Apartments, 100 yen stores, and Grocery Shopping in Kyoto

Now that I finally have a good, stable internet connection, it looks like I can finally post up some of the pictures that I’ve been taking after landing here in Kyoto. One thing I learned here is that Japan, unlike America, does not have free wifi in almost every other restaurant or bookstore. Kind of a shame, I liked my free wifi. On the plus side, you could totally tell that Kyoto is a very historical city. Heck, I went grocery shopping earlier today, but ended up taking dozens of detours to take pictures like the one above. There are a ton of old, traditional Japanese buildings in Kyoto, so much so that you will probably run into one on at least every other block. But yea, three hour grocery run with detours? Heck yea 😛

Anyways, let’s rewind a bit. After arriving here in Kyoto, I ended up moving into a small little 1-bedroom apartment, complete with a puny little bathroom and a veranda with an absolutely terrible view. Seriously, who’s idea was it to block out the entire view with a huge opaque wall?

Meh, bad view aside, the one thing I did notice here is that the Japanese seem to have a knack for being as space efficient as possible. The veranda, ignoring the terrible view, has both a laundry machine and a rack to dry clothes on. As for the bathroom, I didn’t think it was even possible to make a bathroom this tiny! Everything here feels mini-sized compared to American standards, which makes me wonder if either Americans like things too big, or if Japanese like things too small. The cars are also really small, pretty much to the point where their puny-ness is actually sort of cute.

Of course, first problem I ran into was, well, even if I have an apartment and a kitchen, I don’t have supplies. Pots, pans, kitchen knives, you name it and I don’t have it. Being the resourceful guy that I am, I googled “cheap supplies in Kyoto”, and suggestions began popping up. Lots of people said convenience stores (aka combini, コンビニ), others said Department Stores (aka depaato (デパアト)), and some brilliant anonymous guy mentioned 100-yen (１００円) stores.

While all were good intentioned, I can safely say that the best of those suggestions (for my needs) was the 100-yen store. I got pots, pans, soap, kitchen knives, extension cords, laundry detergent, toilet paper, shampoo, and more. Best of all, each cost 105円 (including tax, etc). To put that in perspective, a $1 candy bar in the USA is slightly cheaper, yet what I bought here will last me for far longer than a measly chocolate bar.

As for the other suggestions, “Department stores” here are quite different from your typical American department stores. The デパアト here consist of these gargantuan 8-10 story buildings with each floor dedicated to some sort of product. The bottom floors tend to be dedicated to expensive clothing or cosmetics, and the top floors tend to have restaurants and other food joints. The basement has some groceries, and the middle floors have other stuff. Long story short, while Department Stores here are awesome, they have more luxurious (and thus, more expensive) goods. But yea, if you want pricey but great looking groceries, look no further than the likes of Daimaru and other Department store chains.

As for the コンビニ option, convenience stores are exactly what they sound like; stores for convenience. They have basic groceries such as eggs and milk, and often have lots of drinks, onigiri, and bento boxes. But depending on the conbini’s location, they tend to cater to the local neighborhood. It’s actually rather fascinating to see one conbini with almost no groceries, but tons of magazines and bento boxes, while others are loaded with groceries and extension cords and other more obscure items. You learn a lot about the neighborhoods around you simply by checking out the convenience stores, a small but fun surprise. Of course, though, this didn’t quite help in my quest for pots and pans, so convenience stores ended up as an afterthought on my first few days here.

There are some other awesome shopping areas such as the Shoutengai (an extremely long set of streets lined with small shops), as well as the Shijou area of Kyoto (which is probably the busiest, most lively part of Kyoto). So far I’ve seen the Nishiki, Sanjou, and Teramichi Shoutengai, as well as a bunch of smaller shops dedicated to everything from anime/manga/light-novels to herbal teas. It was sort of surreal seeing some huge anime-dedicated shops next to a small little shinto temple (FYI, the anime shops were heavily advertising the upcoming release of Fate/Zero’s 2nd Blu-ray Box Set, something that sounds quite tempting now that I’m here in Japan…)

All in all, these past few days have been really intriguing, and I’ve been going nuts walking all around the city while taking pictures. It feels a bit surreal that I’m actually in the country where anime all comes from, so I’m pretty excited to say the least. As for talk about the Shoutengai, and other little discoveries, that can wait til next time. Unfortunately, I do still need to do work for classes, all of which begins tomorrow. As for my first home-cooked meal, I played it safe with some pork curry (seen above), but I definitely plan on trying to cook a bunch of different Japanese dishes while I’m here. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have some katsudon to attempt making :3

This series of posts, Adventures Abroad in Japan, was all possible in part due to the generous scholarship from the Benjamin A. Gilman International Scholarship. For anybody that is interested in Studying Abroad, do make sure to check them out!