Yes Virginia there is a Costco

Costco is in Japan. I guess it really shouldn't be surprising, but it is. Are the Japanese really going to buy 48 rolls of toilet paper? Where would they put it? There are a couple close to Tokyo and for those of us who don't have a car or feel like spending the entire day getting to and from via public transportation we can order from their website, The Flying Pig. You do pay almost double however, if you order online. Then you wonder if it's worth it. This is what I did last year, because I wanted certain items and I wanted my cereal to be in the size of a box that would last longer than two days. But oh how I wished I could just get to that store and see for myself what it was like. It only took a year. There were too many scheduling conflicts last year to make it work. This year I even had two failed attempts with sick kids staying home from school. That gets old after a while as I have previously mentioned...

So yes, I finally got there. I might as well have been in the St. Louis Park Minnesota Costco with the exception of more sushi , rice crackers and plenty of other unidentifiable Japanese food items. The layout was the same. You could tell a gaijin cart from a Japanese cart. They had 5 things in their cart. We had 50. I tired not to make eye contact passing by the Japanese as my cart began to spill over. I wanted to announce, 'It's my FIRST time! I've been waiting a year!' To get to the parking lot there was an escalator that I went on with my cart, kind of like the magic carpet at the ski resorts. Somehow the carts just lock on. It's sort of visible off to the side in the picture.

Although it is Costco, it's still Japan, so my bill was twice as much as it typically is in the states, but with plenty of great deals to keep me happy and my cabinets full for a while.