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[Zzonkmiles]

I personally make a trip to Costco about once every 3 or 4 months and spend about 20-25,000 yen each trip. I usually just stock up on items that are too easy to waste money on at a conbini or a local supermarket, such as toilet paper, soap, laundry detergent, and bottled water. I also use the Amagasaki Costco and have had no problems having my items delivered. You can specify the time of day you want your stuff delivered and they've been pretty reliable with it in my experience.

If you are a member, Costco will periodically mail you a book of coupons (called a Costco Membership Passport). They recently sent me one that let me take 900 yen off of a flash memory stick. So I bought a new 512MB memory stick for about 3500 or 4000 yen. Not bad.

They also stock Cambell's chunky soup and French's mustard (I never knew mustard was so hard to find in this country). The soup is a good money saver because you can take that to work with you and not have to buy the daily bento. Unless you have a car, I personally don't recommend buying the fruits, breads, and meats because they might spoil before they are delivered.

However, if you have no car and don't want to pay the delivery fee, you should bring your own bags to the store so you can haul your items home yourself. Large plastic bags can easily be folded and stuffed into your purse. The bus stop (bus 24) is located near the Costco, so it's quite convenient. There's also a food court in the Costco and a shopping mall with a food court next to it.

Remember that you have to show your card to get in the store and that a staffer will check your receipt and inspect your bags before you leave.

[osakajojo]

big block of British Cheddar cheese
pack of Polish sausages
case of Australian beer
box of 8 2Liter Cokes
4 pack of Thai noodles
TexMex corn tortilla taco shells, taco seasoning
they have food from all over the world there and nicely priced as far as pricing in Japan is concerned.

I also recommend the cafateria- free refills on the cokes, drink all you want! Large slices of pizza, huge hot dogs- super cheap. Go with a friend, buy in bulk and split it all in half.

[Sage]

Last time I went to Costco I discovered you can buy bags at the cash register! For like, uhh.. 100 or 200 yen you can buy a nice large plastic reinforced totebag. They are big and strong and a great value. We no longer have to lug our backpacks down to the store as the totes are bigger and better.

I highlty recommend everyone pick up a few of them. They will make your shopping trips to Costco about 1,000,000 times easier!

[JimDunlop2]

Another method, though it may not be to everyone's liking (or budget) is, as I mentioned before, just renting a car and driving to Costco.

Before my wife and I acquired a vehicle, we would arrange a Saturday or Sunday day-trip (sometimes an overnight weekend trip) to Tokyo, and stop at Costco in Machida on the way home... Car rental is not so unreasonable in Japan -- about 5,000-6000 yen from what I remember... So if you make it into a day trip and see some other sights or do some things, it's quite a pleasant excursion for (IMO) a reasonable price by Japanese standards for day's worth of fun...

Also, to cut down on costs, we alyways announced a "day trip to Tokyo and Costco run" to all our friends. Usually we'd have one or two people tag along. When we split the cost of gas and the car rental among a few people, it ended up being a fair shake less than a round-trip train ticket to Tokyo on a commuter train.