Day 29

7-11-08

Today was, as my host brother Yuta put it, "Yakisoba Friday." If this is an actual weekly tradition, like it sounds, I'm going to be very, very happy. Friday is the day that Noriko has cram school and my Okaasan works at the store, so it's just the guys at home. Which is probably why there is yakisoba: it is easy to cook. Now it's the guys and me on Fridays, which is just peachy because I definitely prefer Japanese bachelor food--simple, easy and tasty--to the enormous, elaborate meals usually served.

In the elevator on the way up to our apartment, my Otoosan asked if I liked yakisoba. My heart leapt in my chest; I love yakisoba! He then asked if I knew yakisoba, which I do, and then, in a very pleading, desperate voice, asked me if I would help make it. I agreed wholeheartedly.

My task was to cook the meat (which I assumed was beef, though it was in strips like bacon). It should have been an easy task. But no. The knife I was using was so magnificently dull that I would have thought I was using the wrong side if I hadn't been pushing on the other side with my hand. Could this knife cut through bacon-thin strips of meat? Of course not. Through a combination of hacking with the pointless knife, pulling the meat apart with my hands, and sheer force of will, I managed to get it into managable pieces. It cooked up nicely, and we threw it into the hot plate on the table along with the cabbage, bean sprouts, onions and noodles. (Table top griddles are one of my favorite things about Japan; you can cook your food right on the table and eat it out straight out of the pan!)

It was, of course, delicious.