What do I do with my right hand? Not telling.

Remember back in the day in America when you or mom would walk to the market to get food? Of course you don’t. You’re certainly not my parents’ age (or older) … unless if you’re Sam’s dad. This was a time when America wasn’t on its never ending quest to be the fattest, dumbest, warmongeringest nation it could.

In most cases, walking/biking to the grocery store is now a more difficult endeavour than many Americans want to take. I know that when I lived near DC I wasn’t able to walk to a grocery store for a good while (before the Whole Foods opened). Anywhere farther out than me probably lacked any opportunity to take non-fossil fuel travel. Japan manages to make it possible for a large majority of the population to use human powered means of transport to reach a supermarket. What a novel idea!

This isn’t even close to all of the bikes that were there.

It’s a bigger difference than most people expect. Most people here don’t buy gigantic amounts of food when they go shopping for food. They do this because they don’t have the ability/want to carry so much and also because the supermarket is within walking distance; it’s not some giant trek to just buy some food for dinner like it is in pretty much all of America.

Of course, there is some parking, but it is sparse compared to the number of bikes that the supermarkets have around them. The bikes go around three of the four walls of the building. The cars? Take a look.

They’re really Transformers.

Not too many. I’m not going to show you the inside of the store because it’s just a supermarket… mostly. I might take a couple pictures of some weird shit, but not now.

My shopping (about once every 2 weeks) consists of 2 bags of groceries: one goes in the basket on my bike, the other I hold in my hand. This is how you (usually) buy food in Japan. It’s much easier. I wish it was like this in America.