Osaka supermarket

So it’s been a week or so since my last post. Had a short family holiday to Whistler where I was happy to hear a fair amount of Japanese spoken and see some Japanese families enjoying beautiful BC but I’m back at it now. I went to the Osaka Supermarket the other day (part of the T&T chain) in search of green tea in bottles for the child. I was most excellently surprised to see a few items that I wasn’t expecting to find in Vancouver, albeit at much higher prices. First of all, Tsubaki/camellia oil. Same packaging as Japan, same stuff BUT it was a little over twice the price. Still good to know that I can get it here as apparently you can’t ship it because it’s an oil and I’m not quite sure if I’ll be back in Japan before I run out. Next, Karis was happy to hear that the magic fat burning detox gel is also available here if she decides that it is worth using at about three and a half times what it costs in Japan. Green tea–the powdered matcha NOT tea bags–is also available which is no surprise; however, the EXACT same bag that I bought in the Japanese dollar store for 100 yen (about $1.03) was seven dollars! Glad I stocked up on those as I use matcha every day. The 1L bottles of green tea that Karis bought daily in Japan are much harder to find. The first bottles I bought had sugar and honey in them which sort of detracts from the idea of ‘health’ and ‘detox’ but I went back and managed to find a couple of unsweetened varieties. Almost ALL of the brands available in Canada, from various Asian countries, are sweetened. The ones that are not sweetened are $7/IL bottle. A little expensive for a daily habit.