In North America, these are packages with photo of sushi rolls on the outside. Some would even have instructions on how to make hand roll or maki sushi. These are ~20cm square sheets.

To make spam masubi you'll have to cut up the large sheet.

Speaking of food in sheets...

There is this wonderful website that offers print outs of paper crafts.

The food page is here: https://paperm.jp/craft/food/index.html

And if you’re missing the shopping experience, these delightful examples might help: https://paperm.jp/craft/dollhouse/index.html
If you’re dedicated, with a bit of effort you can make your Japan visit a little less virtual.

I have been using this site for years as a source of greetings cards: https://paperm.jp/craft/hagaki/index.html

I ordered some on Amazon and then immediately found it downstairs at the market. It's actually been harder to find Spam than the nori. Strange days.

That paper website is amazing. I've passed it on to my SO as she is the crafty one.

Many people I know have been stock piling the spam - many Asian markets are out according to some family in NY. Try some of your European markets.

I've tried every store around here along with the grocery delivery services. No one has any except for strange flavors that seem off-putting. Amazon is basically a competition to see who can overprice it the most.

Link for reference: https://camelcamelcamel.com/product/...context=search

Not sure where you are in NYC but Hmart does delivery to certain NY area codes. According to this page, they do have the classic flavor available: https://fresh.hmart.com/groceries/in...s/canned-foods

I appreciate the help, I ended up having to order a larger amount than I wanted but the price wasn't awful. I'm outside the Hmart delivery range sadly.

No problem. I feel the same way about my Hmart situation. Used to live like 5 min down the street from one, now in a place where the nearest location is 3 1/2 hrs away. My consolation prize is having a legitimate Japanese market about an hour or so away.

I have one within subway distance but I'm not risking it for some Spam.

Apparently after some recreational beverages l also ordered some nori from FreshDirect last week. Sadly when the order showed up last night it was missing what was going to be the star of the show for my temaki/handroll learning, 1 lb of lump crab meat.

Does anyone have any ideas for what I can use?

I currently don't have easy access to sushi grade fish so I'd rather find a more traditional protein to use.

I was thinking something like chicken katsu strips or maybe some bbq pork?

There is a school of thought that anything that tastes good on bread should taste good with rice.

Tried and tested ideas from my family for temakizushi are: avocado, smoked mackerel, prawns/shrimp (battered if you prefer), sliced cucumber*, omelet strips, kinpira (esp carrot and gobo - or substitute sunchoke/artichoke for gobo/burdock root, just beware the inulin flatulence.)
Tweaking further I’d add most kinds of soboro: salted salmon, canned mackerel, canned salmon, even canned sardines, and there is pork or beef too - the secret to soboro is how you season it, it’s generally salty from soy sauce/shoyu with sweetness from mirin &/or sugar, oyster sauce is a good secret ingredient for beef and pork soboro. You could fry thin strips of (or shredded) ham/bacon/pork belly with soy sauce, sake and a mirin/sugar to get a “tastes good with rice” result.
Also, rather than going for chicken katsu, I’d steer you in the chicken karaage direction - it’s yelling “hello!” at you.

Now if you want to go off in a completely unfettered, what can I eat with nori and rice direction, don’t get too shackled to the vinegared rice concept.

Take a look with Google images at onigirazu in Japanese おにぎらず or お握らず
hot dog wieners, ham slices, chicken nuggets, cheese, hamburgers - the “anything that tastes good with bread” concept is flying in Households throughout Japan. One only needs to free themselves from the binding dogma of osushi.

Nori rules!

* cucumber: I’ll take the ends off and grind ONE end in some salt for a minute to make it less bitter through the osmosis process. Depending on the cucumber, I might remove some seeds (this pulp can be added to a gazpacho)

Tuna w/ mayo (kewpie if you have it), cooked baby shrimp, imitation krab (formed whitefish), plain cream cheese, or just straight rice are some of the ones I've made and liked. More complex ones like the same ingredients as popular American sushi rolls work also as onigiri.

Almost forgot breakfast style ones with a bit of egg, er tamagoyaki, and diced ham, bacon, or sausage.

Amazing ideas! Thank you both. I'm going to go for it tomorrow for lunch. I have a big gap in my workday so I'll be making the rice and trying out some combinations. Will report back. Pictures will be provided if I'm not too embarrassed at the results.

Would love to see them!
MrLapLap was in Fukuoka and Tokyo in February and brought a hoard of pantry ingredients and ready made products back to London - we already suspected that our April visit wouldn’t happen. Managed to get some cubes of stewing beef yesterday (first time we’d seen non-minced beef for sale in a couple of weeks), so tonight we’re having it with onions and mushrooms (I’ll sneak a bit of frozen spinach in there too) as Hayashi Rice. Our London “fusion” tip is to eat it with a side portion of pickled beetroot.
There’s a Samurai Gourmet 野武士のグルメepisode that revolves around Hayashi Rice and “captures” what it is quite well. The restaurant (Karuizawa) where it was filmed was near Okachimachi station in Tokyo and has since closed forever.
https://www.sbfoods-worldwide.com/pr...earch/054.html
Very unphotogenic though, not worth taking pictures. Takes a professional to capture the appeal!

I think we have S&B products downstairs. Not sure if they have the hayashi rice, I know they at least have the Golden Curry.

Honestly between our grocery deliveries and our family meal orders from one of our favorite Korean restaurants (Hanjan on 26th St in Manhattan for any NYC people) we are almost overstocked for food. I order our beef and pork directly from a ranch in upstate NY so we've got an additional 20 or so lbs of meat in the freezer. We had to reorganize our entire tiny kitchen because we were running out of counter space to hold all our staples.

Cooking has been a fantastic way to distract us and given us a safe topic to banter about in the apartment during our work day.

EDIT: I looked up that Samurai Gourmet episode and I think have actually seen it before. Very sad to hear that the restaurant closed.