Monja yaki

I recently had monjayaki (Japanese food, see the photos). This is a bit difficult to make properly. The first time I tried it, my Japanese friend made it but made the wall too loose so all the liquid stuff leaked out and ran off the table...

This time we had the staff make it for us. This resulted in good monjayaki, but the girl making it also managed to splash me with this, so I got some monja colored spots on my previously white t-shirt, and some fairly hot things landing on my leg. She apologized, of course, and I said I was fine. The t-shirt became pretty white again using my glass of water and the small towel you get in Japanese restaurants.

Most places that serve monjayaki also serve okonomiyaki. I prefer trying to make the okonomiyaki myself (it is not difficult), so I did. It turned out fine (it usually does).

Very large servings of okonomiyaki

The last day of my Tokyo trip there were presentations from early morning to late night. All the people that I knew at the event were to have some form of special secret lunch that I was not invited to, so I had to go out and find food all alone.

I found a place that served okonomiyaki, which is nice. They told me it was "men's day" so I could have a double serving of noodles for free. The amount of food in a regular serving already looked huge, though, so I just had a regular one. It was good. And huge.

Not going to the Otaru Ushio Matsuri festival

Every year, one of my friends who grew up in Otaru (a city close to Sapporo) takes me to the Otaru Ushio Matsuri festival. There are stalls with food, stalls with games, dancing, people in yukatas, and a fireworks festival.

This friends is the friend who got me to wear yukatas. He explained to me that Japanese festivals mean you have to wear a yukata. He always does, and the friends he brings with him do too. My friend even dyed his yukata and painted the designs on it himself. He also has a weird hairstyle (which he cuts himself), that is also dyed a strange color.

Waiting

This year we were to meet at the Sapporo station at 14:00 to take the train to Otaru. At 14:00, the only one there in a yukata was me. At 15:00, another guy showed up. At 15:30, my friend who was organizing this also showed up and told us that there was one girl coming too.

The girl had woken up at 13:00 when he called to wake her. She had woken up and looked around and said: "Where am I?" Apparently she had been drinking quite a lot and fallen asleep in the last place where she was drinking. She was still sleeping there in the afternoon when he called. So she had to go home, change into a yukata (which is a lot of work for girls, for men the yukata is really simple to pu ton), and then go to the station. This meant she was quite late, so we got on a train that left the station at 16:30 or so.

People who managed to buy raincoats before they sold out

Two girls completely drenched (white yukata is nice, but becomes transparent in rain)

Once we got to Otaru, there were signs saying that the fireworks (the biggest attraction) were cancelled because of the very heavy rain and the almost hurricane like storm. We decided to make a run towards the festival area anyway, but as soon as we left the station, the storm winds were so strong that we lost two umbrellas (the broke) and got drenched to the bone. We ran to the closest other building, a big department store, and checked if they sold raincoats. There were several big stores that usually have huge supplies of rain coats, but they told us they sold out ours ago.

Waiting for noodles

We gave up on the festival and went to a soba noodle place that my friends from Otaru knew to be good. We had some very nice food there.

Noodles

Then, we made a 1 minute run for the roof covered shopping arcade, once again getting completely drenched. My Otaru friend said that one of the few things to see near the Otaru Station is a cafe that serves "Pudding a la Mode", which we should try. Even in the roof covered arcade, it was very windy and lots of rain kept blowing in from the sides.

Cafe

We found the cafe. My friend who recommended the pudding a la mode ordered something called "Royal Pudding", which was pudding with whipped cream. The pudding a la mode came with fruits and ice cream. The girl with us ordered that, but asked for it to be made without melon. I am slightly allergic to melon, but I ordered "Pudding a la mode; keep the melon". It was OK.

Pudding a la Mode

While we were eating all this pudding, one of the friends of my Otaru friends, who still lives in Otaru, called and said that he was in the festival area but that everything was closed. They were dismantling the tents because everything was threatening to fly away in the very strong winds.

Taking a photo of a girl taking a photo of a guy taking a photo of a photo.

Souvenir shopping

We decided to take the train back to Sapporo and have dinner there. My Otaru friend suddenly decided that he should by Otaru souvenirs, so we ended up walking around the souvenir shops for 30 minutes and ended up missing two trains.

When we got to Sapporo, my friend said that to him, festivals mean okonomiyaki, so he wanted to eat that. He called one of his friends who runs a bar and had a conversation along the lines of: "So, you have okonomiyaki in your place, right? We will go there soon. 4 of us. Okonomiyaki. ... I can't hear you very well, but we will be there soon. For okonomiyaki. I think I saw an ad in a paper where you said you had okonomiyaki, right? See you soon." They have never served anything even close to okonomiyaki there, but it might be worth a try, he figured.

Grocery shopping

When we got off the subway, we stopped by a supermarket and called the same place again to ask if there was by any chance some ingredient for okonomiyaki that they did not have in the bar; we could buy some and bring it. We listened for awhile, and to briefly summarize what was needed: everything. So we bought okonomiyaki flour, eggs, meat, seafood mix, mayonnaise, okonomiyaki sauce, and the other things necessary.

Raw liver

Roasted duck (excellent!)

Raw fish (very good)

Once we got to the bar, we handed over the grocery bag and ordered some other food too. In the end, the staff were kind enough and made us two types of okonomiyaki. It was very good. My friend said: "I am sorry to bother you with all of this, but Jonas is a foreigner and he really really wanted to have some okonomiyaki. Him being a foreigner, he does not know Japanese culture and just had to have his own way, even in a place like this where you do not serve okonomiyaki"...

