Sounds like what you were given was just a coarsely ground and non-fully-dehydrated version of the root? At home I use off-the-shelf wasabi powder, and after m

Sounds like what you were given was just a coarsely ground and non-fully-dehydrated version of the root? At home I use off-the-shelf wasabi powder, and after mixing with a small amount of water the resulting paste's texture is consistent with that of faux-wasabi. Edit: I'd bought my wasabi powder under the pretense that it genuine wasabi imported from Japan, but now I see several Amazon reviews alleging that it's fake, and I have no way to tell one way or the other. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