Are We Not Men?

Just got back from a family road trip up to Yamaguchi Prefecture. I'll have some words and pictures about that later this week, but now that my wife and daughter are sleeping, and I'm showered and drinking beer, I'd like to relate a rather disturbing and disgusting spectacle I witnessed earlier today.

On our way back to Miyazaki we decided to swing by the Costco in Fukuoka to pick up some stuff (now that we're members, and all). It's the "Silver Week" holidays, so I wasn't surprised that Costco (like anyplace else in Japan on a holiday) was wall-to-wall crowded.

Anyway, we wend our way through the aisles picking up items that my wife deems necessary (and value-priced!) to our household. (A penchant for 5-gallon jugs of whiskey and 48-packs of beer has resulted, over the years, in the loss of my "can-deem-something-necessary" powers in our household's political hierarchy. There was also the Amazon CD and book fiasco...) We've got some coffee in our cart, some clothes for our daughter, a case of soup (a subtle victory of mine!), and some other stuff. Not much really.

We wait until we have everything else until we go to the fresh food section of the store (bakery, meat, produce, etc.--stuff we might have to put in a cooler before driving home). This is only my second time at this store, but I think this particular section is generally very crowded, so many people park their carts on the fringes and go in "hands free." My wife wanted to buy some rolls, but the shelf was empty. She seemed sure that they would be putting some more out soon, so she told us (our daughter and me) to go wait by the cart for a few minutes until she was finished. When we left her she was the only person in line waiting for rolls...

After about 15 minutes our daughter started getting a bit antsy, so I decided to go see what was keeping my wife. As I approached the spot where I'd left her a few minutes earlier, I could see a crowd had formed. I could also see that staff behind the bakery counter were basically just throwing bags of rolls over the counter and on to the sloped shelf one by one as they were being prepared, so that they basically slid down into the hands of whomever was lucky enough to be standing in that particular spot. To say there was a "scramble" for these rolls would be a slight understatement. My wife, who's not a very tall woman, and who was still right at the front of the counter where I had left her, was not having much luck. In fact, much taller men were reaching over her and plucking bags of rolls before she could reach them...

Freeze that scene for a moment. I've seen similar scenes with my wife before. These scenes are, simultaneously, a source of pride and frustration for me. I've never seen her jostle for position, when any rule of fairness would say that she has it. I've never seen her scramble or clutch at or fight for anything that she had every right to have in her hands. I honestly don't know if she has some kind of inner zen, or if she's simply "too good" to lower herself to that level; perhaps if it's some combination. I do know that after about a minute--in fact, it's probably exactly one minute-- of that kind of crap, I'm gonna get nasty...

If it had just been women fighting it out for these fucking rolls I probably would have let things run their course. (Hey, I've read The Bacchae!) If that sounds a bit (or very) sexist, well, excuse my sorry ass. I assume that the only reason any woman would find herself fighting tooth and nail over food is to feed her kids. The beer and potato chips are elsewhere... And, as I've already mentioned, some sorry-assed pricks calling themselves men had already interjected themselves into the situation.

I'm still holding back a bit until one bag of rolls comes cleanly into my wife's hands. I say "cleanly" in the sense that she's started to turn around and walk away with her prize. Just then, some asshole, some prick, some fucking piece of shit who no doubt considers himself a hero of modern manhood, some worthless scumbag, grabbed the bag from my wife's hands. She had a good grip on it, so when he grabbed it away the bag actually ripped a bit. And then, and then, he held the bag of rolls up like a prize and actually cried out in triumph.

At that moment I wished for nothing more than a machete so that I could remove that asshole's head and hold it up like a trophy with a shout of triumph. Fortunately (or not, who really knows?), I've been hanging out with my wife too long for anything like that to happen. Instead, I (firmly but gently--ahem) made my way through the crowd, put my hand on my wife's shoulder, and told her not to worry about it, let's get out of here.

