Foreign Friday

Supermarket Demonstration 

Misawa, Japan

January 1980

Food samples and demonstrations were set up in the grocery store on Saturdays. I don't remember seeing any shopping carts in the supermarkets, but plastic baskets were available at the door for shoppers. I don't know the name of the pottery bowl with lid in the foreground of this photo, but I purchased one and love it.

Since food prices were much higher off-base, I usually shopped in the base commissary. Betty (shown in the blue coat) and I would make a trip to a large local grocery store once or twice a month to purchase items not available on-base.

Customers bagged/boxed their own groceries after making payment. This store is where I first saw and used a plastic shopping bag. Two years later (1982), the bags were introduced in American grocery stores.