Japanese Costco (コストコ)

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This past weekend I went to Japanese Costco. I know that some readers may label a trip to the world’s premiere wholesale warehouse store as wasteful, but I find no shame in proudly proclaiming that I love Costco. My mother and I go to Costco every week in America, and we have also been to Mexican Costco in Los Cabos.

Costco is very easy to get to from Tokyo, provided you don’t mind riding the train for over an hour. While I was sitting on the train waiting for it to depart from the platform, A Japanese man entered the stalled train car, walked up to me, and asked, ‘Where do you live?’ in Japanese. I responded ‘Asakusa.’ He shook his head and said ‘No…no, I mean what country are you from?’ When I told him America, he mumbled something in Japanese that sounded like either Indiana or Italia. He then bowed and left the train car.

I peered out through the window to see the Japanese man return to the side of a thin, golden haired white woman, who appeared to be over six feet tall. They looked over at me and smiled. I smiled back. Then the train doors shut and I was on my way. I wonder what that was about.

The area Costco is located in is called Tamasakai and it is quite unlike any other place I’ve been to in Tokyo, since it is jam-packed with warehouse style stores of all different varieties.

Costco was largely the same as its American counterpart. I would say 85% of the items sold were identical to the stuff you could buy in America. All the books in the store were sold in their original English print and all the DVDs were of western films as well. There were a few slightly discounted J-pop CDs, but no videogames to speak of.

By far, the most interesting area of the store was the refrigerated / pre-prepared food section, which had sushi and fish of all different varieties. Sample stands were not as frequent as they are in American Costco. This is probably a good thing, because the Japanese people would queue up in line for 10 minutes in order to taste a single bite of warm mini-quiche.

More than anything else, Costco Japan was a low budget amusement park for families. Children seemed to comprise half of the customers in the store, and they poked, shook, and touched every item within their reach.

The most popular selling items included potato chips (both American-made Lays Brand and Japanese varieties), maple flavored cookies, and huge bags of American Candy. Every five seconds you would hear the tortured shriek of a young Japanese child as the giant bag of candy they had been hugging to their chest was placed back in the display box by their parents.

I ate good old fashioned Costco pizza for lunch, with the added bonus of Japan-specific Lemon Fanta soda. As with most things about Japanese Costco, it looked and tasted the same as back home.

B.E.W.