A Saturday night feast!

We had our first eat-out Saturday night experience last night in Tsukishima, an area famed for its Monjayaki - our meal to be. The captain of Steve's team invited us out, and four of us made our way to the area after Saturday afternoon's three and a half hour practice, meeting another three or four teammates and their wives/girlfriends for a meal at one of the many Japanese-type-bar establishments that line the streets of this old part of the city. We didn't really know what we were in for - but huddled around a long-ish narrow-ish table, on small, not-so-long chairs, and waited. Or, well... drank beer. The language thing wasn't too much of an issue, as most of the guys speak a little bit of English, and a few of them travel with phrase books or small dictionaries; also, the captain's girlfriend grew up in Texas (of all places - !), so she was translating for us, answering our what's-that-what's-in-there questions. (The language leftovers of the high school Japanese I took in grades 9, 10 and 11 are slowly surfacing, in bits and pieces... but I'm strictly limited to the most basic of basic phrases.)

So, this is how it went down. Onto the two, inlaid-in-the-table grills went - for warm-up snacks - sweet corn and a few pork skewers. And then came the waiters, to arrange and mix and grill the monja for us. Basically, a big bowl of ingredients - cabbage, bean sprouts, squid, octopus, and who knows what else - is grilled, and then grilled in a sauce until it forms a sort of wet, pancake type thingy... and then scraped off with little, personal metal scrapers, and eaten! That is my best description. We also ate udon, okonomiyaki (more of a pancake or egg-cake, with sprouts and beans and ??, topped with bbq sauce and mayo - also yum) and cucumber rounds with miso paste blobs. Before we (Steve and I) ate any of these things, pairs and trios and quads of voices asked us if we'd tried this or tried that, and most of the time we had to say that no, we hadn't. The extent of my knowledge of Japanese food was, before we arrived, limited to sushi, edamame and udon - so there is much to learn, much to try, and much to eat! So anyways, people would order something and then look at us with expectant curiosity as we ate, awaiting our reaction - thumbs up thumbs down? And it was alllll thumbs up - all SAFE, as one guy, Abe kept saying, as he umpire-motioned safe-at-the-plate.

Beer, snacks and peace signs abound...

Cooking up squiddies and bean sprouts

Manja!

Manja - almost ready to be scraped and eaten, framed with a bowl of edamame

And then, after the food and beer and cherry-flavoured Japanese wine, there was dessert - YUM! And it was yummy: a bite-sized crepe with a sweet bean filling, dipped in a sort of honey-ish molasses sauce... it was gooooood! After eating our fill of new and delicious foods, with new, fabulous friends (yay), we finished the meal by saying "Gochisousamadeshta", which translates to "it was quite a feast" as a thank you for the meal. It was indeed quite a meal - a Saturday night feast - for which Steve and I (and our bellies) were very thankful!