We thank you for your co-operation

There are two supermarkets in my town. One, the local (Baby Co-op), is the size of mid-level Four Square and a minute’s walk from my apartment. The other (Mamma Co-op) is exactly the same but four times the size and, with my inability to acquire a Japanese driver’s license, a frustrating hour’s walk away. Sometimes, on those long Polanski-esque weekends of solitude, I arm myself with my walking stick and a packet of camels and brave the three kilometre trek there; a distance which seems much longer on the way back, with a bag of groceries dangling from each arm.

Mama Co-op is somewhat overwhelming. Supermarket staff stands in every corner handing out free samples on toothpicks and yelling in high pitched Japanese. Mothers cram their trolleys full of frozen chickens. There is an entire refrigerated section devoted purely to tofu. There is a whole aisle just for soy sauce. I am not joking.

Throughout all this, the store’s theme tune plays at a dangerously high volume. Mama Co-Op plays the same 30 second jingle over and over again through every speaker in the store. It cannot be brought to justice through words, but if you see me in person and buy me a stiff drink, I might sing it for you. The lyrics go something like this:

“Ju bye, ju bye...who wants a ju bye?”

Then, after an elaborate synthesiser chord, it resumes:

“Nana bye, nana bye...who wants a Nana bye?”

The lyrics in question are sung in a baby voice, either by a small child or a playschool-themed female performance artist. This is followed by a jolly man with a belly laugh who thunders out "hey, juuuuu bye" and what I assume is the Japanese for “Our shop is the best! We have many things you can buy! Look at all our soy sauce!” It ends with a double drum kick and, all things considered, makes for a pretty good little ditty. The trouble is that two seconds after the concluding drum kick, the whole thing starts all over again, baby voice and all.

After walking an hour to get to the magical land of red onions and other things not available at Baby Co-op, I am determined to take my sweet time about it. I like a casual stroll through the produce section, a wander down soy sauce lane and a chance to sift through the store’s array of elaborate bento boxes. And so, after a thirty six minute shopping excursion, my ears have delivered me the ‘ju bye’ jingle SEVENTY TWO times. By this time, my fingers have begun gripping the edge of the trolley and the left side of my face has developed a nervous twitch. I try to smile at the cashier but it comes out as more of a leer and I think about how this nice girl’s ‘ju bye’ intake must be in the thousands and I die a little inside. It is at this point that I remember why I bought the camels.

Baby Co-op provides a much more soothing auditory experience. The preference here is for mainstream pop hits played out on analog synth. Sometimes these are matter of fact clichés that you’d hear in any elevator worth its salt: ‘Super Trooper,’ ‘Penny Lane’ and ‘Strangers in the Night’ set the bar and you’d think things would stay there. Not so.

Amid these tired classics, Baby co-op offers a selection of hip tracks that should never be played through the guise of easy listening. The first time I heard ‘Bullet with Butterfly wings’ muzak-style, I thought that I’d hit the jackpot. But over the next ten months, I was also privileged to hear the likes of ‘Enter Sandman’, ‘You Outta Know’, ‘The Real Slim Shady’ ‘Love will tear us apart’, ‘Don’t cha’ and ‘Killing in the name of’ all beautifully presented through the medium of the moog. My personal favourite is still the bizarre inclusion of a funked up version of the theme from Jaws. As I remember, I was standing by the fish section when it played and I snickered and tossed a tray of salmon fillets into my basket.

For the 8.45pm to 9.00pm every night, Baby Co-op switches to ‘closing music.’ Put simply, this consists of fifteen minutes of ‘Auld Lang Syne.’ It both soothes me and confuses me as I gather my basket of snacks for the evening ahead: What the hell do they do at New Years? Do the staff play it during Baby Co-op's closing time on New Year’s Eve and then, at midnight, drunkenly embrace and sing along to the ‘ju bye’ jingle? Perhaps they get a couple of self-assured party goers to act out the baby voice part and the jolly man part. Perhaps there is a ‘ju bye’ drinking game. I imagine it would involve a bottle of tequila and a loss of will to live.

The twitch is back. Camel me up, baby.