Day 33: Wednesday, November 19. Dinner at Train Station.

Tonight we went out for dinner around the Umeda train station in downtown Osaka. I was given the task of choosing a place to eat, with Kate's only request being that the place a) be kid-friendly, and b) have "easy" food to eat. It's often best for just one person to choose the restaurant, because there are SO many places to choose from and two people trying to get a consensus on a place means it will take forever to decide.

So I chose an innocent-enough looking place. Usually the decisions are made by the menu posted outside, or, more frequently, by the plastic food displays that many restaurants have in their windows. I chose one that seemed to have food that everyone would eat, and in we went.

It was only after we got to our table that we realized we had chosen an okonomiyaki restaurant, a place where your whole table is actually a hot griddle and you fry up an eggy, fishy pancake on top of it. Hmmm. Kid friendly? Not so much. Easy food? Nope on that account. But once we sat down, we decided to make the best of it.

They had an English menu, which was only marginally helpful. We pointed and gestured enough to get our very kind, very helpful waitress to bring us some food (and two beers for us parents). She kept glancing nervously at Malcolm who was grabbing everything in sight and saying, "Careful. Very Hot." and pointing at the griddle/table. Malcolm was actually great, though.

As was customary at this place, the waitress mixed up the batter for us and poured it on the griddle, instructing us simply to "wait." After a few minutes she returned and flipped it, again leaving us with the command, "wait." All was good until she returned a bit later and pointed to the sauces and seasonings at the end of the table. She then left, which Kate, reasonably I think, took as a signal that we could season the food as we wished. She grabbed a dish of sauce, started to spread a little on the food, and DEAR GOD NO! there was literally a scream from the kitchen and the waitress came running over to stop her. She said "no no no!" and actually scraped off the tiny amount of sauce that Kate managed to get on the food. It was so comical I think we were both laughing, despite having committed, apparently, the greatest food faux pas in all of Japan.

And then, two minutes later, she returned to give us the green light on seasoning.

It turned out to be really very tasty, as was the noodle dish we gave to Malcolm (after giving him a few bites of the egg, to which he responded with an immediate rash all over his mouth and cheeks).