Vacation planning can be tricky.

With one kid heading to high school and another in elementary, the vacation itinerary has to reflect the interests of kids at different life stages, plus fulfill our adult expectations.

The kids want to hit the big tourist attractions, while I long to escape the crowds, if just for a moment, and picture what our lives might look like if we moved there.

I tend to subscribe to the philosophy of everyone gets to pick one or two things they most want to do. If we can check those things off the list, anything else we experience is a bonus — a combo of structure and spontaneity.

As we plotted our Osaka, Japan, itinerary, my older kid picked the thrill rides at Universal Studios; the younger chose the brick-filled bins of the Legoland Discovery Center. My annual pick when we head abroad: the supermarket.

While checking out the local market may not top the list of many vacationers, I always do a quick Google Maps search for the nearest grocery store. Besides stocking up on bottles of water and snacks, the thing I’m really shopping for is a sense of place.

A trip to the supermarket gives me a hint of the culture of a city in the most accessible way — through the way they eat.

In Kyoto, we marveled at the meticulously packaged strawberries, nestled in soft tissue in tiny individual cups, $8 for 10 berries, a demonstration of the attention to detail we saw throughout our trip.

In Australia, we learned kids can eat fruit for free in stores. What a literally foreign concept.

I held up the long check-out line in the Katoomba Woolworths grocery store with my confusion when I tried to purchase a banana for my son and the store clerk pleasantly told me to “just take the fruit.” When I asked why I didn’t have to pay, she patiently explained to me that the Aussies try to support healthful habits for their children.

And it wasn’t just that store. In a store in Sydney, my boys scored another banana and an orange. At a third store, they eagerly chose from baskets overflowing with produce bearing signs inviting kids to help themselves.

It was an understanding of societal values we wouldn’t have gotten by sticking to tourist sites.

Besides, even the least adventurous little eater can be coaxed to try something new in the snack aisle: honey soy chicken potato chips in Sydney and strawberry daifuku mochi-flavored Hi-Chew in Tokyo.

And before we leave, we always do a quick cost-of-living price check on a can of Spam, just for fun.

When my kids head back to school, no doubt they’ll be asked to write an essay on what they did on their summer vacation. I hope it goes something like this: I rode a broomstick in The Wizarding World of Harry Potter, cheered at a Japanese baseball game, fed a deer in Nara Park and glimpsed life in another country at the grocery store.

“She Speaks” is a column by women writers of the Honolulu Star-Advertiser. Reach Donica Kaneshiro at dkaneshiro@staradvertiser.com.