Won't Miss #56 - slow payers (reflection)

During my twenty-three-year absence from the U.S., a new way of doing business popped up. It became possible for people to do something which I never imagined that they'd allow them to do. That is, they could check themselves out at the register. In fact, there are some places which only do self-check-out ("Fresh & Easy"). At first, I found the prospect intimidating. Now, I wish every store had that option.

The reason that I love self-checking out is that it means I don't have to wait behind some granny or grampy who doesn't seem to understand the fact that money will have to exchange hands at the end of the transaction. The idea that the logical conclusion of events should also be preceded by the removing of ones wallet from a bag or pocket also seemed to come as a shock to many customers in Japan as they only reached for their cash when the checker had his or her hand (or cash tray) out and asked for it.

There are still slow payers in the U.S., but the use of debit and credit cards as well as self-check-out makes it less frequent and offers a way to get around such people. I certainly don't miss the slow paying people who seemed to always be in line in front of me in Tokyo. 

Won't Miss #45 - pitifiul economies of scale (reflection)

Now that I'm back in the U.S. with access to all of the types of sales that are common here, I conceptualize what it means to be able to buy a lot of something in order to get it cheaper. One of the common sales here is at Safeway supermarket at which I can buy cases of soda for about half the usual price during sales. They tend to do a "buy 2, get 2 (or 3)" free deal. Sure, we have stacks of soda sitting around for ages, but there is an enormous price advantage.

What I have realized is that, except on the rarest of occasions, the economies of scale gain isn't really worthwhile for a "family" of only two people. You can often buy a dozen donuts for a cheaper price than each donut individually sells for, but the two of us can't possibly consume them (and our freezer space is too precious for such an indulgence). Given the small sizes of things in Japan, economies of scale were actually more useful there than they are here.

It turns out that economies of scale sounded a lot better in theory than in practice and it's not really an issue here... either that or it was an issue there and only there. Either way, it doesn't appear to matter anymore.

Won't Miss #39 - walking to shops, the pain (reflection)

While living in Japan, I got used to schlepping around a heavy backpack when I went shopping. Things were generally pretty small, but there were times when I'd go to the local Utakaraya market and buy a small melon, a package of chicken, a liter of milk, a head of lettuce, and four bottles of soda and find that my pack suddenly weighed as much as what felt like a couple of bowling balls. Fortunately, the walk home was relatively brief so I could manage it.

Since coming home, I've still endeavored to walk to the shops, but it is very much harder here for a variety of reasons. One is that economies of scale, buying in bulk, and in quantity are much better. If I want to buy soda, it's much cheaper to buy a 24-pack than individual bottles. What I carried in Japan was nothing compared to attempting to carry such things here.

While I do recall having times when I felt like a weighed-down pack mule in Tokyo, I now find that the hard part seems a lot less difficult in comparison to trying to carry much of anything home from stores here. I'm sure that, if I returned, I'd once again recall what a hassle it was to try and fumble along with a large, heavy, or bulky package, but I've largely forgotten how troublesome it could be.

Will Miss #33 - weird KitKat flavors (reflection)

Ramune and lemon vinegar flavors.

Around the time that I left Japan, Nestle Japan seemed to be changing their marketing strategy. The days when they regularly (and somewhat frequently) released bizarre one-off flavors seem to be over. There is still the occasional freaky flavor as well as the regional offerings, but the treadmill of weirdness has stopped.

That doesn't mean that I don't miss these strange flavors. What it means is that I'd miss them to some extent even if I was still in Japan!

Won't Miss #525 - aural anarchy in shops

One thing which I hated in stores in Tokyo was the high level of noise. It wasn't just the normal playing of music in shops that you get in the U.S., but a near constant stream of announcements or advertising. When I walked through the local supermarket, Inageya, they'd constantly be playing their jingles over the loudspeaker and they stationed cassette players (yes, cassette players) around the store that blared out sales pitches. On top of that, you'd have people yammering over the loud speaker all of the time. I'm not talking about the occasional "please man checkout 3" sort of thing, but just constant chatter about whatever.

