Lost in the Basement

In Japan, in the basement of every department store is the FOOD section. There are tons of kinds of food. Maybe about 1/3 of it is gift foods. Food you'd take has a present when you visit somebody or when you are giving gifts to acquaintances on gift giving holidays. Another 1/3 is prepared foods meant to take home and eat. Kind of like buying potato salad from a deli. You can buy all kinds of things from beef curry to sushi to fried chicken. The last 1/3 is supply foods like meats and breads, cheeses and pickles and things like that.

It seems like the basement is always to busiest floor of any department store.

These are pictures from one department store in Kawasaki. I only took pictures of about 1/3 of the counters. Each counter is run like it's own store. If fact I expect they are individually owned except for a few that the department store owns. Most likely the gift foods are owned by the department store.