An Inside Look At A Belgian Supermarket

Guys, we have a winner! This Belgian supermarket is unreal. Mainly for two reasons. One, they have testers. But not just any old testers. Testers that are in every supermarket section, changed daily and refilled to keep full during all shopping hours. Yes, you read right. Amazing, isn’t it?! Second, and probably most important, they don’t use plastic bags. Instead, they have a unique trolley system to “bag” items at the cash register. You’ll see both as you scroll down under…

I found the exterior of the shopping centre quite strange. There are no signs of this place being a supermarket. Nil. Zero. Laura says they save on advertising etc this way.

Unlimited snickers! So dangerous!

Raw cashews.. nomnomnom can have these instead.
Cheese and olives! Oui!

Call me Captain Obvious but mandarin…
Grapes 
And cherry tomatoes in the fresh produce section.

These are to do with Belgian culture. I’m sure you’ve heard of Belgian fries (NOT French, Laura says), well, these are some of their hundreds of sauces! Including bucket-fulls of mayo! Erghk!

And here is Laura’s dad’s bottom kindly showing us the 0-plastic check-out system. So. The clerk takes the items from your trolley and puts them into another trolley. (I found this interesting as the clerk would be reaching and bending while customers just stood there -not necessarily a bad thing, just an observation.) After that’s done, the customer pushes the other trolley out of the supermarket where they’re then free to unload their groceries straight into their car, bicycle or personal bag.

An Inside Look At A Spanish Supermarket

So different to both Japan and New Zealand. When travelling, I love to visit the local supermarket. It always becomes a highlight because it’s always so interesting.

Two entire rows + four row fronts (each side) just for cheese! Oh my!



This is a monkey fish. You choose your fish and the ladies (or gentlemen) prepare them for you. Of course, preprepared fish is also available.

Jose doing his thang.

Apart from this brand (which is refrigerated) the remaining milk here look like cleaning products because of the way they’re stored and packaged.


Meat, meat and more meat.

Look at the top right yellow label. 339 Euro for one leg! Now that’s some special meat.

Jose says these pigs eat acorns so even though they’re fat, they’re good fat. “Like me,” I said (hehe).
All of the tomatoes an Italian chef could wish for (also on other side).

In Japan, carrots are heavily sprayed making them big and perfect. Then, they’re individually wrapped in excess plastic. This is how fruit and vegetables should be! Ugly but delicious. 

I love these peaches! 0.98 Euro for a KG! Good or good?!


All of the legumes! Plus, olives, anchovies, pates and dried nuts and fruit (not pictured).

Look Japanese friends! “Japanese” food!

Introducing Jose to almond milk and other trendy health foods (hehe).

Italian Pasta in Japan

Basically, the Japanese LOVE noodles. Like, more than NZers love alcohol or bacon or Iranians love kebabs or rice. Though probably even more. Cause they have noodle festivals! Entire festivals dedicated to noodles! Noodles of several kinds but mostly there are 4; ramen (the thin and yellow fast-food Chinese noodle), soba (the healthy brown one made of buckwheat flour), udon (round and thick like moi) and somen (supermodel thin like moi in the future). Which are eaten hot, cold, on their own with dipping sauce, in a soup, in a stir fry and even as a patty in a burger bun! So you’d think after a life-time of living and breathing mamas home cooked Japanese noodles, they’d venture out when it came to dining at Bona Petito… No. What do they order? What SOLE pasta CAN they order? You got it, SPAGHETTI.

It’s funny, even their supermarkets, only sell spaghetti in their Italian/pasta isle. To be fair, on the odd chance, I might see shells or bow-ties, though I’m sure it’s not the Japanese buying those. As for all of the other good pastas; fettuccine, ravioli, tortellini, gnocchi etc they are only usually found in international import stores. Oh and when it comes to lasagne sheets, only the tiny square sized ones are sold because Japanese don’t have full-sized ovens in their homes.

So you go to an Italian restaurant and the only sort of pasta you can order is spaghetti.Which is fine… only a firstworldproblem and all but like, they’ll have packets of tagliatelle displayed around the restaurant for fun or as decoration to tempt you but they don’t actually serve that, no. Or any other pasta for that matter. Just spag. Just more fu&king noodles. #myjapanlife

An Inside Look At A Japanese Grocery Store, The Sequel

There’s a lot of things in there guys. This may become a whole category in itself. Watch this space, I say. Bloody WATCH THIS SPACE! Sorry, I just lost it for a second.

From top to bottom:
An assortment of tempurad (is that a word? well, it is now) stuff
Fried chicken
Giant prawns
Tiny fish (dried and fresh, dead and alive)
Gigantic fruit
Super artificial “bread”
Octopus
Some sweet named COLLON
And as previously mentioned, various ready-to-go foods (2)