This sort of sound chaos was not rare or uncommon. What was rare or uncommon was to walk into a store and just find mellow music calmly and tastefully playing in the background. I won't miss the onslaught of noise that often accompanied shopping in Japan.

Will Miss #521 - the limited selection

A refreshingly puny selection of products for lightening your coffee. Also, "Creap" is an awesome name for a product.

Studies have shown that giving people more than three choices creates stress for them, yet every time I walk into a supermarket in America, there are umpteen variations to choose from for almost every popular product. When I first arrived here, it was like a wonderland, but it was also oppressive and overwhelming as I tried to take it all in.

In Japan, there was always limited variety along with the limited space. They introduced variety via a revolving door approach. You could have this type for awhile, and then it went away. Sometimes, it came back, but there tended to be one core product and one variant and little more at any given time.

At times, these limits were maddening, especially when I liked a variety and it vanished forever. This was the yang to the yin of the reduced stress of fewer options. It meant we tended to go overboard stocking up when something we liked came around. However, overall, I'd rather have fewer choices and less stress. I miss the way in which fewer choices created a sense that I knew and could take in the environment. 

Will Miss #22 - station shopping malls (reflection)

Some time late last year, my husband and I ventured to an area we hadn't been to before and he suggested we walk to the local train station to see what was happening around there. The answer was "nothing". Later, we went to another one that he had been to before and recalled had sold some souvenirs and whatnot. As we approached the building, I actually felt a little excited. Once inside, I discovered it was one little display of souvenirs and a sad little snack shop. At least where I am, there is pretty much nothing going on around train stations. They are dismal, isolated little spots which have no color or interest.

The essence of taking something for granted is that you don't really appreciate it until it is gone. Such is the case with the station shopping malls. Sure, I liked them. It was especially fun to spend part of my lunch hour when I was working wandering around to the myriad little shops that tended to occupy all of the spaces around and under the various JR (Japan Railway) stations.

I truly miss the variety and quantity of shops that I could easily find at most Tokyo stations.

Won't Miss #516 - terrible organics

This guy was hanging in front of the organic food shop. See, he's not too happy with it either. ;-)

There was an organic food store near my local station when I lived in Asagaya in Tokyo. You can always tell a shop that sells food untouched by the brutal hand of pesticides by the fact that it has a bunch of brown, wilted, nasty-looking fruit and vegetables whereas all of the other shops have nearly perfect, clean and generally appealing looking produce. I can't say for sure why the organic food I saw in Tokyo always looked as it it had been driven around in the back of a truck on a hot day for a week, but it did. My speculation was that, without the chemicals that are sprayed on produce to keep it looking artificially nice, the long haul from wherever it was grown to the streets of the city was enough to cause it to degrade rather rapidly. Whatever the case, it was always very expensive and looked like it was not too far from heading to a compost heap where its main contribution would be to feed the growth cycle without feeding any people in between.

While I'm not obsessive about organic food, it is better to buy it for some particular types of food and I don't miss the miserable state in which organic food was sold in Tokyo. 

Random Memories #22

Back in the day, used record shops used to dot the earth. Well, they used to be scattered all over Tokyo. Record collectors could roam far and wide looking for that rare bit of vinyl or a bargain on more commonly available releases. They could do that, or they could simply buy the annual record map book that told you where to find all of the best places.

Image from Amazon Japan's page. 

One of my husband's and my earliest incentives to learn to read Japanese came from trying to decode these books. Each year or two, a comprehensive manual that told you the location and types of inventory of various collectible record stores all over Japan was released. It was our happy pleasure to buy a new one as they came out and look for new locations. Since we spent most every weekend mining the known locations for records that my husband and I wanted to collect, fresh territory was always an exciting prospect.

Unfortunately, as time went by, the number of used record shops started to decrease rather than increase. While many things that started to diminish during our time in Japan were due to the weakening economy, this was due at first to the encroachment of CDs and later to the conversion to digital technology. While more portable, such advances dramatically reduced the collectible nature of second-hand items. My husband and I used to delight in finding lps and singles with their unique Japanese pictures and inserts (posters, stickers, etc.).

