A Gaijin Grocery Shopping in Japan

I really do love to cook and I was very much looking forward to going grocery shopping in Japan and finding all those unique ingredients that I would need to make Japanese food with. I imagined the adventure of looking through countless isles and finally finding that one thing I needed.

Reality was a bit different. I had no clue how to look for miso of other countless ingredients. I had no idea which of all of the sauces on the shelf were actually soy sauce. It took me incredibly long to even find salt and pepper!

I found it a bit frustrating at first but this is just part of acclimatizing to a new country where you can't read the language. Even with the language barrier everyone in Japan is extremely helpful. I frequently went to the counter asking in terrible Japanese "is this right for making ____?" and usually I was met with the person taking me around the store to find the proper ingredient since I had grabbed the wrong one.


Since then I found a lot of very helpful sites with recipes explaining what  ingredients are and what they look like in the store and advice for grocery shopping including the kanji and how to say ingredient names:
https://blog.gaijinpot.com/supermarkets-shopping-japan/

I wrongfully assumed that I could get away with making delicious Japanese foods without things like fish paste or algae but I must admit that this is a huge part of the flavor in so many of the soups. So here is my grocery shopping list of unique ingredients I use in some basic Japanese recipes:

Shoyu (Soy sauce)
Miso /Shiromiso (white fermented soybean paste)
Bonito flakes/ Katsuobushi (dried pieces of tuna)
Konbu (seaweed for making dashi)
Negi (a type of leek, you can also use green onion)
Sake (rice wine)
Mirin (sweet version of sake used for cooking)

Kombu, Miso and Bonito Flakes

Sansho (Japanese pepper)
Yuzu or other citrus fruit
Shiso (leaf herb used like basil)
Daikon (really big radish)
Katakuriko (potato starch)

At least eggs, peppers, carrots, onions, mushrooms and cabbage look the same wherever you are! I use these pretty much every day. I love the diversity of mushrooms in Japan.