was very simple, with little Japanese required. Within minutes, we were card carrying, bona-fide members of the club. Our Costco ID’s say Japan, but they are good worldwide. After shopping in nothing but small local stores, this was overwhelming consumer overload! It was about half and half, recognizable Western goods and Japanese goods. The best part was the fresh meats and fish. They had fresh lamb! It’s worth it just for the lamb. Most Japanese don’t care for lamb, so it’s hard to get and when you do it’s deep, deep frozen. There were huge slabs of salmon and trays of fresh sushi, ready made. Our minds were busy planning future get togethers. I really enjoyed watching the Japanese shop. Buying in bulk is a rather new concept for most Japanese. After the war very strict laws regarding hoarding food were put into place. Combine that with the very small houses and refrigerators, and you see why most people never got into the habit of stocking up. They just shop every day or every other day at their local neighborhood stores. So, seeing them debate the merits of the five-gallon jug of soy sauce was pretty entertaining. One group of young men, flatmates perhaps, were discussing the gallon tin of Texas-style chili –

1: Look at this! There’s a lot of food in here.

2: What is it?

3: Who cares, it’s cheap!

1: We should try it; it’s from Texas.

3: We’re getting it.

2: OK.

Since it was only a fact-finding mission, we walked away with very little this time – several liters of olive oil, a giant size bag of pine nuts, huge shrimps and scallops. We also shared a guava smoothie from the food court. Going home was much quicker, which was good, since we had shellfish in the car. Overall, it was quite an adventure. We ended a great day with champagne scallops and Thai skewered shrimp with grilled asparagus (of course we had to drink some of the champagne – you don’t use it ALL for cooking!)