#jarkarta

First, I don’t live within walking distance of any such markets.  Taking the car to score a deal on eggs hardly seems worth it.  

Second, I’m sure that being foreign would guarantee a higher price to begin with, and my Indonesian is no where near good enough to bargain.  Yet. #goals.

So for now I’m shopping in places that look pretty similar to grocery stores in Japan and the US.  They can though be broken down into smaller subcategories.   Some of the places cater to foreign crowds specifically.  Papaya, for instance, is a Japanese grocery store of sorts.  It seems to have reasonable quality, and a good variety of ingredients used in Japanese dishes, but it is much too expensive for me to want to shop there.  

Stores like Ranch Market cater to a more Western crowd.  I’ve seen Poptarts, Reese’s Puffs Cereal (which I would have bought had it not been $8), and an assortment of Betty Crocker cake mixes.  In fact, the volume of imported goods available in Jakarta is much more than I’ve ever seen in Japan.   I assume that the slight lack of imported goods in Japan could be contributed to two things: one - Japan already has a booming local economy that is saturated with domestic brand names, and two - Japanese people like to buy Japanese products.  

So back to Jakarta.  There are supermarkets that clearly cater to foreign buyers, but of course there are also ones that definitely cater to a more local crowd.  I find the selection there a little underwhelming, but the prices are much better.   Today’s shopping trip was mostly for vegetables and staples, like spices and bottled water.  I visited a more ‘local’ grocer and bought the following.