More Interesting Foods

First off, here's a picture of our pantry in its current state:


We don't have a fridge yet, as we're waiting on reimbursements and my first paycheck to do our real furnishing, so we've been going to the store daily for food and not getting much that needs refrigeration. I can't reach the top shelf there, so I need Lee to get things up there for me, at least until we get a stool. He's napping right now, while I wanted to take pictures of new and interesting things. In addition to what I'm going to show you, I realized something. See those things on the top shelf? Can't tell what they are? Here's a close up:


Those would be the dessert-y items we have here in the house. That's chocolate chip cookies and our fourth box of chocolates we got for neighbors, but since we have only three, it's extra. Lee has I do believe, purposefully hidden the desserts away where I have to ask him to get them for me. And there's still no Cherry Pepsi in Japan! My sweet tooth may just shrivel up and die from inattention.

On to the new and interesting food items. First off, we have butter. This is your average, every day butter. Or at least we think so - we know all the other products in the vicinity were butter substitutes, and this is the only one that said butter only on it. You have no idea how thrilling it is to be able to read something and understand what it is instead of having a crapshoot for dinner. Anyway, butter here is not in stick format. It is packaged like margarine or cream cheese usually is in the US. It's in a big foil-covered rectangle about the size of the box. Not totally bizarre, but something I thought I'd share with you.

Next up, we have bread. The bread here is quite fresh and moist, and does not seem to have much in the way of preservatives in it. It's also completely square. The breads are all the same size loaves, though you can get thinner or thicker slices. The bread comes in 4, 5, 6, or 8 slice formats, all about a dollar each. 1/3 the bread for 1/3 more cost than at home, but most things are more expensive. I can hear you now - What is that small thing near the bread? Well, fear not, trusty reader, for all will be revealed in due time.

The small container near the bread is something we picked up because it was on sale. It is chocolate peanut butter. In a prior post, I was lamenting the lack of cost-efficient peanut butter and jelly sandwich supplies. This small container normally costs $1.28, but was on sale for $0.66 today. All of the peanut butter flavors of this brand were that much, but all but the chocolate were already gone. We decided to pick up one of the last four chocolate peanut butters, just to try it. It is much more chocolate-y than I had anticipated. I had it on a piece of bread toasted on the skillet, since we have no toaster. It tasted like chocolate and the butter I used in toasting the bread, but not really like peanut butter. I was saddened. We'll have to go to the foreign foods store to see if we can get a normal size peanut butter, even if it is double what we'd pay at home.

The last item I'll be sharing with you today is a rather every day food item, but in an interesting package. This is a miniature can of Sprite - about 3 oz. I could not let such a wonderful item not be blogged about, so we got one. It is normal Sprite, but much smaller. Here is with Mr. Hamilton. Sure, I could have used a ruler or tape measure, but I think this was better.