Beware when...

buying snacks in Hawaii...
There are whole walls of the snacks you are about to see.

Some sort of legs...

the common ingredient in all of these snacks is msg, salt, and sugar...

this is ling hing mui on the left-it is red powder that means traveling plum. It can go on just about anything, I've seen it on gummy bears, fruit (fruits here in HI), shaved ice, rock candy, pop corn, mochi crunch, alcoholic beverages-it's very versatile and has a very strange taste-sort of sweet, sour, and salty-how about pickled peaches to go with the legs...

if you thought mushrooms...wrong...msg with some octopus...

oh fun! Nori mix...nori is sea weed...kids eat sheets of dried sea weed here like they do fruit roll ups on the mainland...

...same with dried shrimp (or shrimps if you are local and reading this)...

can't forget the dried squid to go with the shrimps...

here's some veggies and wasabi to go with the msg...

I'm not even going to try and explain the rest of this...

mochi isn't too bad, it's flavored, powdered, rice balls...

ah! here we go-crispy sea weed!

I figured I'd show you the grocery store shelves while I'm at it-this is just soy sauce-or shuyo as they call it here. Look at that-it's sold by the gallon.

This is just a display for easy access-on the bottom is rice sold like sacks of dog food, then Spam, soy sauce and on top-dried noodles. That about sums up the local staples....

here we have monapuas-steamed dough balls with pork in side, lomi lomi salmon, and the ever popular pork lau lau which are wrapped in banana leaves...

kim chee, sea weed salad, Portuguese sausages, and I forgot what the yellow things are-pickled something weird,

and last but not least...the macadamia nut aisle at Costco-on the other side is more macadamias.