Coffee beans, snow fungus, and Sponge Bob

First, for good measure, let's throw this up here from a prior post:

Now, as a disclaimer, I fully admit to being a gringo (i.e. – Foreign White Person) and I also do not have any experience in critiquing food other than what my tongue and stomach end up thinking about something. I am not trying to be culturally insensitive.

Okay, that said, whoever thinks that going to a Panasian market is like going to a grocery store, it. is. not. It is like going to a travel agent who also happens to be a clothing designer who also can read your fortune and who is going to tell you that buying a variety of pickled vegetable products is in your immediate future. At least that's how it was for us this Sunday when we went.

We entered said Panasian market with high hopes to buy one particular item.

No, not that item.

We wanted to purchase "shredded vegetable" in a can. As far as I've been able to figure out in the 5 years and 5 months I've been with S, shredded vegetable in a can is a mustard plant, pickled in pepper spices, and cut into little slivers. The result is a tasty, extremely salty treat that is best eaten with rice:

Soy sauce:

Does the regular mushroom soy sauce feel inferior to the "superior" sauce? Perhaps so.

and tofu (of which I bought three cases, but of which did not take any pictures, because there was just so much else going on).

Instead, we bought flour cakes, moon cakes, shredded radish, rice (we had two unopened bags at home already), mochi, seasoned bamboo shoots, and ramen.

We were delighted that mi gente were somehow represented among the other cultures:

 And we delighted in the presence, if not creepy the presence, of our favorite cartoon characters:

Most importantly, undoubtedly, is that we found an ear picker. This is the tool S uses for stratching the insides of his ear. This is the tool he lost over a year ago. This is the tool he, since that point, has substituted with all of my bobby pins. For $0.99, though, problem solved.

There's no question that will be back to this Mecca of Panasia. and soon.