Someone who burns his tongue on okonimiyaki has no patience

Sorry the posts are slow in coming, I’ve been busy lately with work and getting the best out of life in Osaka and Kansai before I move to Tokyo next week.

On another note, here’s a little adage I came up with: someone who burns his tongue on okonomiyaki has no patience.

When you’re hungry, and you’re not at home, then you usually go somewhere to eat. If at that place you order okonomiyaki (see post on Osaka), your patience will be tested. You see, it’s generally described as a pancake-type thing, but its made mostly of vegetables and egg, like an omelet. Unlike an omelet, the surface it’s cooked on isn’t that hot. It’s hot enough to cook it, but its a slow cooking process; they keep the heat up when they first put it on, then reduce is significantly til it’s done. And oh does it take its time to be done, anywhere from 10 to 20 minutes. Furthermore, its generally done right in front of the customer, which means that you are going to sit there and watch it cook for 20 minutes. It doesn’t stop there though, it’s not one of the those stir-fry situations where it doesn’t even look that appetizing til its totally cooked; on the contrary, within a minute it looks ready to go. I assure you that you will, several times, be convinced that the cook is in gross error and that it is in fact done. So you’re sitting there, watching your food cook, but not noticing anything perceptible happening to it and definitely noting how delicious it is right now. Still, you can’t do anything til its done, since they have to dress it when its finished. So you wait. Still, all that is the easy part. Once it’s done and dress and cut up, right there ready for you to dig in, the boys are separated from the men. It’s been sitting on this hot surface for the duration of the process, and it remains on said hot surface. The heat is usually turned down or off, at least at your setting if it’s part of a longer bar serving other customers, but the cooling rate is still reduced significantly, and it is generally quite hot.

So now you are perfectly free to finally indulge in your meal, but it is very hot, and you know that. And therein lies the test of patience.

The adage isn’t accurate of course; you could probably be the most or least patient person in the world and still burn your tongue or not. It’s more in the vein of the countless sayings with no real basis that people here seem to love. Like, if you let someone put their thumb on your chin you must be a masochist, or if you let children pee on worms their members’ll swell up. I get random ‘wise sayings’ like that all the time here, so I figured I might as well add one. That’s the culture lesson for the day.

I’ll get on trying to get some substantive stuff up in the next week or so, probably next weekend.