With CDs, the size limited the capacity of the record shops to provide interesting add-ins. In fact, what we learned was the best way to get cool extras with CDs was to be present in Japan at the time of a new release. If you bought a new CD, there was a chance that you could get some sort of promotional goodie at the shop (usually a poster) when you bought it. This situation, unfortunately, has also vanished as time goes by as record companies seem to be less lavish with their marketing money these days.

As the image above shows, the record map book continues to be updated and published, but I'm sure that there is less to them than there once was. It's not only the technology and the fact that few people are buying records of any sort in this age of MP3 players. It's also online sellers and auction houses. There is much less of a need for a brick and mortar store than their once was and maintaining a shopfront in Tokyo is a pricy endeavor.

The business card that is featured in this post is from 1988 or '89 and shows various branches of the used record shop "Reco-Fan". If you look carefully, you'll see that it reveals it's age in that there is no URL for the business. That's something that would be a huge omission in this day and age.

During my first visit to Japan in '89, my future husband and I spent quite a lot of time visiting such places. As a die-hard collector of items related to the rock group KISS, I found them to be fascinating treasure chests of records I rarely saw. Of course, my boyfriend had already raided those chests for the "gold", and we didn't find much that was new during my visit.

That being said, there is a sequence of photographs of me and my future husband in record stores which show me looking through the bins. He had to show me which ones contained the KISS lps since I couldn't read anything. There was also a certain technique to rapidly sifting through a huge volume of discs that he had to teach me. Finally, there's a shot of me purchasing something, and the shop clerk handing me a promotional poster at the same time. It was a mundane sequence of events, but it all seemed much more meaningful because of the perceived exotic nature of the discs with their Japanese "obi" (paper band) wrapped around the sides or tops and the potential for little extra surprises.

Reco-fan, unlike many of the smaller operations that we tended to frequent, is still open at this time. However, it was never the best place to find rarities. It's stock tended to be pretty picked over, relatively expensive, and to be missing any added Japan-only touches. One of the last things my husband and I did before leaving Japan was to visit the Kichijouji branch of Reco-fan. It was less than a shadow of its former self and it was never the best to begin with. Bins of laser discs lined the front and records of no particular import tended to fill out the center. CDs at slightly discounted prices lined the sides. The truth was that I wanted who even went to such places anymore. It just felt very much like a bag of Halloween candy that had had all the good stuff picked out and all that was left was the gum and candy corn.

Will Miss #5 - funky shop names (reflection)

For disco dogs. No cats allowed.

I never took much notice of the way stores were named in the U.S. until I'd spent many years in Japan (mostly Tokyo). In the suburban California area that I currently live in and the neighboring areas that I have visited, I'm shocked at the bland and generic look and feel of most of the stores. Many of them are strip malls and shopping centers with nondescript names and typefaces. I'm talking about places with just "Salon" written on them in a san serif font against a dull-looking edifice. I'm amazed that such places can attract any customers at all. I certainly am not drawn to them. It could be that I'd see a lot more color if I were living in a major city, and I did see some more interesting shops in San Francisco, but even in the outskirts of Tokyo, things seemed to have more of a life and identity than what I have been seeing here.

I knew I'd miss the chuckles I got from shop names in Japan, but I think I miss them more than I could have expected because things are much more boring here than I remembered (or than they were when I was last here).

Won't Miss #488 - limited edition foreign imports

Strawberry corn flakes, probably there and gone, but thankfully so. ;-)

Sometime in early 2011, while still in Japan, I found a display of Celestial Seasonings specialty teas on offer at Queen's Isetan market in Koenji. I had never seen the flavors before (Chocolate Raspberry Bliss and Vanilla Strawberry Rose) and they cost about 400 yen ($4.43) a box. Since they were new and expensive, I bought one of each to try. By the time I discovered that I really loved one of them, they were no longer on offer. I can't tell you how many times my husband went overboard and bought up a ton of some import and had it go bad before he could eat it because he knew that it'd vanish and he'd never see it again. One time we found packages of South American strawberry bars which were similar to Fig Newtons and we bought up every one in sight (about 10 packages) and ended up tossing them out after a year because we just couldn't eat them fast enough.

