Food is Global -- Even Japanese Food?

It's easy to miss while living in Japan, but the world seems awash with Japanese food now. At least compared with 20 years ago. Friends of Meg's have just opened a Japanese restaurant in Lisbon -- not the first by any means -- and at Asian supermarkets there we can buy many Japanese ingredients.

Indeed, we've just had some nori (dried laver; used for sushi and the like) with our lunch and were intrigued by the packaging. (We bought it in Lisbon.) The brand name is Sukina, which sounds pretty Japanese. It is labeled in Japanese as ??????? (nori for hand-rolled sushi). There's also English: Roasted Seaweed (Laver), which is about right. The distributor is Wang Globalnet, a company with offices in the US. The European importer is a company in Paris. The original packaging gives the origin as South Korea. Finally, there's a stick-on label added by the Portuguese importer, where the origin is given as China.

How odd! And one wonders why Japanese companies have missed out on the opportunities opened up by a worldwide interest in Japanese food?