Shopping Locally

Most of the time I have to walk and carry home anything that I buy here.  That means buying less and having to make more trips--very different from driving to the store in the U.S. and coming home with several heavy bags of stuff, letting the car to all the hauling.  I shop almost every day for our produce  at this little grocery store a block away from our apartment.  It's in a long strip mall that runs between two huge apartment complexes, so there are lots of apartment rental agencies in the mall.  The two young men in white shirts and black trousers work for one of the agencies.

I always head to the back of the store for veggies and fruit.  Nothing you see here is refrigerated, so by late in the afternoon, the greens are likely to be wilted.  Some items like snow peas, broccoli and mushrooms are in a refrigerator case with the tofu and meat, located off the right side of the photo.  Most vegetables are very reasonably priced, especially greens--$.30-.60 for a nice bunch of spinach, baby bok choy, or napa cabbage.  Someone will come to this counter, weigh the produce I've picked out, and stick a bar-coded label on the bag.  A lot of plastic gets used to bag up produce, although most people bring a tote to use at the checkout.

I think that an extended family runs the store.  These are two of the familiar faces there.  The fellow on the left is very quiet, but he's paying attention.  Last week when he saw me eyeing the few pathetic-looking carrots that were left, he came over and opened up the big box of fresher ones under the counter for me to choose from.  Later when he was weighing my pears, he reached in and took out one that had a spot on the stem end and pointed it out to me.  Good customer service, I'd say.  I have never seen the fellow on the right not wear this pink shirt.  He speaks a little English, more  than anyone else who works there.   Today when he was beeping through the barcodes on my veggies at the register, he was quite conversational:  "Hmmm...cooking..."  And later as he slowly set two very ripe persimmons on top of of everything else in the tote, he patted them and said (approximately), "Careful."  Knowing all the people who work in this little store and exchanging pleasantries with them, even nonverbal ones, are good outcomes of having to shop locally and often in a new place.