Supermarkets 2: Produce 「スーパーマーケット２：農産物」

When I made my first trip to the supermarket after coming back from Japan, I was immediately thrown off by the produce section.  There was counter after counter of fruits and vegetables, and by the counters was a set of plastic bags and a few scales.
 

That's right, I thought. How could I have forgotten?  Produce here is sold by weight.

It's the kind of thing that you may all take for granted, but it is something that had I had not thought of in ages..  In Japan, bananas and oranges and heads of lettuce are, for the most part, sold in units.  One bunch of bananas (pre-bagged) might be 388 yen, or a bag of five clementines may be 298 yen.  Cucumbers may be 98 yen each. Prices vary widely by season (in the off season, greenhouse-clementines, for example, climb to nearly 600 yen).  No weighing, no calculating.

Simpler, yes, but it certainly makes people pickier about which fruit they choose.  Do I take this bunch of three large bananas, or this other bunch of four small bananas?  Do these five apples amount to the same size as those five apples?  There was many a day in which I bought a bag of five clementines, only to find that one of the mix was in less than ideal condition.

I prefer the American system: choose the volume and weight that's right for you, and pick everything individually.  Perhaps I only want one apple today.  Maybe I want one each of several varieties of apple.  Perhaps today I only care to take home a small bunch of grapes.  If this leek is a few grams lighter than that one, then I want to pay a little less for it.  Sure, limiting those options means that you don't see many people hanging around the produce sections in Japan thumping melons, but if I'm going to be eating it, then I want to be able to choose the produce that's right for me.

Supermarkets 1: Access 「スーパーマーケット１：アクセス」

After a few days in the United States, it came time to go stock up on groceries.  As I had only just arrived, I was still living with my parents, and so we bundled into the car and went off to the supermarket.  I had forgotten just how far we had to drive to get food!

In Japan, supermarkets were very convenient.  In the last apartment that I rented in Japan, I could walk to two different supermarkets in less than five minutes!  I also had two 24-hour convenience stores and over ten restaurants that were equally close.

And no, I did not live in the city center.  Easy access to food was not limited to my suburb, either.  For my first five years in Japan, I lived in what Japanese people call 田舎 (inaka, literally "countryside," but used in conversation to mean "the middle of nowhere").  Even there, I lived a five-minute walk away from one supermarket and a twenty-minute walk away from another.

With food being so convenient, people usually don't buy a carload of groceries at a time.  Instead, they usually only buy a few days' worth, a small enough amount that the food can be carried home easily.  The mentality behind bagging groceries is, therefore, very different between the United States and Japan—but more on that another time.

Girth 「メタボ」

I've often heard that about fifty percent of Americans are overweight.  Perhaps you think, "Oh, it really doesn't seem that bad."

You want a shock?  Go live in Japan for a few years, then come back to the United States.

People in Japan are fit.  And I don't just mean moderately well-shaped.  I mean FIT.  That's not to say that there are no overweight people in Japan—I did see quite a few heavy people—but concave abdomens were much more the exception than the rule.

And I don't mean that people were unhealthily skinny, either.

I was a high school teacher, and almost all of the boys had pecs and six-pack abs.  Don't get me wrong, it's not like I went around looking at my students, but when kids change for gym in the classrooms and have swimming classes and sports days and school festivals and what not, and when you're assistant coach of a track and field club, you see the occasional bare chest.  And they were in shape.  Even the kids in the art club and the computer club had muscles that most American high schoolers would kill for.

Now, why are they in such great shape?  The sports clubs certainly have something to do with it: clubs in Japan are serious business.  But that doesn't explain the computer club kids.  Well, as far as I can tell, it's simply diet and exercise.  Food is generally healthy and portions are small.  92% of kids at one of my high schools came to school by bike, and I'm sure that other schools post similar numbers.  Gym class in Japan is serious business.

Oh, and just in case you're wondering, it's not just something that can be passed off as Japanese genetics, either.  Take me as the example, if you will.  I graduated from college struggling to keep my weight from rising above 169 pounds (76kg).  After seven years in Japan, I weigh 142 pounds (64kg) with eleven percent body fat, and can run a 5k road race in under 20 minutes.  Now, of course, I have to try to keep it that way.  I'm not optimistic.

So, you want a good dieting tip? Live in Japan.

Restaurants 2: Portions 「レストラン２：量」

My father and I went to a Chinese restaurant the other day.  It was my first time at a sit-down restaurant in quite some time.  We took our seats, ordered our food, and then the meal came.

I stared at the plate in front of me.

"I only ordered a single portion," I said automatically.

"That's what I gave you," came the response from the waiter.

I couldn't believe my eyes.  The plate was heaped with food.  The pile of meat and vegetables was nearly invisible beneath the mountain of rice, which was topped off by several precariously-balanced pieces of crab rangoon.  It could easily have passed as a plate for three at a Japanese restaurant.  Did seven dollars really go so far?

Now, I am capable of eating quite a lot, and so I finished my plate, but I did not have of an appetite for the rest of that evening (or the following morning, for that matter).  I have heard a lot about the monstrous appetizers at some restaurants that give you 2,000 Calories before the main course even comes.  Reading about something and seeing it for yourself, however, are two different things.  I wonder if restaurants will let me order a single meal and split it with three people from now on?

I should add, by the way, that even the biggest meals in Japanese restaurants rarely top 1,000 Calories.  Where do Japanese restaurants fall down, then? Sodium.  Most menus in Japan now list Calories, fat, and sodium for each of their offerings.  I was horrified on more than one occasion to open up a menu and see offerings that were made with 4.5 grams of salt for a single serving.  It just goes to show you: you have to be careful of what you eat, no matter where you live.

Oh, and no, my insistent capitalization of the word "Calorie" is not an error: it's the teacher in me.  One Calorie, with a capital "C", equals 1,000 calories, with a lower-case "c".  If you were to live on a 2,000-calorie diet, you'd die of starvation rather quickly, because the energy in our food, as labeled in the nutrition information, is counted in Calories, not calories.
Japan avoids this confusion altogether by listing the energy in its foods in terms of "kcal", or kilocalories, which is a much less confusing way to count Calories; don't you agree?