Monja-Yaki!!

Yesterday (Thursday) was a long day at school, but it was made all the easier knowing that we were going out for dinner with Yoko that night. For those of you who were at our wedding, you will know Yoko as the bridesmaid who changed into the red kimono. I was at  work until about 5:30, and then I walked speedily home thinking about nothing other than all the yummy things we could order at the restaurant. As I approached the house, the sun was setting slightly in the sky, and the way it hit the newly-planted rice paddies was really beautiful, so I tried to take a picture of it with my cellphone... but as always, it didn't really turn out. Here is is though, for your viewing pleasure...haha.

Anyway, when I got home we relaxed a little before heading out. The restaurant was about a 20~30 minute drive away in a town called Mineyama. Yoko was going to meet us there. Actually, it was Liz's first time to this particular restaurant, called "Uchinku". It specializes in a kind of food called "monja-yaki". Monja-yaki is basically like a really runny okonomiyaki (think of flower, water, eggs, shredded cabbage and whatever meat/seafood/veges you want to add in to the mix, then fried like a pancake on a hotplate... only it's runny so it's more like the consistency of bubbling glue... doesn't sound very appealing, but it's nice enough).

Each table at the restaurant has a large hotplate built into the tabletop. When you order at monja-yaki, the staff bring the bowl of uncooked mixure to your table, and cook it infront of you on the hotplate. It's quite high-speed and really interesting to watch. It seems there's quite an art to preparing it right. To start with the fillings (in our case, seafood) are in bite-size pieces, but when they cook it for you at the table, they chop away at it at high speed with two sharp spatula-like things until they are all chopped up into tiny bits (for the most part). If you have ever seen a Japanese Teppanyaki performance, it's a bit like that. It's really fun to watch. Here (above right) is a picture of the monja-yaki while the waiter is chopping away at it. His hands are moving so fast that it's all blurred.

So when it's all done, it looks like this...(see right)
The lumps you can see are bits of squid, I think. It was really good!!
You get given little metal spatulas to eat it with. There's a tricky wee technique to using the spatulas, though, which adds to the fun of eating it. Basically, you take your flat spatula and squish it down into the bubbling monja-yaki and slowly pull/scrape it towards you. As you pull (in theory) it sticks to the spatula so that you can eventually lift it up and eat what you caught... it didn't always work out so easily, but it was fun, as you can see in the picture below!! haha. As the bits around the edges cooked more and more on the hotplate, they got darker and yummier...

 In the picture above, Liz and Yoko have fun trying to scrape up some monja-yaki with their wee metal spatulas. You can see how hot it is!! It's steaming up a storm! The big black bowl has salty cabbage and dressing in it. It was REALLY good!!

Liz and Yoko ordered ginger ales. This may not seem like much to those of you who live in countries where ginger ale is commonly found on drinks menus, but here in Japan it's not so common. Not only was it on the menu, but you could chose between sweet or dry!! AMAZING! haha

So, we ordered corn!! Yes, store-bought corn fried in butter, with salt and pepper. Basically (remember there's a hotplate in the table) they brought a bowl of corn to the table, threw a lump of butter on the hotplate and then piled the corn on top! So simple, and not something people back home would pay much for, but it was really yummy.We used our spatulas to scoop it up, because it was taking too long to eat it bit by bit with chopsticks!! ;)

We had a really fun time. Liz still wasn't fully recovered from her cold/flu, but we still managed to enjoy ourselves and leave anxiously looking forward to the next time.
We have some really great friends here.