The next bag of rolls fell into her hand. No one else touched it.

Trip to Costco

With the kid away visiting relatives, my wife thought it would be a good opportunity to drive up to the big city (Fukuoka) and do some shopping. She wanted to go to this place that she'd heard about--from friends, TV, the web, I don't know; she wanted to go to Costco. Since I'd never been to a Costco myself, I was interested and agreed to go.

It might seem strange to hear someone from North America say that he's never been to a Costco. Fact is, until my last trip back to Canada a couple of years ago, I'd never even been to a Walmart before. There is, I think, a pretty simple explanation for this. By the time these entities had started becoming common all over North America, I was a) well past the age where I'd be living at home with my folks, b) a poor, struggling student, and (most significantly) c) without a car; anything's possible, I suppose, but taking the bus to Costco seems a bit odd somehow...

And speaking of cars, it was only after living in Japan for a few years that I finally got a driver's license and bought a car. I did these things in Japan the same way any Japanese person would. I even went, like most Japanese, to a driving school here before obtaining my license. Having little or no previous experience to refer to, there was (for me) nothing particularly odd about experiencing these things in a Japanese context.

Anyway, I was talking about Costco...

Home of the 5lb. bag of potato chips.
You can't really tell from the picture above, but there was not nearly enough parking here to accommodate all the shoppers. This is a problem all over Japan. In fact, I'd guess that it's a problem for drivers anywhere outside the US/Canada/Australia, for reasons too obvious to waste space here discussing it or complaining about it.

Of course, before we could go in and start buying things as God Himself designed us to do, we had to become Costco "members." This meant shelling out 4,200 yen before we even set foot in the door. As my wife is filling out the papers, I'm thinking about the gas we used in the 300 kilometer ride from Miyazaki to Fukuoka, and doubling it for the trip back... Thinking about all the stuff that was waiting for me inside, however, kept pushing such practical trivialities from my mind.

I thought it was a nice touch when, having been granted membership and making our way into the place, we were presented with our own jumbo-sized shopping cart. (I looked, but I couldn't find our names emblazoned anywhere on the cart--probably done with micro chips or something these days...)

I've read that the great churches were designed to elicit a big religious WTF! when unsuspecting believers entered them. So too, the Costco's and Walmarts of today fill modern worshipers with a sense of awe and power--economic power, for surely you wouldn't be there if you didn't have any money!

This place didn't disappoint...

As far as the eye can see... Stuff!
Like the guy in Jaws, when he first sees the massive shark and tells his shipmates that they need a bigger boat, I turned to my wife and asked if she thought our shopping cart was big enough. My wife gave me one of those looks that wives have been giving husbands while shopping since time immemorial. I went outside and had a cigarette.

When I went back in my wife was nowhere to be seen, no doubt consumed by a frenzy of consuming. The place had swallowed her up. She was somewhere deep in the bowels of Costco. Well, you get the picture. I couldn't see her anywhere. I decided to wander around and have a look at what was there--all of it, mine for the buying! Hey, that's a good deal on mini DVD's for the video cam. I scoop up a 5 Pack. 3,500 yen for a pair of Levi's!? In my size? I sling them over my shoulder. Whaaat? A two-pack of French's mustard? You can't get that stuff in Miyazaki. I pick it up. OMFG!! A 12 pack of Campbell's chicken noodle soup? For 900 yen!? After about 30 minutes or so I'm beginning to look like some kind of hermit crab, festooned with all manner of consumer goods, stumbling around looking for my wife, who's got the goddamned shopping cart.

When I finally find my wife she gives me an odd kind of look. I'm not sure if it was a look of pity, or a look of contempt. (Nietzsche, you know, thought they were the same thing...) And what does she have in the shopping cart? Some clothes for our daughter, some cleaning supplies, and a small coffee machine (the old one is broken). I slowly begin to walk backwards...

And so ends my tale of our trip to Costco. I got to keep the soup.

Yeah, but is it art?