Lunch pal Barbara and I cruised tirelessly up and down the aisles of Oto's Marketplace, fascinated by what we saw. Maybe "overwhelmed" is a more accurate word.

"The thing about California is everything is so unexpected," said Barbara, a travel writer. "These kinds of places are an adventure, and this is my new favorite store."

We marveled at the vast assortment of colorfully packaged goods imported from Japan, lining shelves and stacked in freezers and coolers. Nearly 6,000 items are on offer, Russell Oto told me later. He's the general manager and co-owns the store with other family members.

The roots of the current business go back to 1960, when Russell's father, Ted Oto, opened a little butcher shop here in town. That grew into something bigger, which had to be relocated to a larger space – a process that has been repeated several times.

Barbara and I examined sauces, seasonings, rice, soba and udon noodles, tea, saki, Hello Kitty and Hello Panda cookies, candies, crackers, taro chips, lotus root, dried and frozen fish – the list goes on.

One favorite was the Lucky Cat (Manekineko) bobbleheads ($12.95 to $24.99); the ancient Japanese cat figure is meant to bring good luck.

Barbara opened a freezer door. "Bubbie's ice cream from Hawaii," she said with a laugh. "That's Yiddish for 'grandmother.' "

In a cooler case was another island icon – a lineup of Hawaiian Sun brand sodas, teas and fruit juices. The company opened in 1952.

We inspected the meat and seafood counters. Glistening chunks of ahi and yellowtail tuna, piles of prawns and squid, a tray of oysters, an octopus or two. In the meat counter, huge roasts of Kobe and Wagyu beef (dry-age bone-in ribeye, $32.95 a pound).

Our original destination was the take-out area, which we'd heard so much about. We stood at the counter and watched the busy kitchen crew cook, prepare and package an assortment of foods as boxed lunches ($3.95 to $8.95, bargain-priced given the serving sizes). The choices included sushi, sashimi, chicken, seafood, vegetable croquettes, salads and other luscious-looking goods ($3.95 to $8.95). "We can't keep up with the demand," Russell Oto noted. "We try to cook enough for both lunch and dinner, but we're sold out before dinner."

Barbara and I chose a bunch of boxes and sat at a small table near the checkout stands. Ranking the dishes wasn't easy, as everything was fresh and tasty, disappearing quickly:

• The slices of delicious marinated and grilled huli-huli chicken were tender and juicy, served with noodles and rice. Huli-huli chicken is very popular in Hawaii.

• Teriyaki glaze gave the perfectly cooked salmon an added dimension of sweetness.

• Gyoza are the Japanese version of potstickers, though closer in texture to dim-sum dumplings. The garlicky puffs were irresistible when dipped in the accompanying sauce.

• The California sushi roll was a fine version of the traditional combo of rice, seaweed, crab and avocado.

• As for the shreds of spicy, crunchy green seaweed, "It's an acquired taste," Barbara noted, going at it with chopsticks.

Uh, pass some more of the chicken and gyoza, please…

Andrae's hours …

Oops. One of the things we got right in last week's review of Andrae's Bakery in Amador City was its four-star rating.

But we messed up the days and hours of operation. The store is open from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. Thursdays through Sundays.