On Thursday I met my friend Yui for lunch. Yui is the music teacher at my school. A couple of months into the year, I asked her where she ate lunch. When she told me she usually just ate alone in the music room, I insisted that she join my class on the days she visited our school. From then on we had a standing lunch date every Wednesday and Friday, and I looked forward to those days each week.
For our final lunch date, we decided on okonomiyaki. It's kind of like a big savory pancake filled with shredded cabbage, pork, seafood and practically anything else you fancy. It's cooked on a hot plate at your table, then topped with katsuo bushi (dried fish flakes), mayonnaise and okonomiyaki sauce. The restaurant was on the 29th floor and oh, boy did it have a view!
For the first time I actually remembered to take photos while I was out to eat! Also, since I wasn't by myself, I had someone to take a photo of me!
All okonomiyaki restaurants are a bit different. Sometimes they bring you all the ingredients and you have to make it yourself. At one of our favorite places in Tango they bring it to you ready to go. Here, they mixed it up and prepared it right in front of you, so you get to see the magic happen, but with none of the work. First, she made sure everything was mixed together well.
Then, she poured it all onto the hot plate.
...And shaped it into a nice, round pancake.
In the meantime while the okonomiyaki was doing it's thing, we had some other dishes that offered more immediate satisfaction - yakisoba and moyashitamago.
As bittersweet as all these goodbyes are, I am getting excited. I'm going to the airport to meet B tomorrow afternoon, and, as I was walking to the station this morning I noticed a few blossoms on the cherry trees I passed! In a few days they are going to look like huge puffs of cotton candy and I absolutely cannot wait!
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