Supermarket Adventure (blog by Luis)

Every time I travel, one of my “fetishes” is exploring supermarkets and see what type of food can you find, what do people normally eat in those places/countries. In Japan, there are convenience stores and supermarkets everywhere. Moreover, these are most likely to be open any time, I mean 24/7. In the remote scenario that you cannot find one, you will surely pass by several vending machines.
Once inside the supermarket you feel immediately in an unusual territory.. You start by entering through the left door(the opposite to Europe/US), corridors are quite narrow since the shop tends to be smaller too. I haven’t found any really big supermarkets where you find everything you need (hypermarkets, big grocery stores), here they are more specialized in food (they might have a second floor with clothing and house products). The products, well.. where to start, totally different and very hard to find the brands you normally would find in Europe or America. Foreign brands and products are almost non-existent. If found, they are priced 2 or 3 times above a European/American store. Thus, to save money in Japan, you will need to invest some time exploring Japanese products and brands first. Nonetheless, 1L of Japanese milk costs about 1,50Eur and the only pasta (I wanted penne, there was no fusilli, and only a 2~3 brands of spaghetti) I could find was in a tiny 125g package and cost more than a 500g package in Europe! On the other hand, there is quite a lot of fish for reasonable prices though.
The fruit is curious, the sizes I mean. They look like the fruit in Europe or America, but while the taste is similar to the European (Yummy!), the size is closer to the over-sized American “bland and tasteless plastic” fruit (I am referring to the apples for this comparison). On the other hand, you get vegetables like a cucumbers which are thinner and smaller than the ones overseas.
Time to pay! The payment process is quite similar to anywhere else, the funny part is the gestures of the employee and how they meticulously pass the products through the machine and count the money you give them and the change they give you back, it looks like a ritual (to avoid the word robots) or maybe more like an assembly plant. Another difference is the cash machine they use, there is no till!! Well, there is one but it does not open, the machine has an automatic coin counter and bank note reader and gives back the exact change. Those employees at the counters could easily be replaced by no-one! Nothing revolutionary, we already have self-payment checkouts in Europe, and US has them too.
I almost forgot one important part. Ah! Except for bicycles, there is no parking lots at many of the convenience stores.

Japanese Cooking (blog by Luis)

The other day I cooked: Boiled udon with thin pork slices mixed with vegetables, with Korean kimchii as side dish.
It was my first attempt to cook Japanese food and I must say it was damn good. My meal portions have to be always quite generous. And thus they are not so fancy to the eye. Of course, the Korean kimchii was not prepared by me, but it is considered to be the healthiest food on Earth (by me!), very spicy cabbage, and I love it.

Favorite quote(by Luis)

"Some people see things as they are and ask why.
I dream things that never were and ask why not!"

Below are photos of the front and back from my(Glenn's) parents house. My father recently completed this big project. He did a great job!!