Hot like wasabi when I bust rhymes

I found wasabi. Yeah...that doesn't sound like a big deal to me, either. Nevertheless, it marks a new era in my shopping skills. I didn't buy what was clearly labelled as 'wasabi powder', mostly because I had no idea how to reconstitute it. This left me with staring at the pictures on the boxes and trying to find the tube that 'felt' most like wasabi to me, given the pictures. I ended up picking the one with the green lump next to what appeared to be a piece of tuna sashimi. Luckily (for me and my sashimi), I got it right. It's fresher than what is usually on my plate when I get sushi. I'm guessing they use some variation on the powder. It doesn't seem as spicy which is both a blessing and a bit of a disappointment.

Why is that a new era in shopping? Well, it marked the end of my ability to buy things based on packaging. At this point, I've gotten most of the easy stuff - salt, sugar, bread, etc. With cooking more came buying more things to stock my kitchen - oils, vinegar, worcestershire sauce.

I think worcestershire sauce was the worst one so far. Turns out, nothing you can put on a bottle other than the words "Lea and Perrin" say w. sauce to me. I ended up giving up and coming home where Google helped me with a picture of a bottle labelled in Kana that I was able to duplicate in the store later. That's become my new trick and proved VERY useful. It's why we have mirin, despite my earlier failures. It's also why we have sesame oil after many recipes just getting more of the soy/canola oil I had and not quite tasting right.

Speaking of not quite tasting right, worcestershire sauce shouldn't be sweet. I'll skip my tirade about how I don't like sweet sauces unless it's ketchup and just say...this stuff is not the above mentioned "Lea and Perrin". It'll do for a while, but I don't think I'll use it as liberally as I do the stuff back home.