8 ms·
The grocery checkout is a related to car culture. In America you shop for the month since you can fit it all in the trunk. Items are sold in bigger boxes, and
by byoung2 13y ago
The grocery checkout is a related to car culture. In America you shop for the month since you can fit it all in the trunk. Items are sold in bigger boxes, and you get beer by the 18 pack. When I was in Japan I shopped every day, just getting what I could carry in one hand on the train. One Sapporo and some rice makes for short checkout.
- a3n 13y ago> and you get beer by the 18 pack. I really don't mean to come off as snobbish, but, what kind of beer is worth drinking that comes in 18 packs? I'm not sure I've ever seen anything but cans of alcoholic water in that configuration.
- jevinskie 13y agoThat is a bit snobbish. Nobody should have to apologize for their beverage of choice.
- coldtea 13y agoWhy not? If something is worth doing, it's worth doing right.
- dmm 13y agoAmerican Lagers are a fine style of beer. And many of the most popular ones are fine examples of that style.
- coldtea 13y agoWell, one would hardly consider them beers in the first place.
- JonnieCache 13y agoOptimising every aspect of your life like that has rapidly diminishing returns. Before too long you end up like that one guy writing blogs about your bespoke fucking japanese spoons or whatever it was. Pick a few things and maximise those. Presumably the guy buying the 18 pack of beer chose something else.
- BugBrother 13y agoNo. You're factually correct that it is like premature optimizing code, but it is a hobby for quite a few people to optimize their lives. Others collect money. Some friends do board games. Or sport. (Personally, I spend a lot of time learning about some odd interests.)
- adventured 13y agoThere is no such thing as "right" when it comes to the subjective world of taste (whether food or beer). There are only snobs that claim there is a "right" and everybody else who enjoys what they like regardless of the snobs.
- Avshalom 13y agoI'mma go with Chesterton on this: if it's worth doing, it's worth doing poorly.
- barrkel 13y agoDo you optimize your choice of cups? Of USB cables? Brake fluid in your car? How far do you go to get the perfect sugar? I get my olive oil from an electrical hardware store around the corner from where I work - http://mroliveoil.com/page19.htm http://mroliveoil.com/page19.htm - how far do you go to get yours? Lots of things are worth doing - often unavoidably so - but that doesn't mean you need to optimize each and every one of them until they're "right".
- lmm 13y agoCups and USB cables are tools, a means to an end. (I do buy fancy sugar, because I bake as a hobby). Beer is supposedly something you do for fun - it's not like it's nutritious - and if you're just drinking to fit in or using it as a way to get drunk, you might have a problem.
- ngoldbaum 13y agoYou're the Ron Swanson of olive oil.
- coldtea 13y ago>Do you optimize your choice of cups? Of USB cables? Brake fluid in your car? How far do you go to get the perfect sugar? No, I don't "optimize" everything, but I do optimize a lot of stuff. If you like beer enough to consume 16 cans a week, then it sounds like something worth optimizing. In general most things diet related are quite important to leave to chance. And if fun is involved too, then optimizing them can be fun too. You don't have to be OCD about it, just to try different brands and experiment. >I get my olive oil from an electrical hardware store around the corner from where I work how far do you go to get yours? Hmm, that's a bad example, as we value olive oil very much in my country, so I even have my own olive trees and produce my oil in cooperation with the village mill. Well, my parents do at the moment, as I live abroad now.
- a3n 13y agoThe question wasn't meant for people to justify or apologize for their choice of beer. Despite its (unavoidable?) snobbishness, it really was the bare question itself, "what kind of beer that comes in 18 packs is worth drinking?" A few responses actually answered that; "beer that I can, or choose to, afford" was the essence of many of those. Or "because I like it" were some others. Interesting, and probably not surprising, that most responses addressed the snobbishness behind the question, and that was as valuable to me as the responses that addressed the question.
- mam8cc 13y agoI'm an avid craft beer drinker that is involved in home brewing as well as trading. I've had word class beers in my fridge sitting next to a 30 pack of Beer 30. Beer is beer is beer. People drink what they like, and not everyone likes Heddy Topper/Westy 12/KBS/etc. Cheers!
- rwc 13y agoYou came off as snobbish.
- Texasian 13y ago4, 6 and 12-packs are just as inconvenient if you're hopping on the subway to head home. Even if they aren't as bulky, they can still be plenty heavy if you can't grab a seat or if the floor is too nasty to put stuff on. Plenty of good session beers are coming in 12 packs these days too.
- rayiner 13y agoWhen I was in Chicago, I'd buy Goose Island (locally-brewed, hardly alcohol water) in boxes of 12.
- maaku 13y agoI think that was his (snobbish) point - only mass-produced domestic beer like Bud or Miller is in boxes of 18. Everything else seems to be boxes of 6 or 12.
