“Okay…okay…okay…okay…okay…okay…. okay…. okay…. okay…. okay…. okay…. okay….”
It’s Sunday afternoon and that means that I am about to head on down to the OK to be engulfed in grocery store craziness one might expect to only be a part of on the eve before Christmas on in the moments prior to predicted natural disasters…like Gamera attacks, for example. Walking into this place I always give myself about a 50/50 chance of walking out with all limbs and functions still in tact. The OK is a dangerous place to purchase produce. From the outside this grocery store looks rather quaint. There it sits at the end of a long parking lot packed with small, Japanese automobiles. Sometimes there is an old fashioned milk-truck outside, painted maroon and inside a man sells crapes or French rolls, the sweet smell dancing around the lot to entice you. There is a small octopus dumpling stand next to the outside displays. At the store entrance people offer you samples of fruit, huge stacks of snack food and coffee displays are set up, baskets of vegetables are continuously stocked and pre-stacked shopping baskets await you and your shopping experience. The doors open, you take a step and then, oh my friends, then comes the chaos!
I discovered the OK just before the summer about a half hour walk from the apartment. With so many grocery stores closer one might wonder what there is to draw me so far away. Well, it all comes down to price. The OK is like the Bulk Barn of Japan. Here you can get all sorts of goodies for the cheapest costs and you can get it in abundance. Whereas three thin strips of chicken purchased at another store might cost you three-hundred yen and feed you for one night a pack of about ten chicken breasts at the OK costs five hundred yen and will feed you for a good week and a half. Why stop there? A small package of frozen vegetables elsewhere will cost a buck. Not a bad price at all and certainly nothing to complain about. At the OK, however, you can get triple the amount for cheaper. This is the only place in Japan I’ve found fruit at a reasonable cost. Oranges, single oranges, don’t cost two bucks here. You can get a bagfull for three. Milk, condiments, snacks, baked goods, it’s all here and it’s at bargain basement prices. Cheap…that appeals to me better sense of finance. Though not money, there is a cost you pay for shopping at the OK.
The moment you step in through those doors you are almost shoved back outside by the influx of plastic, green carts pushing for the exit and freedom. You dodge these and get your first clear view of the store…the clearest view one can get over what looks like a thousands heads but can’t possible be a thousands heads because this place can’t be much bigger then your apartment. Five rows slice into the middle of the store, each row divided by a freezer where you can dig out items if you can break through the other hands reaching downward and you can only do that if you can make it though the carts block up the rows. The OK was not created with the best of design blueprints. I imagine them to look pretty much like those used by the Coyote on his never ending quest to catch the Roadrunner. There is no real logic to the flow of shopping traffic. You just have to go in charging and weave, and bob like a football quarterback and hope you come out clean with something edible on the other side. You will see things that you might want behind a wall of carts…ignore them. It’s not worth it. You will see cart collisions. Ride on passed. It could be you! You will have to avoid tripping on fallen items, being cornered against a bin of potatoes, dangerously edging into a stack of glass jars. You can’t just go into the OK without a game plan. It’s war in there and the unprepared get second rate turnips and to the victor go the fresh strawberries. And through it all, as the battle rages below, from above comes the OK theme song again and again and again until you want to puncture your brain through your ears with bananas and cucumbers and anything you can just stuff into there to quell the damned song! “Okay…okay…okay…okay…okay…okay…. okay…. okay…. okay…. okay…. okay…. okay….Okay…okay…okay…okay…okay…okay…. okay…. okay…. okay…. okay…. okay…. okay….Okay…okay…okay…okay…okay…okay…. okay…. okay…. okay…. okay…. okay…. okay….” NO! NO it’s not okay!!! END! ENNNNNNDDD!!! The song is song by three women and though it includes more Japanese all you hear clouting your mind is that OKKKKKAAAYYYYY. The tune wouldn’t be so bad if it wasn’t so catchy and soon you find yourself weeks later humming it on a train ride from the city at 11 in the evening. And to cap it all off, the icing, comes the announcer. He is not there live in the store to boom over the loudspeakers. Oh no. Surely the crowd would tear him to pieces and stuff him into shipping crates if he were. I know I would. His screaming drill on sheet-metal voice, nails on a chalkboard, Joan Rivers talking, steamrollering boxes of weasels voice is pre-recorded from a bunker deep in the mountains of Hokaido and tapes a flown in secret by armed men and delivered to the protected home of the OK tape recorder to play out onto the shoppers. This tactic of ultimate annoyance must be used to ensure a careful flow of shoppers as one can only take about ten minutes of this before heading towards the exit regardless of what they carry. “Damn, I didn’t want salted horse liver but fuck it…I’m out!!!! FREEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEDOOOMMMMM!!!!”
And this…this is the OK, a place only recently released convicts, out of work talent agents and men like I trying to save a buck will shop. I am suited up and ready. Wish me luck. I’m goin’ in!!!!
