You gotta eat Sushi in Japan

I know it's rather cliche but when you are in Japan, you gotta eat Sushi. You can buy sushi from everywhere now, even from Tesco, Boots, M&S or Costco. I have even seen meat sushi, hah???
But once you go to Japan and try Sushi, you would know the real difference.

Sushi literally means sour-tasting as it originally started as a fermented rice and fish, adding vinegar for preservation. Sushi we know now (i.e. not fermented) was originated in late 18c to 19c in Tokyo (or known as Edo in those days), using freshly caught fish in Tokyo Bay (or Edo Bay). Wasabi is often smeared between the rice and a slice of raw fish to reduce the risk of food poisoning and light pinkish coloured sweet picked ginger, called gari, is eaten between sushi courses for cleansing palate and aiding digestion. You can eat sushi with fingers.

Eating sushi used to be a very special and expensive dining experience until conveyor belt sushi (kaitenzushi) gain popularity in 1970, making sushi inexpensive and more accessible to family dining.  According to wikipedia, the inventor of convener belt sushi had problems staffing his small sushi restaurant and had difficulties managing the restaurant by himself. Having watched beer bottles on a conveyor belt in an Asahi brewery, he designed and developed the first conveyor belt sushi in Osaka in 1958.

We went to Ganko-zushi, one of those conveyor belt sushi restaurant chains in Osaka for a quick lunch. Typical sushi plate (with 2 pieces of sushi) costs around £1.00 - 3.00 (based on exchange rate of approximately £1 = 180 or 185 yen last year). We ate reasonable quantity of sushi between 5 of us and came only about 6,000 yen, which was equivalent to approximately £35! Wow, definitely good value for money!

Window displays of what they serve.

We were seated by the rotating conveyor belt with good selections of sushi.  The restaurant was busy enough so turnover of sushi was good and you could still get almost freshly made sushi. Sushi chefs are constantly making sushi to add to conveyor belt, which is a good sign.

We love Anago (grilled eel with tasty sauce) so we ordered those to start with. By the way, you can get water or green tea for free, unlike some conveyor belt restaurants in UK who charge for a glass of water off the tap!

We also had tuna. This one was 180 yen which was about £1.00!!!

This one below is called gun-kan (literally meaning army ship) filled with sushi rice and tuna and grated mountain potato on top encased with seaweed.  This one was freshly made. If you can't find sushi on the conveyor belt or want fresh one, you can ask sushi chef to make one fresh for you.

You can also order miso soup with clams.

In the meantime, varieties of sushi keeps coming around. I see salmon sushi is approaching .....

I asked sushi chef to make me "aji" sushi or jack mackerel. This comes with grated ginger and chopped spring onion on top. This was yummy, especially sushi rice was hand-held warm.

Emily and Maria tried crab gratin and loved it. It had lots of crab meat inside!

We tried different types of sushi between us.

I think we had enough.....

It did not break our bank, in fact it was Emily and Maria's treat!  Even better!

As we were leaving the restaurant, more people kept coming in and chefs were busily preparing more sushi.

At home, you can also order sushi from nearby sushi shop to be delivered to your home (the one in the front).  Yellow ones are tamagozushi (egg), white ones are ika (squid), orange ones are sake (salmon), red ones are magiro (tuna), light pink ones are hamachi (Japanese amberjack) and silver one is saba (mackerel).

The ones in the back, brown sushi, are called "inarizushi", a pouch of fried tofu filled with sushi rice. It is named after the Shinto God Inari who is believed to have a fondness for fried tofu. The ones surrounding inarizushi are makizushi or rolled sushi wrapped in seaweed. These all home made by my mother.

The one in the middle is typical county-side food with tofu, fried tofu, cooked vegetables such as mountain potatoes, carrots, roots vegetables and also some local red akagai (surf clam).  These preserve well and are often eaten during year end or new year when shops are closed for holiday as they live in a small town in country side (although shops are not necessarily closed in a big city like Osaka or Tokyo anymore ....)

Huge sushi mug I bought for my husband for souvenir at Kansai International Airport

Sushi fridge magnet I bought at a Japanese department store.

Wow, talking about sushi makes me wanting to eat sushi in Japan. We just need to go back to Osaka again very soon.....

That's all forks!

