That supermarket was enormous!

The ceiling was really high, the shelves seemed to go on forever, and there were like twice as many aisles as in Japanese supermarkets!

Yeah. I was really surprised when that student told us how the ones outside the city are even bigger.

Pretty sure we all thought it was more than big enough.

The shops on the backstreet we visited yesterday were all fairly small. It may've felt bigger as a result.

When we entered, I was like, “Whoa, this place is huge!” And our jaws hit the floor when we saw how big the carts were!

You and An could've probably ridden them.

Yeah, I was honestly wondering why they were so big...

But it all became clear when we saw how big the stuff on the shelves was. Everything was gigantic.

The bags for the snacks were all like twice the size of what you see in Japan, remember?

You could even get eggs in whole flats instead of just cartons of ten.

And we just happened to watch a family put two flats into their cart.

Other than running a business, why would anyone need that many eggs?

Maybe they're going to boil them?

Scrambled eggs and omelets seem like they'd take a lot of eggs, but even so...

Not only did everything come in giant sizes, the variety was crazy too. Did you see how many different types of cereal they had?

Oh, that reminds me. One of the staff told you something by the cereal, Toya. What did they say?

Ah, that.

They said, “The blue box there is our top-selling cereal brand. If you can't decide, I'd pick that.”

They were talking really fast. You really understood what they were saying?

No, I'd be lying if I said I got everything perfectly.

I managed to catch individual words, but I had to make an educated guess from there given the grammar and sentence structure.

Yeah, all you sometimes need are a few words and phrases to paint most of the picture.

With “top-selling” being the magic word in this case.

Top... Oh, right!

That means it's been selling the most!

Most of the actual words the employee used were on the simpler side.

As long as you calmly listen to what someone has to say, you should be able to get a rough understanding.

Right...

I thought I'd gotten a lot better at speaking and listening, but I definitely still have a lot of room left for improvement...

Me too. My brain still freezes up a little whenever someone comes up to us and starts talking to us in English.

Yeah...

But...

I wanna work on my listening skills, and get to where I can actually speak English with people!

Connecting with folks through music like we did at the session yesterday was fun too, and all.

But I want to actually talk to people about music. Like Mr. Lloyd and Toya's dad.

I wanna ask them about the music they like, how they got into music and so much more!

I've been getting the basic gist of what everyone's been saying, but I'm still having trouble responding. That's been a little frustrating.

Me too! We came all this way to the United States, so I wanna really understand what everyone's saying!

I don't think I've ever been more motivated to learn English!

Then, why don't we use this time to study?

Yeah, it's not like we have anything else to do.

Let me help you, An!

Thanks, Kohane!

Alright, let's do this!