One of my favorite things to do when we travel internationally is to hang out in the grocery stores. This is weird because grocery shopping is not something I enjoy normally. I would put it in the necessary inconvenience of modern life category. But a grocery store in an unfamiliar place is a cave of wonders. I am suddenly an explorer in search of undiscovered treasure.

Since we usually rent a house for an extended stay, finding a local grocery store is usually a good beginning step toward settling into local life. First, however, I have learned to explore my kitchen and cookware. It does no good to have food you can’t store or cook.

In Ireland, we stopped at a local market and bought a week’s worth of groceries on the way to the new house from the airport. We discovered upon arrival that the refrigerator was half the size we were used to with limited freezer space. It could hold about three days worth of food. Oops.

In Portugal, I had an ancient gas oven that had to be lit with a very long match. Baking was possible yet challenging. In a 250 year old European farmhouse, we had a wood powered oven and stove. The owners cut and stacked plenty of wood but I had a steep learning curve. Making anything quickly was impossible. It had to be planned.

This trip, we have rented a typical house in a Tokyo suburb. There is a small toaster oven, electric range, a variety of electric and gas portable cooktops, four kinds of rice cookers and a few appliances that I have no idea about. I don’t seem to have any forks but there are a lot of tongs. Hmm. (Perhaps I am supposed to cook in hot oil?) But there are also no spices, condiments, or cooking oils in the house. We will be starting from scratch.

The neighborhood grocery is busy. People are rushing in and out like their lives depend on it. I am not used to this level of grocery shopping energy. We get a cart. I notice I am getting a lot of side eye. It is polite, and yet something is suggesting we are breaking a norm. After a little observation, it seems we were supposed to put a shopping basket in the cart and then put the groceries in the basket…. not directly in the cart. I’ll file that away for next time.

The produce section is easy. I recognize lettuce, onions, carrots and a variety of fruits. We can’t go wrong with fresh fruits and vegetables. But the next aisle is packaged insects. Mmm. Nope.

I move on to the next aisle which is entirely rice. A whole aisle of rice! Not a box of minute rice to be found. Guess those rice cookers could come in handy, but since every meal we eat out will come with rice, we move on to noodles.

There is also an aisle of sauce. At this point we realize that we don’t read Japanese and just looking at the package isn’t at all helpful. Now the polite side eye of other shoppers turn into barely suppressed amusement. My husband and I hover over packages with our cell phones trying to get an angle that allows the Google Translate camera app to tell us if the sauce was are holding is pomadoro Italian, basic ketchup, seaweed extract, or octopus juice. I can’t tell if I am fascinated or terrified about what I might accidentally take home.

We’ve done this dance all over the world. The strange thing is that no matter where I am, I can always find the ingredients for taco salad/tacos, spaghetti, pizza and pancakes. I can find cuts of chicken, beef, and pork. There are always potatoes, eggs, and bread. No one is starving. Things may just not look the way we are used to seeing them.

The eggs won’t be refrigerated. The butter may come in a squeeze tube. I may have to ask a butcher for “mince” if I want hamburger. I may discover that he is profoundly insulted that I expected to find ground beef prepackaged. There will likely not be preservatives in the meat and bread, which means that we will have to shop every few days getting just what we need or our food will spoil.

The grocery store tells me a lot about what people value. Limited packaging and a strong culture of bringing your own reusable bag signal environmental awareness. Aisles of dried and fresh fish tell me people have a close relationship with the sea. There are hints of lifestyle on every shelf. Lack of junk food and the regulation on dyes and preservatives tell me health awareness is more than a slogan.

There are limited bread options and almost no sweets. I see rows of rice cakes and a few varieties of chips. There are exactly two breakfast cereal options (I wonder what the lady watching me shop would think of our wal-mart aisle with a hundred cereal options? Probably how I am feeling about the endless varieties of rice…..how much can you actually need?)

We stop to collect a few bottles of soft drinks. We don’t usually consume soda, but Coke looks familiar in a sea of unknown. Yesterday I got a lovely green tea out of a vending machine. At least I thought so. It turned out to be barley water. It was a lovely color. The package was beautiful. It tasted like a mouthful of grass.

Sometimes we buy the snacks and Doritos even though they are rarely in our everyday pantry. The juxtaposition of comfort and exotic. I will defend till the end of time that Tayto is the best potato chip in the world (I never eat chips at home, but in Ireland I eat them by the case…not the bag). In Japan, I am becoming addicted to cans of calbee veggie straws. Weird.

Sometimes I improvise and use the new things I find with recipes I know. I make taco salad with baked rice chips because we are craving Mexican and we can get most of the ingredients right. Occasionally a masterpiece is born. Usually it is edible. Never will it knowingly contain bugs or octopus juice, but most new things are fair game. We won’t know until we try it. And to try it we have to buy it.

Ps. When we get to the check out, we understand why you need the basket. There is no counter. They take out the basket and set on a small ledge. The items are scanned and put into your cart for you to bag. We have created an awkward situation for the checker. We also don’t know how to operate the payment machine that is only in Japanese. A friendly local helps us out. Now we know. Next time I won’t hold up the line . Gomenasai.