I wish I could have taken you shopping yesterday.  First I went to the local Seven-Eleven to pay my phone bill.  Just across the street was a gas station. The cars were line up for about a mile.  This I checked out later on my way to the supermarket.  I thought of sitting in the line to actually time it, but I knew that you wouldn't have been impressed with my sacrifice, especially since I didn't need any gas.  In Tohoku today, my friend told me that the people were lined up for miles, but the gas station was not even open yet. After I paid my bill, I began looking at the empty shelves.  The bread shelves were the first one I noticed.  All the sweet rolls, meat filled rolls were gone.  The only thing that sat on that shelf was a collection of a few jars of peanut butter and jelly...without bread#?**&?  The next self not visible in the picture was the flashlight and batteries shelf.  Yes, it reminded me of rolling blackouts yet to come.

I drove to the supermarket in the basement of a department store, a typical arrangement, for many supermarkets.  Today the arm at the gate was open meaning that parking was free.  Great!  I parked and went toward the 4th floor entrance to meet this sign.  "The store will close all transactions at 2:30 pm and the parking lot will close at 3:00 pm due to the 3:20 scheduled blackout.  Please give us your understanding."  Thus, the free parking.

I went down to the basement with the idea of buying milk and eggs.  Stopping by the fruit and vegetable, I noticed that there were more varieties there than I had imagined.  Especially onions.  Tons of onions. Onion soup has a lot of vitamin A....but I realized that what I really wanted was tofu and natto.  Natto, (fermented beans) if you mix it with onions, cooked spinach or even tomato with soy sauce flavoring, it tastes great and is full  of calcium. But, alas, there was no tofu and no natto.

So let's get what I'm really after, milk.  There were 15 cartons left of one brand out of 15 brands.  Of course it was whole milk!  I was getting nervous since I only had one egg left.  I passed the three empty bread asiles, and came to the empty egg frig.  No wait. There were some... refrigerated eggs cooked in hot springs.  A little like putting an egg in the hottest water you can get out of the tap and leaving it there for a few hours. In other words, it looks like a one-minute boiled egg when you break it open. I wonder what will happen if I continue boiling it. Or I can eat it practically raw, I guess, if was starving. So I bought four of those.

Lastly, I strolled by a very looooong aisle of empty shelves with a sign saying, "please only one package per customer"...upon checking what I missed, I realized that it was something for "younger" women, and not maturated women like me. No loss.

I learned a few things. All the items not needing to be heated were gone. Japan has not become a bread-eating country. But the fact is, there is no rice in the stores. And bread (and probably rice) is being diverted to the needy north. My shopping trip was rather short compared to my friends up north.  Today the same friend told me that she decided to go pick some essentials since she still had gasoline. The people lined up at the store said that a clerk had just come by to tell them that the "wait-time" would be five hours. My friend, rolled her eyes and took off for another store she knew of. How fortunate she was, that line was "four hours long." What was it that you complained about today?  Shame on you! Count your blessings, name them one by one...when you get to ten, stop. You still have nine more than people in northern Japan have.  They list their blessing as being alive.