Japan Adventure #6

Tonight, it was pretty much pouring. I waited in the hotel lobby in the hopes of catching a couple of attendees that were not planning to attend the social event that I could maybe join for dinner, but was unsuccessful. I debated just eating at the hotel given the weather, and the lack of dining companions, but I knew I would regret not getting out into town and having some authentic food, especially since lunch the last two days has been grabbing a quick box lunch at the hotel. It is authentic Japanese lunch (I haven’t been getting the Western-style sandwiches they offer as an option), such as Teriyaki chicken, beef or pork sukiyaki, etc but still, getting out is part of the experience.

So I asked the concierge to recommend an okonomi-yaki restaurant. All of the tourist literature says that okonomi-yaki and the local oysters are a specialty here in Hiroshima, so I figured I would go for that. Map in hand, I was off. I figured it wasn’t a big deal to get wet for the few blocks I would have to walk, but apparently the bellhops would have none of it. They literally chased me down the block to hand me an umbrella, which I was glad to have, because I would have been VERY wet by the time I got to the restaurant and back. I passed a gas station (one of the landmarks the concierge gave me) and almost didn’t realize it was a gas station – it didn’t have the standard pumps like we have, mounted in cement islands. Instead, I think in order to conserve space, it was just a parking lot in front of a building, and the pump handles and hoses were hanging down from above on those spring-loaded reels like they use at the Jiffy-lube for the oil fillers.

Anyway, there were 3 places that the concierge recommended, but there was a slight problem in identification, because my map was in English, but the establishments all had signs with only kanji on them. The concierge had written the kanji next to the names, but I was coming up dry in trying to match printed and stylized characters from the signs with her handwriting. I ended up choosing the only place that had an English sign, named after the food that they serve. It was a pretty small, hole-in-the wall kind of place, but I knew I had chosen correctly, because it was full of locals, even at 7:45pm on a rainy Tuesday night, and as far as I could tell, several members of the same family were working there (likely the owners). Fortunately, they had an English menu to go with the sign. The place was something like the teppanyaki restaurant, in that the griddle was right out in the open, and if you wanted, you could actually sit at the griddle. I chose a table, but noted while I was watching them cook that when they served people at the griddle, you actually ate right off of the griddle, probably in order to keep it warm. Okonomiyaki starts with a freshly made pancake the thickness of a crepe. They put noodles, meat and vegetables on top of it (piled high), then top it with a thinly scrambled egg, fresh green onions, and some sort of brown sauce, probably fish sauce or something. They served mine on a heated cast-iron plate. I got one with squid, prawns, scallops, and green onion. It was quite tasty, and huge – I had trouble finishing it.