The Comforts of Home

While we have been here we have only gone grocery shopping a few times. Reason being, when we are in the grocery store we spend half the time staring at products wondering what they are. The other half of the time is spent saying to each other " Where is the _____ ? " "I wonder if they sell ______". Lately it's been " Why cannot I not find cheddar cheese anywhere? ". But as of today, that will no longer be an issue.

When we are still in Canada Jame was wondering if there was Costco in Japan. He looked into it and discovered that there was, so he decided to bring his membership card with him. About a week ago Jame was searching for it's exact location on-line and to our surprise we read that Costco is only a short train ride from our new place. So of course, we wanted to go check it out.

We grabbed 2 backpacks (1 hiking pack and a smaller one) and headed off to Costco. Once we got off the train we started walking in the direction that the map said. The more we walked, the more residential the area started to look. After about 15 minutes, we asked an older lady if she knew where it was. She wasn't sure what we were saying, so she asked the stranger to our left. Jame pulled out his membership card as he was saying Costco and once she saw it, she understood and said "Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh.....Cos-tah-co!!", then she gave us some directions in Japanese. We partially understood them and started to walk again.

About 10 minutes later I suggested we ask somone again to make sure we were going the right way. We asked a man who was unloading some boxes from his van. He didn't undertand us until we showed him the membership card to which he replied "Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhh.....Cos-tah-co!!" He too gave us some directions in Japanese and it was then we realized that we were headed in the direction.

About 5 minutes later as we were crossing the street I heard a car horn beeping behind me. I turned around and it was the man who gave us directions gesturing for us to get in his van. We got in and he drove us to Costco. We couldn't believe how kind it was for him to pick us up. This was a prime example of the generousity Japanese people possess.

We weren't too sure if our membership card would work here, but it did. We walked in and had the biggest smiles on our faces. Who would have ever thought that Costco could bring two people so much joy!

Of course the Costco here is pretty much the exact same as it is back home, but of course the one here: sells "sushi platters" instead of "meat platters" / one whole aisle is dedicated to various kinds of rice / the back corner is loaded with several kinds of beer and booze. There was one slight disappointment though....no poutine!!!! That's o.k., we knew we wouldn't be able to have it all!

Once we bought our stuff, we tried to shove as much as we could into our packs. Everything didn't fit, but that wasn't a problem as they have a delivery service for 600 yen (about $6.00). The things that didn't make it into the pack will arrive at our apartment the day after tomorrow. It is very convenient....practically every store here has a delivery service.

Once we left the store we stood outside the exit looking around to see if there was another train station nearby. Jame's pack was pretty heavy and I had this small pack with an ackward full size ironing board (another thing that had been impossible to find up until today), so we were hoping we didn't have to walk all the way back to the station we arrived at. One of the employees asked us if we were o.k. His english was awesome so we asked him if there was another train station close-by. He said that if we waited 20 minutes there would be a free shuttle service coming around that would take us to the station. Nice!! We lucked out again!

So of course we waited, took the train home and unloaded our goods. It was then that we realized just how little storage space we have. Whatever though -- we are now spoiled with the things that we got so easily back home! Awesome!!!