16 June 2013

Apologies + What is Usuter Sauce?

The better question to ask, actually, is: "Is there such a thing as Usuter Sauce?"


"Usuter Sauce" spotted at a local "Daiso" / 88-peso store here in the Philippines.
I deeply apologize for not having been able to update this blog at all for more than two months now! Since coming back to Manila, which I thought was home, I've struggled to find a place to settle in. My stuff at the apartment I used to live in here have been all thrown away and it's just been tough because I have been practically homeless. And that's all fine because I've been with family and that is the most important, although internet has also been too awfully slow -- typically just 0.2 Mbps download and 0.1 Mbps upload, and it gets worse, compared to the 7.2 Mbps that the internet company here promises as maximum speed and 72 Mbps for what I had back in Japan! But I just can't resist not blogging about this one immediately.

Now, ウスターソース / usutaa soosu is something I never encountered at any grocery in Japan, or it was very rare and I had no need for it so I don't remember seeing one there. But I definitely know it's not oyster sauce, which would be オイスターソース / oisutaa soosu. And yet they wrote that this is "Usuter Sauce" which is just too out-of-this-world. What's an Usuter?

I suspected though that it's actually Worcestershire Sauce (color-wise, it certainly looks like it), because while Google Translate pronounces it as "worchestershire," I was taught it's actually pronounced like "woostershire," and thus, possibly like usutaa in Japanese. I checked my dictionary and Google Translate, and indeed what they wrote here as Usuter Sauce is actually Worcestershire sauce.

I can forgive the Japanese company who wrote "Usuter Sauce" on the label. But Daiso Philippines getting it wrong? Congratulations to them for being able to read katakana and verify that the label indeed reads usutaa, but a slap on the back of the head to them for not knowing (or at least checking with a Japanese-English dictionary) that this actually is Worcestershire sauce.

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