Reverse shopping woes

Today I combed Woolworths for a few common Japanese ingredients. I'm planning to make Yakisoba (Stir fried pork and noodles). I needed seaweed, Japanese noodles, bean sprouts, thinly cut pork and cooking sake. Eventually I found all except the last. In Japan this is a cheap meal because all the ingredients are very common. It was the exact opposite to looking for "Australian" ingredients in Japan. Ingredients like icing sugar, chocolate chips, golden syrup, corn flakes, non-'plastic' cheese, zucchini, passionfruit; are common here are more difficult (or impossible) to find and more expensive there. I'll have to go looking for a Japanese food shop. The only one I know of is in Sunnybank, a fair distance from here. I can buy udon (thick Japanese noodles) at Woolies but not the sauce to go with them. Believe it or not, we miss Japanese food when we're gone. When we're in Japan we don't eat Japanese food daily, but we do enjoy it when we do. One of the reasons I wanted to cook this meal this week is because we have a Korean exchange student with us for the next eight days. I thought he might appreciate some Asian cooking. I don't know how to cook anything Korean, but Japanese is probably closer than Australian. And a cultural experience is what he's here for anyway. This poor nine year old boy has been totally bombarded by our intense boys. Our four y.o. particularly has hardly left Lee alone since he came home from school with everyone. It's going to be an interesting week.