Reporting from Tokyo, (Kugayama, Suginami Ward) I can give you the following update.
Most shelves at the supermarkets are full again with the exception of milk, bread and bottled water, but all are available. The local Seiyu Supermarket has asked customers to limit their bottle water purchases to two 2-liter PET bottles per customer and has posted an easy to understand chart showing Iodine-131 concentrations in the tap water, with indicators where the danger levels are.
They also ask that people over 40 who are no in any danger at all from the increased iodine-131 to refrain from purchases so it will be available for families with babies. The local ward office has trucks out delivering free bottled water to families who can’t get to the stories.
I surmise that the wheat is being channeled to the disaster areas where it is being baked into bread for emergency rations. Ditto the milk, most of which comes from Hokkaido and and also faces a transportation bottleneck. But once again, both ARE available, just in limited amounts.
There is no shortage of meat, fish or any fresh veggies. In fact, fresh vegetable prices are very cheap because of the iodine-131 scare, even if they are grown far south of Tokyo and not affected by the disaster at all.
Bananas are extremely cheap at 95 yen per bunch of five or six, oranges and grapefruit from the states are also quite reasonable, Hokkaido apples are not available, but the US apples are.
In my fridge right now, I have a 600 gram package of hamburger meat I am going to use for chili this afternoon. It cost 445 yen at 89 yen per 100 grams, which was a good price before the earthquake, so that’s about normal. American beef and pork are both available.
do they have Mexicans picking the apples there?