My readers will have seen my previous posts on trips to Uwajimaya, our local Asian grocery store.  On previous trips, I just took photos of the vegetables, which the store arranges meticulously so they are very photogenic.  Just today, my husband needed to restock his Udon noodles, so I went along to get a change of scenery, and photograph more of what this delightful store sells.  All of the shelves and bins throughout the store hold exotic and unusual items from all over the Asian world (and our local area and the US too).  The link above is live, so you can visit their Web site.

As is our normal routine, we started at the produce section, where the fruits and veggies are arranged to please the eye.  Sometimes, you hate to actually buy something and have to disturb their arrangements!

Can you believe so many different kinds of cabbages?  The potato-looking ones are Taiwan Sweet Potatoes. After Produce, I went around the store, checking out the rest of the shelves.  At Uwajimaya, they carry multiple brands of most items.  How about coconut milk?

At least three different varieties, from three different parts of Asia.  Maybe you are looking for fish.

These are only two types of canned fish.  They had many different brands of tuna.

These look like noodles, don’t they?  But they are varieties of dried seafood, like squid and octopus.

This package really caught my eye.  Dried crabs, anyone?  Check out the eyes on the crab on the package!  Guaranteed to impress the kiddies.

I am always fascinated by all the different canned fruits and vegetables that line the shelves.  It helps to know Japanese and Chinese so you can read the labels, and some of the products are unknown to our Western tastes.  Rambutan?

There are also shelves filled with sauces and seasonings, dry, canned, and in jars.  There was a whole shelf of various kinds of honey!

Sauces.

And seasoning packets.  Those Indonesian ones looked pretty good, and I might try one someday.

How about that profusion of various spices?  Anything you might think of, is there.

And don’t forget the salad dressings!

And it wouldn’t be an Asian grocery store without a profusion of different kinds of rice. And this is just a portion of the shelves with every conceivable kind of rice.  At the front of the store, they stack the 25 and 50-pound bags.

For the dry ingredients, they stock many different kinds of flour and starch, including rice and sweet potato.

Of course, you can’t forget the snacks.

One of my favorite parts of the store is the container aisle.  My husband is a container freak, and he often comes home from shopping with a new and different item for storing all the leftovers we seem to generate.

Another favorite is their eating and drinking utensil department.  They stock a wide variety of rice bowls, tea cups and mugs, and chopsticks (disposable and reusable).  And everything is painted in pleasing patterns.

Last but not least, Uwajimaya has an interesting assortment of bamboo cutting boards, including some shaped like both the city of Seattle, and the state of Washington!

When you get done shopping at Uwajimaya, you usually end up buying a lot of impulse items.  How could anyone resist all those bright colors and interesting new foods?  If you are ever in the Seattle, a trip to Uwajimaya is a must-see experience.  I’m really glad I could get the opportunity for a change of scenery from the produce section!

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