It was very often the case that some import that I really loved was "here and gone" in a week (or less if it's snapped up by shoppers) and I don't miss having such a small window of opportunity to get some interesting item from a country other than Japan, but especially I won't miss the sort of mass-buying (followed by waste) we felt compelled to engage in when such items showed up.

Will Miss #483 - Ameyokocho

One of the oldest shopping streets or shotengai in Tokyo is located in Ueno. It is called either "Ameyoko" or "Ameyokocho" and has one of the most unique atmospheres of any shopping area in the city. There are a fair number of discount shops, a famous one at which a man stands outside and throws candy into a bag and tells you a discount price for the entire lot. There are also sellers who have laid out enormous displays of neatly arranged bags of Japanese food staples, sweets, snacks, and spices that I have to imagine take a very long time to set up each morning. The biggest reason to go there isn't to save money, but rather to soak up the slightly rundown and seedy yet utterly non-threatening feel of the area. 

This particular shopping area has a special feel which is very much "Japan" to me, and I will miss it. 

Will Miss #480 - chicken breast is cheapest

There have been quite a few shocks since coming back to the U.S. and one of them is how the price of turkey and white meat chicken have sky-rocketed. When I was living here before, these types and cuts of meat were cheaper because they were viewed as less flavorful. Personally, I don't like the stronger flavors or the texture of dark meat chicken. I realize that many people prefer them, and that dark meat actually has a better nutritional profile, but I like white meat. So, sue me. In Japan, I could go to Yutakaraya and often buy white meat with skin for about 38 (49 cents) yen per 100 grams (3.5 oz.) whereas dark meat was 58 yen (74 cents) per 100 grams (3.5 oz.) at its cheapest. In the U.S., with the  focus on health and lower calories, things have reversed. Boneless skinless (which I don't like either) chicken breast is more expensive than thighs and legs. Now, I feel extravagant and wasteful for buying what I like. In Japan, it made me feel frugal and savvy. 

I miss the fact that white meat was cheaper because I lived in a society that valued flavor over fat content. 

Will Miss #479 - hands aren't out everywhere

Things have really changed in the U.S. since I lived here in 1989, and one of them is that some supermarket employees ask you at check out if you want to give money to charity. I don't mind the appearance of a jar into which one can drop money or even a question printed on the payment screen asking if you'd like to donate before entering your payment. What I do mind is the clerk asking me if I want to donate money to charity before I pay. The asking is obviously meant to put the customer in the awkward position of having to say, "no", and encouraging them to capitulate and pay. If this was something that happened three or four times a year at one particular place, that'd be fine, but it has happened several times a month since my return. I'd like to be able to buy a few groceries without someone trying to guilt me into ponying up money for charity. On top of that, of course, there are homeless people parked in front of markets, coffee shops and other establishments with a jar out asking for money (as well as those who panhandle actively). If I put money in ever outstretched hand every time it was held before me, I'd be broke.

In Japan, people did not aggressively ask for money for charity very often, and I miss that.

Won't Miss #478 - kameboko

The kamaboko is on the left.

The most exciting time in Japan is at the beginning when all is new and wondrous. It's also the most dangerous from various points of view because you can't read or understand much of what is around you. You wander into a store and see all sorts of curiosities and wonder what is actually food and what might be a cleaning product or marital aid in disguise.

There are plastic tubes cinched with little metal ties at either end which look a lot like cheese, or, to be more accurate, "cheez", available in many shops including markets and convenience stores. If you buy one and take it home to accompany that box that clearly looked like salty crackers but ends up being some bizarrely sweet crispy thing, you're in for a shock. Kamaboko is fish paste. It is supposedly akin to gefilte fish, which I will never sample knowing that it is a ethnically diverse cousin to kamaboko. My, admittedly limited, experience with it, was that it not only tasted like fish that had expired on the beach and left lying there for quite some time. It also had a rubbery and unappealing texture.

