The closest grocery is just a block away from my apartment here in Nagano. Although it’s part of the large Seiyu chain, this particular store is kind of crummy. It’s small and the selection isn’t great. The atmosphere is just this side of seedy. I go there often because it’s convenient, but I’m never entirely happy about the experience.
Tops on my list of complaints is the aural cacophony one is assaulted with while shopping. There are at least three different soundtracks playing at once, on top of the constant refrains of “Irasshai mase!” (roughly translated: “welcome to our establishment”) any time you pass an employee. One soundtrack in particular—the loudest of them all—drives me crazy, and I’m including it here so you can decide for yourself whether I’m justifiably irritated or just a crank:
Seiyu Jingle (350k MP3)
Two days a week at Seiyu—on Tuesdays and Thursdays—the store has ¥100 days, where select merchandise is marked down to the low, low price of ¥100. On these days, the store turns into a sort of video game, where the object is to negotiate one’s way through swarms of tiny grandmothers erratically and veeeerrrrrry slowly pushing their carts down the isles. On these days, the Seiyu Jingle turns into a an apt accompaniment to a cousin of that classic vid game, Frogger.