A love for food across the other side of the world comes with discovery and confusion.
Hello again, I’ve enjoyed writing more since I arrived, and I of course have more to write about because this place is profoundly wonderful. Utterly brilliant. If there was a way to bring Greggs to Japan, then I would never leave.
I’ve embraced Japanese fashion, or more so, I’ve started wearing comfier clothes; however you want to look at it. My Represent cargo pants are a thing of the past. Slim-fitting is so out of touch with the scene here; loose-fitting pants with an elasticated waist are my current dailies. Honestly, this decision is not because I need an elasticated waist due to the amount of food I’m eating; it’s just a convenient coincidence that comes with ultra-comfort. I’ve even taken back up running over here, you can check my Strava, just don’t chat about my average pace. I’ll keep improving. Be better than you were yesterday and all that jazz.
Here we are, about to indulge in the description of food I’ve eaten. You’d think that’s all I’ve been up to. Well, to be honest, eating and working are the most regular occurrences. Who the fuck wants to read about what I’ve been getting up to at work? I’m not going to write words about writing words; it sounds very Black Mirror in a multi-parallax universe of boringness. But if you do know of anyone who wants any words written, hit me up; I need to fund the purchase of the Base Set Charizard I stared at for 29 minutes yesterday.
I digress. Food is the direction we were going in. Where else?
Yesterday’s culinary discovery was an okonomiyaki restaurant. Basically, you sit at a table with a hot plate built into the middle (boiling, oven-hot, so my wife decided to rest her knuckles on it as we sat down, great start). What’s Japanese for burnt knuckles? (Yaketa yubi no kansetsu). Bag of ice, please. They cook your food in the kitchen out back, then bring it over to your boiling-hot table, like the centre-of-the-earth hot. They slap the food on the really hot plate, and you use chopsticks to move the food onto a single plate you have (that’s not boiling hot). Without being ignorant to new cultural experiences and forgetting I asked at the start of this to bring Greggs to Japan; I’m not entirely sure why this concept of dining is a thing. Sure, it keeps your food warm as you eat what’s on your cold plate and then reach for more. However, as it sits on the really fucking hot part of your table, it not only gets hotter but also begins to burn underneath if you don’t eat it quickly enough.
As someone who doesn’t do many things quickly, I felt a small level of anxiety knowing I needed to eat at a pace that meant the remaining food did not burn but also that the inside of my mouth didn’t blister by eating too quickly. So there I found myself in a bit of a sticky situation, thinking, ‘This wouldn’t happen if I was eating a 7/11 TikTok sarnie.’
But you’ve got to try these things. Even if you walk out smelling like a chef’s crotch and with knuckles as scorched as the inside of a volcano.
To be honest, I would most definitely go back again, but I’d probably ask them to turn the hot plate off and just serve my food directly onto a cold plate. Maybe I can suggest this revolutionary new concept to them and make millions? Oh wait…
Chances are, no one reading this runs an okonomiyaki restaurant that’s been in their family for generations. But if this is the case, then I sincerely apologise; you really should try a Greggs chicken bake.
See you on the next one.