They gave me the smallest shopping basket I’ve ever seen and it was cheery yellow; I had just parked in a nondescript lot in Honolulu, stepping into Mana Bu transported me directly to downtown Tokyo.

Mana Bu sells just two things — musubi and okazu — but their restraint means a lot of attention goes into what they do make. The musubi aren’t the spam-laden Hawaiian kind but the triangular snack-sized ones (aka onigiri) that you apparently find all over Japan. One seriously packed shopping basket and $27 later, I had nearly one of every kind of musubi available that day. For good measure, I also snagged a few Hawaii-influenced okazu (sides) like Okinawan sweet potato and macadamia nut salad and Curry mac and edamame salad.

Everything was in pristine packaging but I tore through it like a kid on Christmas Day and gorged on musubi (including unagi, spicy ahi, vegetarian curry pilaf, teri-yaki, and sekihan okowa). There wasn’t a bad one in the bunch, but I lost all restraint around the miso-yaki and the 10-grain shiso-wakame flavors. The Mana Bu folks have yet to catch the social marketing bug, but you can go 90s-style and pre-order via fax (assuming you know where to locate one). If only I could figure out how to then receive the musubi via fax, I’d start scheduling regular trips to Kinkos.