Costco, the balm that cures ills!

Months ago when Shelley and I were starting to think seriously about our move to Japan, I was anxious about whether I could provide her enough of a life that resembled "home". As you can imagine, life can be very different here. I was really excited to learn that there were a number of Costcos in the Tokyo area. That certainly had me excited. Turth be told, the Costco that we go to in the States is really crowded and a big huge pain to navigate through, as people seemingly buy up cart loads of things they don't need...at least from our eyes. We go to Costco in the States to get stuff at a discount not to load up. Little did we know, however, that the Costco here in Japan would be the balm that cured our ills.

Naturally, this is the biggest move that our family has had to make. And we really didn't think that it would be this physically draining and somewhat emotionally taxing to live in limbo for a while before you can feel totally settled with your new life, all your stuff, new friends, different language/culture, etc. And so, for the first week to have only gone grocery shopping for a few things and to only have to eat "little smokeys" sausages for breakfast every day can push someone over the edge! We debated whether or not to ask our relocation folks to take us to Costco as it seemed like a glorified taxi service, but we were desperate.

In preparation for our trip, we had to get enough cash. Since we hadn't funded our local bank accounts, we had to max out our daily ATM withdrawals...for the both of us. We also had to make a list of the things we wanted. About two minutes into the planning we just decided that we would go up and down every aisle and throw into our cart anything that looked remotely good.

It was the most wonderful Costco experience of our lives. If we wanted it, we threw it into the cart. We filled up two big carts worth of goods and we looked like those people that you see at Costco that you hate. We were unashamedly those people. We were the happiest people that ever walked through check-out. It took forever to load the car, unload the car, lug it all up to our apartment and then put it all away. But when we were done we had huge smiles on our faces. It was a big mental hurdle that we had cleared and suddenly we felt so much better about our lives here in Japan.

Without disclosing the total bill, the receipt did run up from the floor to reach Shelley's waist.