広島焼き、もんじゃ焼き

Last night, I was finally able to pick up my cellphone. It took 3 days, but fortunately, it came right before the weekend, so I could get a ride down to the store. After picking up the new cellphone (sweeet), I went with a fellow teacher to a place called Dohton Bori. Originally the plan was to eat some お好み焼き, but he decided to order hiroshima yaki instead. I had never heard of hiroshima yaki before.

Soon, a young girl came and started heating up the stove thing in front of us. This place was definitely cool. In my town we don't have many restaurants, and the food places we do have are basically fast food style, and have like 2 seating areas (yea...pretty brutal...). This place, we had to take off our shoes, and sit on these square pillow things. I have to say, I still haven't gotten use to sitting like that while eating. Every time I got up to go to the drink bar (which is what they call free refills for tea/soda/juice), my legs were in pain and I almost stumbled over, but it was definitely still cool.

Anyways, back to the main story. So the girl heated up the stove and started putting stuff on it like a frying pan. She put soba noodles, squid, shrimp, octopus - all my favourite seafoods.
Then she put an egg on there, and started doing stuff that I really can't explain well in writing. Anyways, all that stuff I just mentioned ended up being wrapped into some sort of okonomiyaki looking crazyness. Her movements were pretty quick and precise. It was like watching a master at work. We asked her what she had to do to be able to work this job, and she told us that she had to take a 6 month course on how to cook this stuff. Amazingly, this was just her first time making hiroshima yaki. We thanked her, and started eating. Damn, it was delicious. In Toronto, we can't really get this kind of food - it's just not possible, unless there's a Japanese person in town who happens to be good at making this stuff. Restaurants don't have it on their menus. To eat it, you usually top it off with fish flakes, shredded pieces of seaweed and mayonnaise. I'd have to say, I was starving at that point, and that food certainly hit the spot.

We were still hungry afterwards, so we decided to order something else. It's quite difficult ordering at that restaurant, because everything looks so damn good. And at the same time, everything looks the same! My co-worker kept asking me what I wanted to eat, but being new to the country, and really not knowing anything about the stuff on that menu, I told him he could decide. Eventually, he settled on Monja yaki. Apparently, from what he told me, Hiroshima yaki is from Hiroshima..hence the name hiroshima yaki....go figure. Okonomiyaki is from the Kansai region of Japan, particularly Osaka - that I already knew from before. However, Monja yaki is from the Tokyo region - this I didn't know. In fact, I had never heard of "monja-yaki". Somes like something illegal...hmm. Anyways, we ordered it, and a different girl came to start frying the stuff (gotta love Japan..). This was quite different from hiroshima-yaki, in that basically she just put a bunch of stuff on the frying pan and started mixing and mashing it up. Our Monja-yaki's main thing was mochi, so she put a lot of mochi in there. The interesting thing was that apparently, we were not to use our chopsticks to eat this "monja yaki". So I asked, well, what are supposed to use? Well, the girl handed me this thing that is difficult to explain. It was like a split between a fork and a knife, and was quite small sized. Apparently, from that mashed up mixture in front of us, we were to use this tool to "scratch off" what we wanted, burn it on the pan, and then stuff in our mouths.

It was definitely an experience I won't be forgetting for a while. In Toronto, we don't really heard much about Japanese food that isn't sushi, sashimi, miso soup, and so on. Looking forward to eating more crazy Japanese food.