grocery shopping in japan

Sorry for the lack of updates!! (and I don't even have pictures for this one)

I wanted to share that I saw the busiest supermarket I have ever seen today. I think (I'm not exactly sure since I don't understand Japanese that well) that there was some kind of sale at the supermarket today. I believe that if you have a certain type of credit card you could get 5% off your purchase. And there were also other sales going on at the same time. So the place was PACKED. The lines went from the registers all the way to the back of the store, and then people were squeezing in between the lines to do their shopping. They were also giving out balloons to the kids (nice mylar ones), handing out samples of food and other products and there was some kind of blue animal/alien character you could take pictures with.

There were also specials where you stuff a small plastic bag full of certain products for a flat price. I saw people stuffing yogurt drinks in one part of the store and nori in another part. I wasn't sure if I could get the flat rate without the certain credit card but I thought I'd try anyway (because it looked like fun...haha). I managed to stuff about 35 yogurt drinks (they look like yakult) into the small plastic bag... but I think some people probably got over 40 in it. One lady stuffed 3 bags to take home, so I guess it was a good price. I was able to get the flat rate without the credit card and it was 198yen for the bag.