When kamaboko was served with a meal, especially the pink and white type which looks so cute and candy-like, it was always something which was an unwelcome addition and I won't miss it.

Will Miss #469 - everything is priced

It may be overpriced for consumer grade boozy chocolate bon bons, but at least it is priced.

Having been away from America for so long, there are some things I never would have imagined I'd miss about Japan because I didn't think or remember that they were absent here. I'm sure that's an assertion I've made before and will make again, but one of those things is stores that have a price on every item. Since coming back home, I've been in two different states and many different stores and one thing which seems to happen nearly everyday is that prices for various items are missing or extremely hard to find in U.S. shops. I find it incredibly frustrating when I am interested in some item and have to hunt down an employee to get the cost and then said employee wanders off for 5 minutes to find the information. I just give up when that happens because it's not worth the hassle.

I don't know what it is with American shops, but it was extremely rare for me to go into a Japanese store and find no price marked on an item and it seems to happen every time I shop here. I miss having all prices clearly marked on goods. 

Won't Miss #450 - narrow market aisles

Yes, this is a store, despite the fact that it resembles a warehouse. Shops in Tokyo often optimize their display and storage space but putting open boxes of products in front of shelves or at the end caps, taking up valuable real estate that those annoying customers might take advantage of.

I've been shopping in a relatively smallish supermarket since returning to the U.S. My guess is that it has average to smaller than average aisle sizes. They are wide enough to accommodate two very large shopping carts plus allow a person to squeeze by them if they are parked on either side. In Tokyo, I'm pretty sure one really big cart would block most aisles and allow one trim person to pass through. I do know that it didn't take much for one or two lingering shoppers who had no consideration of others to completely cut you off in many cases and won't move even when you say, "excuse me," and make it clear that you need to pass by. Some get angry with you for even making them aware that you would like to get by. It also doesn't help that the shop workers also block the way.

I won't miss the narrow shop aisles in Tokyo and the frustrations that accompany them.

Won't Miss #422 - Japanese fitting rooms

I can't speak for every single fitting room in Japan, just the ones I've tried. Since clothes here aren't exactly made for my foreign body, I am not exactly the most experienced person in this regard. That being said, I can say that at least some of them require you to remove your shoes before entering them. In fact, that is the way in which you indicate the room is occupied in some cases. If you see a pair of shoes outside, someone is in there. Considering that some of them are covered with nothing more than curtains (as is also the case back home at times, or so I'm told), I guess this is better than nothing at stopping people from barging in on your partially naked form. 

Taking your shoes off and putting them back on just adds one more step to the cumbersome task of trying on clothes and I won't miss it when going into a Japanese fitting room. 

Will Miss #405 - playing Auld Lang Syne for shop closing

A crowded department store during New Year's sales. I'd love to see this bunch cleared out with a song.

When shops are about to close back home, announcements are often made which are the polite equivalent of "we're closing soon so finish what you're doing and get out." In Japan, they handle it in a gentler way. When the time for the shop to close is coming up, they start playing Auld Lang Syne. The funny thing about this is that they don't play this New Year's classic during the actual holiday, but many shops play it every day to bid their customer's farewell. 

I think this is a gentle way of ushering customer's out of shops and I imagine that, for the rest of my life no matter where I am or what the situation, I will always associate this song with Japanese stores offering a genteel goodbye to their patrons. 

Will Miss #397 - shops that serve tea

My husband and I were walking around Nishi-Ogikubo, one of many little stops that have little of note to offer that we decided to explore, and I decided to peruse a Japanese sweets shop. I found myself waiting to buy a couple of small bean cakes behind a woman who apparently needed a remedial class in how to purchase goods from a shop. In the few minutes that we twiddled our thumbs, one of the two ladies manning the shop scuttled out bearing a tray with two tiny cups of tea and about 1/6 of one of their cakes on little paper doilies. While it isn't as common as it once was, no small number of traditional Japanese shops will greet every customer, regardless of purchase, with cups of tea (and less frequently, accompanying merchandise samples). 

I will miss this way of welcoming customers and how it makes you feel more like a guest than a wallet that the shop wants to extract cash from.