Friend making okonomiyaki for us

I said I thought it was he who wanted the okonomiyaki, but he said that "You said you could eat anything. That includes okonomiyaki." Who can argue with that? So I apologized profusely for being such a spoiled brad to the guy who made the okonomiyaki (who I know quite well since before). He laughed a lot.

Okonomiyaki

Wedding business and food

My wedding invitation

One of my magician friends (we both have magic as a hobby but work with other things) is getting married. The wedding is in September, and since his wife is going to perform a song with her brass band friends, my friend wants to do some magic together with me at the wedding. More specifically, he wants to produce lots of money and he wants to do an illusion of some kind.

Last week we went to take a look at the location, to see what kinds of illusions might work. It turns out the performance space is pretty much in the center of the room, so the stuff you do has to be OK when viewed from 360 degrees of spectators trying to figure out your secrets, haha. It also has to be of a kinds that makes sense to people watching it from all angles (a shadow illusion would be incomprehensible to the people "behind" the screen with the shadows, for instance). But hopefully we will come up with something.

On our way up the mountain where the wedding will take place, we also stopped for some late lunch/early dinner okonomiyaki. The young waitress came up to my friend and said: "Here is an English menu too", when I was reading the Japanese menu. I am pretty sure he looks way more Japanese than I do, so that was a bit strange.

My friend also had to try out a bunch of suits and pick one to wear during the wedding. He figured it would be best to have someone else with him to discuss fashion things, which makes sense. For some reason, I was the only one there for him to talk about clothes with, which does not make much sense (all my Japanese friends tell me I have zero fashion sense and dress like a weirdo). In the end, I think we did fairly well, though.

After the suit tryouts, he invited me back to his place where his wife was making dinner for us and two other guests. We had temaki sushi. This is very nice. You put vinegared rice (sushi) on sheets of seaweed and then add raw fish or whatnot, wrap it into a small package and eat.

Swedes in Sapporo!

I asked the waitress if she had something on the menu that was very Japanese and that she thought was good. She suggested this mayonnaise and cheese covered squid.

On Sunday, at the festival in Otaru, I ran into a Swedish guy visiting Japan to visit his girlfriend's family. On Monday, I met a Swedish researcher who was here in Sapporo for a conference. I went to elementary school with his wife, so this time there was a connection. A few months ago she asked me: "My husband is going to Sapporo around the end of July, do you want to meet him?"

We went out and had okonomiyaki, a Japanese dish that I like and that you rarely see outside Japan. For people visiting Japan, sushi is of course the most famous Japanese dish to try, but since you can try that abroad too (and if you go to a good enough place it might even be like Japanese sushi :-) ), I like to show visitors Japanese food that you cannot find elsewhere.

Ramen salad, a Sapporo specialty

When we were walking back towards his hotel and my bicycle, we stopped at a red light and four other people caught up to us there. They also spoke Swedish! It turned out to be four Swedish ladies travelling around Japan. They had been in Tokyo, and had just visited some small islands in the far north of Japan. They were going to stay a few days in Sapporo and then go south, finishing their trip in Hiroshima. When we met them they were heading for an electronics store to buy a battery charger for one of their cameras.

The next evening, I met up with my former classmate's husband again, and we went to an izakaya, a Japanese type of bar that typically serves Japanese food. When Japanese people go out to drink, this is one of the most common types of places to go too, and they serve a variety of food popular with Japanese people. We also had my Swedish colleague with us, and a Spanish guy from the same conference our Swedish guest was attending.

A very very common way to prepare fish in Japan. This is a "hokke", which I did not know the Swedish name for. Probably there is no Swedish name for it? Hokke is very common (as food) in Hokkaido.

I ordered a lot of different things to show a wide variety of  food, but ended up ordering a bit too much. It was nice, though.

Meeting this many Swedes in one week in Hokkaido is very rare. The only week I have met more Swedes was the week when the Sweden Hills area and Leksand (a small place in Sweden) celebrated the 20 year anniversary of their sister city agreement and 70 or so Swedes came here for midsummer. One time I randomly met a group of 15 Swedes in Hard Rock Cafe in Tokyo (where I was taken by an Australian woman showing foreigners around), but Tokyo is not in Hokkaido.

Osaka trip: okonomiyaki

I went to Osaka and met my friend who now works in Osaka. The first time we met, she was studying Swedish in Stockholm and I was just back in Sweden from my first six months stay in Sapporo. She wanted to practice Swedish and I wanted to practice Japanese to not forget the little I knew.

This time in Osaka, she took me to a famous Okonomiyaki restaurant. Osaka is famous for tako-yaki and okonomiyaki (food that is more like omelet, and is not served with rice).

Okonomiyaki means literally "fry what you like". You can usually choose what you want in it (and toppings to put on it too), with options like pork, beef, squid, octopus, cheese, shrimps, mushrooms, etc.

The place we went to served very nice okonomiyaki. The interior was also nice, in an old Japanese style. We had to stand in line and wait for about 20 minutes or so, and then wait another 15 minutes inside the restaurant, so the place is evidently popular.

In some okonomiyaki places you get to cook your food yourself on a hot plate on your table. The place we went to this time was not like that, but you had a hot plate in front of you to keep your food burning hot while you ate the rest of your food.