All things cute

I arrived at a decent hour at my hostel, drenched in sweat from Japan's notorious humidity. Even in September, it felt like a sauna, peaking around thirty degrees. I felt so drained but I was pleasantly surprised,  I had managed to navigate my way through the Osaka subway and through the streets of Japan to my quaint hostel. My iPod was my saviour it always helps me control my nerves when I travel. During the train rides the soothing music of Death Cab For Cutie, reassuring me that they 'will follow me into the dark." I dropped my bags and luckily no one was in my room; the last thing I felt like was socializing. I jumped into the airplane-sized shower and tried to rinse away the stresses of the day. I got out and was immediately soaked in sweat again! My body wasn't used to the climate change, plus I'm not used to this phenomenon as I'm a girl I don't sweat, I glisten. Once I got out I decided to grab a bite to eat from the grocery store.

Now if you've never been to a grocery store in Japan, it's quite the experience! At some groceries there are TV screens sandwiched in-between your produce and veg with happy-go-lucky Japanese people smiling at you and indicating how good this product is for you. The background music is a bizarre array of music, ranging from classical to pop to hardcore rap music. All the while 4 foot nothing Japanese grandma's walk past, looking up at you and smiling, not having a clue that there is a vivid description of  raunchy sex scene happening with the rapper and all his hos. The English music that is chosen seems to be solely on the grounds that contains English, although most people don't understand what there singing about, nonetheless I supposed they enjoy it's tune or random gangster babbling or maybe just hearing English?

I walked around with my basket trying to look for something that I knew at least half the ingredients it contained. There is a completely different selection of goods and most of them are things you may never know until you try it. The packaging in Japan is insane! Everything is wrapped up several times in smiling, cute, little animation characters that are shouting at you to buy them! It's hard a urge to resist buying almost everything you see on a whim because it's so darn cute! I made a few of those purchases, including chocolate panda miniature cookies. I was excited to hit up the liquor section. There were rows and rows of beers and hard liquor that could be purchased with your groceries (Canada really needs to change this)..all the while being desperately cheap! A couple tall boys of Asahi beer would do it I thought, a little unwinding and celebration. I took my purchases to the checkout and was surprised that every item's price is told to you by the clerk as its scanned in. Now I worked a checkout job before, at Rona, and I can't imagine a cart full of items coming up along side me and having to read out e-v-e-r-y single item to the customer, while they can clearly see it on the register in front of them. But Japan seems to like things to be transparent for the buyer, maybe as a means to reassure that buying those ten nonessential, cute, little panda chocolates was a good choice after hearing and seeing the price. I guess I had been warned..