Hey guys, welcome back to my channel! I
just got back inside from doing my weekly grocery shopping trip and I
thought I would share it with you guys because if you're anything like me
you're probably really interested to see what kind of products they have here in
Japan that I'm eating on a weekly basis and maybe how much things cost here
because it's probably a little different than where you live! So there are two
grocery shops in my town that I frequent a lot they both carry a very different
range of products so I find that I kind of have to go to both of them once a
week to get everything that I want. The one that's close to my house does carry
all the necessities and I could get by just by going there but the one that's a
little further has an import shop so I can get like foreign snacks and foreign
cooking ingredients. I use this huge bag when I go shopping I tend to buy a lot
of food I do a lot of cooking at home especially now that I'm inside all the
time but this is pretty similar to what I would buy on a normal basis as well.
Produce wise I just got some broccoli and some bananas this week. I wanted to get
some more bananas but unfortunately I don't drive and I haven't purchased a
bicycle since I moved to Morioka so I need to make sure that the amount of
groceries that I buy I'm able to carry home! It's quite a long walk so I
only got four bananas normally I would get a lot more because I like to freeze
them for smoothies. One of the major differences that I find at Japanese
grocery stores is that the fruit section is very seasonal. At the moment
strawberries are in season so there are like three rows of strawberries,
different types of strawberries from all over northern Japan but other fruits
that aren't in season at the moment are very difficult to find, whereas back in
Canada I found that we kind of had a little bit of everything all year round.
So that's something I've had to get used to in Japan. It's kind of fun though
because you're always looking forward to strawberry season. Oh the
strawberries are back, awesome! Because you couldn't get them all year right? So
it's kind of fun. Oh and I got an avocado of course. So my
grocery store is really weird with the pricing of avocados, it fluctuates like
crazy. I would say probably the average price is about 175 yen sometimes that
goes up to 195 and on a really good day I can find them for 98 yen and I'll
stock up on a whole bunch of them. It was just a regular price today so I got one.
I've been eating a lot of pasta recently. normally I just buy these packs of
spaghetti they're like already packaged into one serving size bundles, it's very
convenient. And then I get this tomato and garlic, it's like a ragu sauce. I'll
usually add some veggies like peppers or onions. Makes a really quick dinner for
when I'm feeling super lazy. This is a brand new product that I was super
excited to see because Mabo tofu is one of my favorite dishes! It is like a spicy
tofu and it normally has ground meat in it you can see it looks like ground meat.
But this one is made with soy meat! It is very rare to find a dish like this
prepared with soy meat in like a premade sauce like this. So all I have to do is
cut up tofu and add the sauce to it and I'll have a spicy tofu dish for dinner!
I've noticed that recently Japan is really getting into the fake meat
scene. Slowly I'm seeing more products arise, especially like pre-made things
like this. Okay I got this to try out a brand new recipe that I've never made
before. These are harusame noodles and what I want to make with this is
sunomono salad! So if you go to a Japanese restaurant in Canada they
always have sunomono salad on the menu it's basically these noodles with like a
vinegar and maybe some cucumbers or some shrimp and tomato. Those are usually the
basic ingredients. What is funny is I've never had that dish in Japan, I've never
seen it in Japan, it's just not a thing. But I love it so much and I kind of miss it
so I'm going to attempt to make it myself with these harusame noodles!
Are you guys ready for probably the most exciting development of my life in
recent weeks? Japan has come out with a cereal that
actually looks really good, and like something you would get in North America!
Now if you saw my previous Japanese cereal video that I put out a couple
weeks ago with Emma, they have a very interesting selection of cereals here. If
you go to the supermarket you'll see that about 70 to maybe even 80% of
the cereal row is different flavours of granola. There are probably over ten
maybe even fifteen flavours of granola at my local supermarket. But today they had
these unicorn fruit loops! It is so rare to see like a really sugary junk cereal
like this in Japan and I have to get it because crappy breakfast cereals are one
of my weaknesses. I like to think I have a relatively healthy diet, I eat pretty
well most of the time. But now that this is available things are gonna change.
It's made by Kellogg's so it probably tastes really similar to the Froot Loops
back home in Canada. Heck yeah and it was only like $2, it was so cheap. I
also got a bag of my usual cereal that I get these are genmai flakes. Genmai is
brown rice. I thought I would try this. I've actually never made this at home
myself. These are the little tofu pouches, they're like deep-fried tofu pouches and
then I got some kishimen to put them on top instead of udon. They're
basically udon that has been flattened out. I've had them at one
restaurant so far and I really enjoyed them so I'm gonna try making that. These
are one of my favourite snacks! They're called Sapporo Potato and
they're a vegetable stick, a little potato stick with chunks of veggies in
them. They're not healthy at all they're like a deep-fried, basically like a
potato chip, but the package was sakura I thought it was so cute. Normally I
don't get much junk food like this but I was attracted to the really pretty
packaging. The Sakura have finally started to bloom here in Morioka, like
just starting today was the first time that I've noticed them. So probably
within the next week or two they should be in full bloom! And finally I got some
nori to make some sushi rolls. That's it for my regular grocery store, and then I
went to the import store to see what they had, to see if I can find anything
fun. And I found lentils for the first time ever! But this is not a product that
you would normally be able to find in a regular supermarket here, you have to
go to an import shop to get it unfortunately. I also found this butter
chicken curry paste and when I looked at the instructions you actually add the
butter and the milk and the chicken yourself, so the sauce itself doesn't
have any dairy products or chicken or anything in it. It's just a bunch of
really yummy sounding Indian spices so I'm gonna make this with my soy butter
and my soy milk and add some tofu to it and make like a butter tofu curry to go
on rice really excited to try that! Last but not least, I found microwaved
popcorn it's not really a common thing you would find in the supermarket so I
picked these up from the import shop. They were only like a dollar each which
is a score for a product that comes from outside of Japan. I would say normally I
would buy a lot more fresh produce but because I'm trying to go to the grocery
store as few times as possible throughout the month I've been eating a
lot more frozen vegetables than usual so my freezer is packed with frozen goods.
