This essay as told is based on a conversation with Richard Truong. The following has been edited for length and clarity.
I work as a software engineer for a large insurance company in Pennsylvania, and I’ve been a Costco member since 2016. I started taking a lot of photos of the signs and prices at my local warehouse because that’s how I would budget my food expenses in college.
I love traveling the world to understand different cultures and places because you see them on TV and in movies, but it’s never really the same as being there.
It’s fun to walk around Costco warehouses in different countries and see what they have: what’s similar to the US and what’s specific to that region.
Japan is pretty cool with its food. If I had a way to cook while traveling, I might buy the cheaper wagyu beef there, instead of going to a restaurant. But when traveling alone, it is quite difficult to try many foods in large quantities. It wouldn’t be great to have five pounds of beef to eat and five gallons of alcohol to drink all by itself, but I’m pretty sure I could at least eat an entire platter of sushi.
Japan has 32 Costco warehouses. Here is what I saw during my visit to the one in Kyoto.
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