If you’re from anywhere but Japan, you will be used to the cashier transferring your items from your shopping basket to the checkout bag. However, in Japan, the shoppers do their own transferring of goods. They pay for their goods and then take their baskets to a designated area and transfer their groceries from the baskets to plastic bags which they get to take home.
About a decade bag, all the supermarkets, and stores shifted to “eco bags” also known as “my bags” as a part of a movement to make the environment greener. The supermarkets stopped supplying plastic bags to the shoppers and they were required to bring their own bags to carry their groceries home. They also had the option to pay extra if they wanted a bag from the supermarket.
This eliminated the need for procuring plastic bags after payment and a number of shoppers taking advantage of this fact proceeded directly to the designated areas known as “kagonuke”. They transferred their unpaid items to their own bags and went on their merry way.
To stop that from happening, different colored shopping baskets were introduced. These different colored shopping baskets allowed the patrol to distinguish between paid and unpaid items and stopped any potential shoplifters.
So the next time you are shopping in Japan, the store managers would know from a distance if you have paid for your items or not.