September 05, 2006
Okonomiyaki
There is a couple of routine things that I do when I go back to Japan. One of them is to visit my advisor in undergrad. He moved from Osaka to Tokyo a few years ago so I missed a change to meet him for a while (my home town is Osaka.).
Before I met him, I had about half hour to kill at the station where his campus is located. I walked around a bit and found a Okonomiyaki restaurant. Okonomiyaki is one of my favorite foods even after I lives in U.S. If you go to a Okonomiyaki place in Osaka, you would have good taste Okonomiyaki at any restaurant because people in Osaka love Okonomiyaki. I wanted to try in Tokyo if it is true. In Tokyo, there is a similar food called Monjayaki. It is much softer and the shape is not like a pancake. So people use a small steel tool to scoop and bring to the mouth. I am not sure nowadays, but people in Tokyo used to prefer Monjayaki to Okonomiyaki in old days.
The Okonomiyaki I had in the picture was acturally quite good. The mixture of flour, water, potate and eggs was very soft and the souce was a little sweet but spicy.
The one bad thing was that I had to eat in rush because I was almost late to appointment to meeting my advisor...
September 03, 2006
Beef bowl (special)
Like fast food hamberger chain stores for Americans, there are beef bowl chain stores for the Japanese. The major three chains are Yoshinoya (probably the largest in Japan), Matsuya, and Nakau. I forgot where I had this in the picture, but I am sure at the one of their places in Yokohama.
The standard menu is a just beef bowl from the size of medium (Nami), large (Ohmori) or extra large (Toku-mori). The miso soup, pickels and raw egg are the sides. So having a beef bowl with sides is a kind of "Special". The shredded red things on the beef is ginger. The slightly spicy tastes of the ginger match the thin sliced marinated beef. The raw egg with a few drop of soy souce is alos poured onto the beef and mixed well. This is like Sukiyaki, which thin sliced beef dipped into raw eggs.
Well, if you like salty soy souce taste, you don't want to miss this.
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