All-You-Can-Stuff (2005-09-20)
Fresh food in Tokyo like meat and vegetables, especially those from local farmers and growers is expensive, no question about that ( Strangely enough, imported food is often cheaper than locally-produced food). You learn to live with it and at the mean time trying to look for a good sale to help ease the grocery bill.
And when you are really lucky, your supermarket may have what is
called "All-you-can-stuff" (Tsumehoudai) sale. In such occasion,
the store will give you bags with barcode stickers for
the produce on sale and shoppers can stuff as many veggies as they can
in the bag. This is one of the best supermarket bargains in town.
Last week our supermarket had All-you-can-stuff-onions sale. I
jumped right at the chance and following the tactic other shoppers are
using,
crammed onions all the way to the rim of the bag. The
important thing here is not to feel shy or embarrassed about your
jamming technique. The store fully expects people to heavily
stuff the bags. The cashiers are especially accommodating when it
comes to handling such bags. They would carefully lift the bag
now gorged with veggies from the shopping basket, scan the barcode
slowly and stand the bag back into the basket cautiously so as not to
knock it over and spilling the content.
The onion bag last week cost about US$1.3. Normally
that price would get me five or six onions, my all-you-can-stuff bag
netted me 16! I can't imagine the store making any money with
their onions that day, no wonder they only have this kind of sale once
in a blue moon.
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