But yeah I thought I'll give you guys a little tour of my fridge! Alright it
wouldn't be a proper fridge tour without showing you what I've got going on on my
fridge door. So I've got some purikura that I took with Candie! This is my meal ideas
sheet. I'm the type of person that will eat the same thing for breakfast and the
same thing for lunch and dinner like over and over again throughout the week.
So I try to encourage myself to try some more variety with my cooking. This is one
of the shots from my 80s photo shoot with Taylor!
Some more purikura with Natsuki and the message I got at the restaurant
from my birthday party last year! It's quite a tiny fridge, fridges in
Japan are in general this size I would say. Unless you're like a big family with
kids. The top row is my favourite because at the moment it is stocked full of
pudding! Japan just released a plant-based pudding by the pucchin
pudding company. This is probably Japan's I would say most famous pudding. The
typical custard pudding with a caramel sauce on the bottom. This is made
all from plants! And recently I found these mango puddings which are made with
soy milk, so those have been my like go-to desserts recently. Next we have
soy yogurt at the back there, that's just like a regular plain soy yogurt and this
one has aloe pieces in it. Haven't tried that one yet, not sure how it is.
But again Japan seems to really be increasing their amount of soy products
which is very exciting as someone who doesn't like eating dairy. This is my soy
milk-based margarine, I use that on toast and stuff. And in the back we've
got my favourite soy milk flavours of chocolate and earl grey tea! Not much
going on on the next shelf. Got some sriracha sauce and some ketchup that I
use in cooking a lot. Some apple juice, this is a tomato paste that I use in
Hungarian cooking. Got half an avocado left over from this morning, some tofu
and miso paste. On the next shelf I've got some fun products that I haven't
tried out yet. This one here is a jyajyamen made with noodles that are sugar
free basically just a lower calorie noodle but jyajyamen is actually the
specialty of my town here in Morioka. We're famous for noodles. Jyajyamen is
usually made with meat but this one here it didn't have any meat in the sauce so
I thought I would give it a shot. I'll let you guys know how that goes when I
eventually get around to trying it! Here we've got some agedashi tofu it's
tofu fried in like a tempura batter, so good. In these little Tupperware
containers I've got some leftover veggies, some green peppers up top, and
some carrots. Down on the bottom this is like my obscure drink collection.
Every time I find an interesting drink at the grocery store I have to buy it,
it's like an obsession of mine. Like I don't drink soda but I saw this
strawberry coke and I just had to get one so I can try it. This is a sparkling
sake, it's not very alcoholic at all it's more just like the flavor of sake
and it's pretty sweet. This is like a tree sap drink that I got as an omiyage (souvenir)
from someone. Lots of these are omiyage. This as well, this is a
strawberry cider from a strawberry farm. some more
omiyage sake in the background there. These are one of my favourite vitamin
drinks. These are one of the only ones that don't have artificial sweeteners in
them! So if you're like me and you try to avoid artificial sweeteners this is one
of the only jelly vitamin drinks that you can get that doesn't have them
in it, so look out for this one. It's House brand, it's called perfect vitamin. It's a grapefruit flavour, really good. Lettuce there. All
right now over in the door, I've got this it's like a ginger paste mixed with
sugar and lemon peel and it's great to add to boiling water when you've got a
cold, super tasty. Some wasabi paste for sushi, this is like a lush oil massage
bar I think, I keep it in the fridge so it doesn't melt. Down here I've got some
maple syrup, I actually really don't like Canadian real maple syrup like this
but I do use this in cooking, not on my pancakes. Some salad dressings, chili
sauce, these are basically just like cooking sauces. This here is my
favourite skin serum, it's like a vitamin serum for your skin. I keep it in the
fridge so that it doesn't oxidize. Keeps it nice and fresh. Down at the bottom I've
got my soy milk and these are all things like cooking sake. This is mirin
it's like a sweet liquid that's used in lots of Japanese recipes. Liquid aminos,
okonomiyaki sauce, vinegar, mayo and some more sweet chili paste. So that was about
it for inside the fridge and then down below is my freezer and I've got a pack
of bananas that I'm freezing for smoothies. I've always got a bunch of
bananas in there. Some edamame these are super convenient to just heat up and
have as like an extra side dish for dinner or a good snack throughout the
day. Frozen spinach something else that's really easy to make a little side dish
with. Asparagus, green beans, and some frozen mango. it's really hard to get
fresh mango in Japan and when it is available they're like 5-6 dollars
each it's crazy. So I can really only afford the frozen stuff. And also some
blueberries for smoothies. And then there's this little tray here I really
like this where I keep my ice cubes and these are frozen soy milk packages in
really interesting flavors. Rum raisin chocolate mint, amazake, and what's this
one kinako mochi, it's like a Japanese
dessert flavour. They're in the freezer because I have this kakigori machine,
this like shaved ice machine, that's made specifically for these little soy milk
packets. You just like take off the wrapper stick it in the machine and you
can make shaved ice in any flavour you like! That's pretty fun. And that
completes my fridge tour and my grocery shopping haul here in Japan! I hope you
guys found that interesting. Do you let me know if you have any ideas for videos
you would like to see from me. Obviously I'm pretty limited at the moment to
things I can film, so if you can think of anything exciting or interesting that I
can film from home here in Japan do let me know down in the comments. I would
really appreciate your suggestions! Thanks so much for watching guys and I
will see you very soon! Bye for now!