- binxbolling 13y agoBut that's just not true. In the NE, I can get Smuttynose, Harpoon, Long Trail, Sam Adams, etc in 18 and 24 pack boxes. I have difficulty imagining it's that different for the rest of the country. And whatever you think of those beers, they're certainly not of the Bud/Miller variety.
- maaku 13y agoI haven't seen that anywhere where I live (northern California). Just 6 packs and 12 packs for anything except "domestic" (piss beer).
- tptacek 13y agoEhh. We could go back and forth on Goose Island.
- nollidge 13y agoHow could you possibly not mean to come off as snobbish? There is no other way to interpret your comment other than snobbery. I'm not saying there's anything wrong with that, necessarily, but at least be honest with us (and yourself). EDIT: What's wrong about it is classism, though. Not everybody can afford premium microbrews.
- thisone 13y agoand not everyone likes premium microbrews either. sometimes I wish I had the gif "stop liking what I don't like" on a hotkey.
- cobrausn 13y agoYou probably already know this, but that was snobbish. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KWBV7yKWhWE http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KWBV7yKWhWE
- beachstartup 13y agoyou can pick up high quality microbrews at pretty much any decent grocery store these days so i'm not sure where your sense of superiority is coming from.
- kalleboo 13y agohttp://www.7netshopping.jp/food/detail/-/accd/2110181641/subno/1 http://www.7netshopping.jp/food/detail/-/accd/2110181641/sub...
- freehunter 13y agoSierra Nevada, Sam Adams, and Blue Moon can come in large packs. I know I've gotten 24 packs of those, along with some much more local brews that aren't nationally distributed. But if you're talking about American beer overall, Budweiser is much more common and therefore a better indication of mass-market American culture.
- a3n 13y agoToday I was reminded that there are other parameters for beer than my own.
- ekianjo 13y agoYou don't need to shop everyday in Japan. That's retarded. I live in Japan and only shop once a week (and I don't eat out every single night). It's not that hard to get organized and have a shopping list with you.
- dagw 13y agoBut if you pass food stores on your way home anyway, why not shop every day. A weeks worth of groceries is a a bit of a pain to carry no matter how you look at it.
- verisimilidude 13y agoExactly. When I lived in Tokyo, there were several excellent grocers and produce shops on my walk home. There was no reason to plan ahead. Every incentive—cramped living quarters, convenience of the shops, no car, always having fresh ingredients relevant to the mood of the night—all pointed me toward daily grocery shopping.
- skwirl 13y agoTip #11: Don't call things "retarded" if you are an adult.
- kalleboo 13y agoAlso depends on the size of your home. Buying a week's worth of food for me and my SO means we'll be playing Tetris all week.
- ulfw 13y agoThat only works if you buy no fresh groceries/fruits/veggies or other perishables. I guess Americans love living on processed food then.
- aaronem 13y agoWell, "love" is a strong word, but our society is built in such a way as to provide strong incentives toward doing so, especially for people with low income or little free time or both.
- diogenescynic 13y agoAmerican tastes changed vs Japanese and European tastes after World War II. The veterans coming home had eaten lots of canned food and other non-perishables while the Europeans and Japanese citizens had to eat what they could find locally and seasonally. It's had a lasting impact.
- officemonkey 13y agoThis finally explains the difference between one grandmother's cooking (Depression-era home cooking from scratch) and my other (younger) grandmother's cooking (Post-WW2 TV dinners and frozen vegetables.)
- j_s 13y agoCitation needed! (Actually, this is the first time I'd ever heard of this idea and I would greatly appreciate any additional reading material you could point me to.)
- wil421 13y ago> In America you shop for the month since you can fit it all in the trunk. That is absolutely absurd no one shops at the grocery for a whole months worth of food. Most perishable items like meat and produce will barely survive a whole week. Everyone I know usually goes once or twice a week.
- RogerL 13y agoWell, the post was probably a combination of a bit of hyperbole and lack of details. We go on a 'big' shopping trip once a month or so, where you get all the staples. Then, on a more frequent basis you get the perishables. This lets you efficiently go to small markets for produce, use the quick lanes in groceries, and so on. But, I am not sure I buy that this is the reason. I don't even know if the report is accurate. Are we really (on the whole) slower than the average Japanese market? I know we have a culture of 'friendliness' at the check out - lots of 'hi, how is your day going' nattering, and if you have a club card they peer at it, mangle your name, ask if they got it right, insist on you giving the correction, then say 'good day Mr Xybpppphhht.' All that slows things down a bit. But laser scanners are pretty fast, and a lot of cashiers really rip through very quickly. It also might be regional. Thinking about it I think the grocery clerks where I grew up all went hell-bent, and things seem more laid back here in CA. It's challenging to make pronouncements about an entire country as large and culturally diverse as the US.
- wil421 13y agoI think you have a lot of good point here. Friendliness is definitely something that people come to expect from retailers. Could that be why Japanese lines are so fast. Maybe since they are only buying a few goods at a time the lines go quicker.