Friday, May 05, 2006

Time marches on



Hey, a proper supermarket has just opened down the road from us! I mean like a proper one! Not one of those tiny, runty little supermarkets which I have been complaining about since getting here. It's called MaxValu and it opens 24 hours a day and it is big. Really big. It's ruining a whole part of Hiratsuka with it's traffic jams. It's great.

Half of me, despite all my moans about the expense and tiddlyness of the normal Japanese supermarkets, couldn't help admiring whoever was responsible for keeping the megamarkets out. Actually that's a lie. It was about 3 per cent of me. The other 97 per cent is now getting in the car, shunting through the traffic jams, and cruising round the wide aisles of MaxValu filling my trolley to its brim.

There are some nice things to be had: free range eggs (the first I've seen here); fairtrade coffee (ditto. No tea though); non-UHT, non-homogenised milk (!!). The cheese is rubbish and they keep their red wine in the fridge but MaxValu will be making a few Yen from me in future.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Yippee, can't wait to roam around the aisles with you!!

Anonymous said...

Shame about the cheese and I suppose you can put up with letting the red wine get back up to room temp before you quaff (if you can wait that long - interesting revesal of the normal problem with white wine) - but it sounds great! It's funny how quickly the romantic stuff about local small shops disappears once the disappears down the plugho;e when the splendours of the supermarket are experienced!

Nonjatta said...

They have fairtrade bananas too now.