Interesting phenomenon on grocery store shelves in the past year: a bunch of the major Asian food brands have traditionally imported products into the US to make English packaging versions, then reimported those into Canada. We're starting to see many of those show up in Canada directly imported from Asia, with the original-language packaging and a sticker.
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@misty
I was at T and T this morning and there did seem to be a lot of labels i couldn't read. Maybe this was part of what you were seeing, but maybe it was because it was T and T and their customers don't fool around.
Our tendency has always been to buy Asian products because made in the USA usually means inferior ingredients and safety. Quality is job last down there.
@human3500 T&T are owned by Loblaws, so I guess that may also be part of it - they already have the import lines to get this for one chain and can just bring them into their other stores.
@misty
Makes sense. I'm not happy about spending money at Loblaw but we've used T and T since before they came in to ruin it.
@misty need label pictures !
@paulywill Appears to be a pretty normal Japanese domestic market soy sauce, just with a black and white bilingual label!
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@misty I need this in my life…what store?
@paulywill It's one of the Loblaws-owned grocery store chains, so I bet this is starting to show up in the Asian section at other chains they own too.
@misty @akamran @lrhodes I can't find the post as well, but I found this article from May
https://www.npr.org/2026/05/13/nx-s1-5820671/japanese-snack-packages-black-and-white
@misty I'm sure the US companies that would have made money repackaging those products and transporting them are super happy about that turn of events.
For example Kikkoman will still sell you imported-from-America-imported-from-Japan English label stuff, but also sells a cheaper direct-from-Japan soy sauce with a Japanese label.
(tbh I think the direct-from-Japan product might be a little better-tasting too? Haven't compared them next to each other though.)
@misty out of curiosity I just checked my Kikkoman bottles at home here in the US, one bought from an Asian market (can't remember if Chinese or Japanese), with a big refill bottle of the same style (low sodium) bought from Costco, and both have "Kikkoman USA" as the supplier with "brewed in the USA" on the label. So I guess neither were imported, surprisingly.
@andrewjbtw Brewed in the USA, huh! That's an interesting plot twist. I thought the ones I'd seen were brewed in Japan, but I might be misremembering. The cheaper Japanese-label ones here are definitely made in Japan though.
@misty possibly a recent development? But the US market is pretty big now, especially for "generic" soy sauce.
I've bought more specialized soy sauces - with a specific style on the label - for my mom that I'm pretty sure were imported. I could only find that at a Japanese market.
@misty maybe grocery stores are now using the same suppliers as the Asian markets? Loblaws owns T&T, so that would be easy enough for them (fuck Loblaws of course)
@giflian I could definitely see that. In this case checking the bottle, the paper labels they slapped on for importing it have the actual Kikkoman logos and no name of an importer, so this may be either Kikkoman themselves doing it or the grocery chain directly buying from Kikkoman in Japan.
@misty we need a journalist to figure this out for us.