What you can eat in Japan - Okonomi-yaki (Japanese savoury pancake)

If you are in Japan, especially in Osaka, you got to eat Okonomi-yaki. This is a Japanese savoury pancake, literally meaning 'cooked what you like' and is made of batter with flour, grated yam, dashi (Japanese soup stock), eggs and shredded cabbage, and you add extra ingredients such as meat, seafood, vegetables or cheese. Most of Okonomi-yaki restaurant has a cook who prepares the dish in front of you on a hot plate. Once ready, you eat it with Okonomi-yaki sauce (a bit like brown sauce but more sweater, saltier and thicker), green seaweed flakes, bonito flakes and Japanese mayonnaise.

We went to Botejyu in Umeda, which is a chain Okonomi-yaki restaurant.

Customers sit at counters watching a cook preparing Okonomi-yaki on hot plate.

In Japan most of restaurants have show-windows displaying plastic models of foods they serve, which look real, and inside of the restaurant menus often have pictures of foods they serve too, so if you don't understand Japanese, all you got to do is to point at a picture of what you fancy and you never go starve, ha ha ha!

So we sat at the counter. Wow, it was really hot sitting there as you got the heat off the hot plate right in front of you.

As we were taking pictures, the cook was busily preparing out food, mumbling to himself in Japanese, "Oh no, I am feeling pressure here ....".

The cook mixing all the ingredients throughly before pouring onto the hot plate.

Okonomi-yaki mix with lots of vegetables...

Checking orders for other customers too.

Preparing fried noodles to add to Okonomi-yaki for other customers....

He then put whatever extra ingredients you want from the menu. Emily, Maria and my sister opted for pork and bacon whilst I decided to try oysters as they were in the season in winter. and it was on their special menu.

Three Okonomi-yaki with pork and bacon in the front
and my oyster one is in the back being cooked on the hot plate.

Whilst we were waiting we had grilled aubergine slices with say sauce and mustard.

As Okonomi-yaki was getting ready, the cook put a lid over the okonomi-yaki to trap the heat and to ensure it would cook thoroughly, not just the top and bottom but middle too.
They were almost ready!  He then clean the hot plate to get ready for more orders for other customers.

Bowls of Okonomi-yaki mix are waiting to be grilled on the hot plate....

Once ready, you then add tasty Okonomi-yaki sauce, mayonnaise, green seaweed flakes and bonito flakes.

You then eat it with this steel spatula to slice the Okonomi-yaki in bite sizes.

If you wish to recreate this dish (but it would not be the same as you can't get the suitable type of potato here such as yama-imo, a bit like yam), you can try using the following ingredients for mix and cook it using a frying pan.

1 egg
50g plain flour
50g stock, cooled (or ideally Japanese dashi stock if you can buy it)
125g cabbage, thinly shredded
15g grated raw potato (though you could cook them to mash to give a softer consistency)
spring onions, chopped

You can go to a Chinese supermarket (unless you can go to a Japanese store) and buy okonomi-yaki sauce, if not you may try HP sauce mixing with Japanese soy sauce. Some Chinese shops may also sell Okonomi-yaki mix too if you want just adding extra ingredients to it.

Mmmmm, I may go to a Chinese supermarket this afternoon to see if I could buy some mix and make this at home for dinner.

That's all forks.

What you can eat in Osaka, Japan - Floating Garden in Umeda Sky Building

We have just been to the Umeda Sky Building in Osaka which is 173m high and was completed in 1993. It is described as "a pair of skyscrapers connected in mid-air built in an unusual architectural form not often encountered anywhere in the world." It is earthquake-proof with disaster protection.

The two 40-story skyscrapers are connected at their top floors with a huge atrium that extends about 150 meters and Sky Walk at the very top where visitors can feel the fresh air and enjoy 360-degree panoramic views of Osaka city. The idea of the building is that it is covered with the half-mirror glass that reflects the sky so that it seems to become 'one with the firmament' (according to their website information and not my own word obviously!), giving the appearance as if the garden is alone and floating there in the blue sky.

Architectural model of the building and its surrounding area

Looking up to the floating garden

You use this escalator to get to the floating garden and to the Sky Walk.

There is a small snack bar in the observation deck. We bought an ice cream corn, hot dogs and ice coffee float and consumed these whilst looking out the city of Osaka.

 The views from the top are interesting.

And it was rather apt to have an ice coffee float up in the floating garden and chill.  You also get a free wifi and catch up with your friends whilst having some snack up there.

Floating coffee float....

That's all forks!