Groceries

"Go Grocery Shopping" is an initiative led by OIST Resource Centre to provide community members with information on products sold at supermarkets in Okinawa including, but not limited to: food products, daily necessities, home appliances, etc..

Grocery shopping in Okinawa can sometimes be an adventure as most of the products sold at supermarkets normally don't have descriptions in English or sometimes even in Japanese.

OIST Resource Centre will generate articles about how to distinguish laundry softeners from detergents, salt from sugar, ground beef from ground pork, etc. We will also share trivial stories about these products or products sold in Japan.

You can also share with the community your experiences in grocery shopping, your comments/requests for the upcoming articles, etc.

There are unique food products available at supermarkets in Okinawa. We will also be posting some information on what these products are made from, how to use them in cooking, recommended recipes, etc..

Hope you can also share your comments, requests, recipes, etc. to enrich your life in Okinawa even more!

• Is it whole milk, or something else?
• Soy sauces - How are they different?
• How to distinguish different types of flour
• A new Indian/Halal food shop in Okinawa city
• Order groceries online and have them delivered to your door!(1)
• Miso paste - What are they, and how are they different?
• Gluten-free - COMING SOON!

Tips/comments shared by the OIST community members

Name: Anonymous
I would really like to know of vegetarian friendly foods that do not sneakily include meat extracts, alongside places were you can buy meat subitute foods such as soya mince. Thank you :)

Name: Anonymous
Hello there,
just wanted to say it's fantastic that you're doing this!! Despite nearly a year here I'm still often lost and positively helpless without google translate.
Two categories I'd really like to know more about would be soysauce and miso paste. There seems to be a million of each and I have very little idea what the differences are. And something that would help me as an expat a lot (but I have no idea how to implement this) would be some way of sharing where certain "foreign" food items can be found. The Shopping guide on the resource homepage does list a few shops that carry foreign food but looking for specific things tends to be trial and error and a lot of word of mouth from other expats. Again, I admit I have no idea how this could be implemented easily but in case someone has a good idea that would have made my life here so much easier, especially in the beginning.
I'm already looking forward to the other entries in the shopping guide :)
Best to all of you!

Name: Mirijam Neve
Thank you for this information!!!

Name: Andrew Scott
A guide to different kinds/brands of miso would be useful

Name: Anonymous
Could you please cover the topic of gluten-free food?
As a non-japanese speaker, I am concerned about going shopping and being able to find something fine for me. Thanks for your help.