30 days challenges: food - Day 12: Monjayaki

WARNING: This post contains disgusting pictures.

Today the CTO of my workplace decided to treat me to some Monjayaki (and okonomiyaki). I told him about my 30 days challenge, and he proposed this. I had never heard about it, so I accepted.

Day 12: Monjayaki, or, the most visually disgusting food ever.

 

This looks just like a pile of v...
But It's actually pretty good! It's a good thing, in this kind of restaurant, you actually made it yourself, so I was able to see it being made in front of my eyes, or I don't think I could have been able to eat it.
You eat it with a little spatula, scratching the burnt part and eating it directly.
I also took pictures of the process, I'll post them too, because they make it seem less disgusting

30 days challenges: food - Day 11: Dorayaki

Today I felt lazy and stayed home, so I didn't know what to eat. Around 10:30 PM I went out to try and find something in a conbini, and noticed that if I would have gone out 1 hour before, I would have been able to see the local matsuri of my neighbourhood.... laziness is evil.

Day 11: Dorayaki

Dorayaki is 2 pancake-like patties made from castella wrapped around a filling of sweet Azuki red bean paste. It's really good, but I prefer Taiyaki to it.

Everytime I post about some food, I actually do a little search about it before, and today I learned that around 2003 there was a popular meme on the internet regarding Dorayaki. that consisted of a bunny called Oolong, balancing a Dorayaki on his head with the caption "I have no idea what you're talking about... so here's a bunny with a pancake on its head". You can learn more about this meme here:  http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/pancake-bunny

30 days challenges: food - Day 10: Beef Kushiyaki

First thing: this post is 1 day late, but the food was eaten yesterday, so it's still ok for the challenge, which is to eat 1 different food everyday, not post about it everyday!

Yesterday I went to another matsuri, but it wasn't so great, so I wont post about it, but you can find the pictures here: Hanabi 8/03

Day 10: Beef Kushiyaki

 

To be fair, I'm really not sure about this name, but Kushiyaki is the general term to describe skewer grilled food, both poultry and non-poultry... and this one was beef. There's a couple results for this term "Beef Kushiyaki" on google, so I went with it.
It was pretty good, but it's in a festival so it was pretty expensive!

30 days challenges: food - Day 9: karē raisu

Nothing really fancy today, but something delicious, and really easy to make, Japanese curry with rice (and pork in this case). In japan you can find this kind of curry everywhere, and in multiple form. The cheapest I found was a big bag of curry in flakes, easy to melt, and really good.

Day 9: karē raisu (Japanese Curry with rice)

You can see on this picture, it's pretty simple, rice, and curry, and whatever is in the curry (in this case, only pork, because I'm saving money right now). I had originally planned to go to COCO Ichiban for the day I would post about curry, which is a good curry chain restaurant, but instead I'm showing you my home made curry!

30 days challenges: food - Day 8: Gyuudon

Gyuudon is really simple, it's beef, with onions, served on rice, in a bowl.
If you're on a hurry, or a tight budget, it's the prefect meal in japan. There's shop specializing in Gyuudon everywhere, it's usually fast and really cheap. The closest one to my home is Matsuya (who calls their gyuudon; gyuumeshi) and it only cost 280円 for 1 bowl, and it comes with a miso soup too.

Day 8: Gyuudon:

Matsuya is one of the 3 biggest fast food chains specialized in gyuudon, the other 2 being Yoshinoya and Sukiya. I actually prefer Yoshinoya, but close to my house, and close to my workplace, there are only Matsuya.

30 days challenges: food - Day 7: Onigiri

Nothing really fancy today, I went to the conbini and bought some Onigiris.

Day 7: Onigiri

Onigiri are pretty simple, it's rice pressed together, surrounding some kind of ingredient, usually fish, surrounded by nori.

Usually Onigiri have a triangle form, but this one, which is my favourite, is made like a hockey puck.

30 days challenges: food - Day 6: Shabu-Shabu

Today was my friends birthday. We both love Shabu-Shabu, so we went to one of our favourite restaurants in Tokyo, MK.

Day 6: Shabu-Shabu

Shabu-Shubu is a kind of Nabe (hot-pot),  or like a fondue. You have a pot in the middle, you cook food in it, and eat it. Shabu-Shabu's pot contain an almost tasteless soup, depending on the place, sometimes it's just water, usually there's some konbu (a kind of algae), or some other dashi based soup. Shabu-Shabu's taste doesn't come from the soup, but from the sauces you dip the meat/vegetables/noodles in. There's usually 2 of these sauce: Ponzu (which is heavenly delicious) and a sesame based sauce.

I love ponzu, and I love Shabu-Shabu, it is probably my favourite Japanese meal.