For a while, figuring out on what days and for what items a sale was held was a complete mystery to me. A store could have a sale advertised out front, but once you got in the store it was near-impossible to figure out what was actually on sale. First of all, "sale" is a rather inaccurate word, since often it meant there was a 2 yen reduction in price. Big whoop. Secondly, those items that were on sale were just as often completely useless or mysteriously hard to find nestled amongst other non-sale items.
It came to me the other day that I had adapted to this annoying Japanese custom without even knowing it. I call it "reading the swarm." Japanese people do almost everything, it seems, with some kind of hive-mind mentality. It has been like this for so long that choosing a restaurant to eat at is often prefaced with "oh, there's a huge line there, it must be good." Plenty of people who have found an excellent hole-in-the-wall know that this line of thinking is absolute horse shit, but nevertheless it is a very popular one. It affects many other things as well.
The swarm has its advantages. I can read a fair amount of Japanese, especially when it comes to the grocery store. I am, however, still rather slow at it. Reading the swarm is faster. Instead of scrutinizing every sign in the store, all I have to do is look for where the most people are congregated. Is there a line 5 people deep just to scope out the meat selection today? Ahh today must be meat sale day. Are there 10 stooped grannies hovering around the daikon? Must be a veggie sale. It's infinitely faster, and something I found myself doing without even knowing I was doing it. Fascinating!
The downside is that I'm starting to lose my faith in "going the path less trodden." I'm suspicious of restaurants without a hoarde. I wonder why an item on sale isn't selling like hotcakes. But I'm not there yet. I really hope I never think to myself "Oh, 80,000 people from Tokyo will be visiting that flower garden today. It sounds like a great idea to go there!" Some things about the swarm you have to be born into in order to appreciate.