Friday, November 20, 2009

American Food Prices

I was hoping to bring back an American newspaper with grocery store ads, but the recycling truck beat me to it. So I swiped a Seattle Times from a first-class seatback on the airplane and made due.

The kids were pretty fascinated with their first American newspaper. The most glaring difference is that the pages turn left, not right. The dimensions are also noticeably skinnier and there is much more white space. Also, it's in English.

I did find this Fred Meyer food ad within the pages:


The prices are unusually low, but I still converted them for comparison and blew the kids away. I'm sure they won't remember the numbers, only that food in America is far cheaper than Japan, which was the point I was after.

4 comments:

Mom said...

So how much would you pay for an avocado on Zamami Island?

Emily Boland said...

If you ever want me to take pictures of the grocery store ads in the newspaper here and send them to you, let me know.

Dave said...

Avocados run pretty consistently at $1 apiece here.

Emily, that's a really good idea! I might ask you to do something like that later, but maybe from a grocery store? Would be fun to include Erin in it, too.
Something I did while home was take a bunch of pictures from inside a grocery store to show the kids the differences between countries. I inadvertently included many prices in those pictures which helped comparison (American mango (from Brazil): 60 cents, Japanese mango (from Okinawa): $20-50 apiece). It would be an interesting theme to both cover food prices, but also to teach some geography. I'll let you know, Embo, thanks.

japalinka said...

3 for 1$ avocados!? never in wisconsin. :( they're about 1$ or more here. 1.50$ most recently. though of course mangos are still quite cheaper than in japan but are nowhere near as perfect looking. :)