Round, Flat, and Good with Mayonnaise

It’s finally happened: my Japanese test has come and gone, and while I’m certainly relieved that it’s over, I can’t exactly rest easy. The grammar and listening sections weren’t too much trouble, but I’m pretty sure that I made a fool of myself in the kanji section, which counts for a quarter of the grade. I suppose it’s possible that I managed to squeak by with a score in the low 70s, but I won’t know until February. Guess I should start studying for the next session in July, just in case.

That aside, school is also proving to be a handful, thanks to the end of the second term. The old lunar calendar calls the twelfth month Shiwasu, meaning “teachers run,” and with the presentations, meetings, random lesson schedule shifts, and review preparations, my legs are starting to get tired. I’m buoyed by the thought of soon being able to use a computer that doesn’t make horrible grinding noises when it ought to be asleep, as well as the upcoming New Year’s-related festivities, but they seem like such a long way away from now. On the bright side, I can at least indulge my appetite for some good Japanese-style cooking.

I’m sure that most of you are familiar with sushi, teriyaki, and ramen. These are well and good, but they are just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to food here in Japan. This is especially true in Osaka, which is known as “the Nation’s Kitchen”, where you can “Eat Till You Drop”. While Tokyo is known for its high-end restaurants, and the ancient capital of Kyoto for its haute-cuisine and traditional Japanese sweets, Osaka has good, old-fashioned, artery-clogging comfort food.

For starters, there’s takoyaki: this is a fried ball of gooey batter that contains, at its center, a chunk of octopus tentacle. It’s far better than it sounds, and it’s sold by street vendors and dedicated takoyaki sellers alike. It tastes a lot better than it sounds, and is easy to snack on while you walk down the street – just make sure to let them cool off first, though. They can burn the tongue straight off the griddle, as I learned the hard way.

There’s also yakisoba, which is a stir-fry consisting of noodles in a tangy sauce, cabbage, a variety of meat (pork, shrimp, and squid are popular here), and some other ingredients I’m not exactly privy to. Nevertheless, it’s quick, cheap, and not difficult to make – all plusses in my book. But my favorite Osaka food is the round, flat, and apparently untranslatable okonomiyaki.

Literally meaning “cooked favorites”, “okonomiyaki” is often rendered in English as “Japanese pizza” or “Japanese pancake”. While the first sort of conveys the interchangeability of ingredients, and the second the general shape, it’s really not that close to either. At its heart, okonomiyaki is a pan-fried batter-cake where you can choose the ingredients that go in it. Generally, this means cabbage, a kind of meat (or several), sometimes cheese, and occasionally shallots.

When it’s done, you smear okonomiyaki sauce on top, crisscross that with some mayonnaise (Japan loves mayonnaise) and then sprinkle over that bits of seaweed and tuna flakes. These last seem to dance in the heat of the freshly-cooked food, which is both oddly fascinating and disturbing at the same time. If you’re at the right kind of restaurant, it gets served directly onto a heated pan in front of you, where you can then use a special spatula to cut it up and heap it onto your plate. Some places even let you make it yourself. (Japan is less litigious in general and thus seemingly untroubled by the thought of burns or food poisoning from letting hapless customers do their thing.)

There are regional varieties, too – Hiroshima, out west, prides itself on a layered (rather than mixed) version with only a thin kind of batter, while Tokyo has monja-yaki, which is like okonomiyaki but runny. My personal preference, however, is for modan-yaki, a homegrown Osaka favorite that includes yakisoba noodles right in the mix. It’s like the best of both worlds in one, and a high-calorie guilty pleasure I can justify by the fact that I go to the gym. As long as I don’t have it too often, anyway….

At any rate, Osaka provides a wealth of less-than-healthy food for me to sample, and eating out with friends is a sure-fire way to ease the pre-holiday blues. I mustn’t forget, however, that Japan has a variety of regional specialties, which is why I also intend to travel during the upcoming holiday. After all, someone’s got to eat that food, right?