お好み焼きを食べた時 (When We Had Okonomi Yaki)

in which Natsumi gets a New Haircut

Today we had Shimo-san, my ATW tutor over for dinner, along with Joe, the head of the tutors program. My host mother decided to celebrate the occasion (she has known Joe for a while) by preparing materials for cooking okonomi yaki (a Japanese pancake with various options to add to the batter, like vegetables, pork, beef, chicken, fish, octopus, cheese, etc). We all sat around a frying pan that she placed in the middle of the table and added whatever we wanted to our own. I really like octopus now, so I made sure to add a lot of that (funny bit of trivia: octopus is pronounced “tako” in Japanese, so whenever I’m asked if I’ve ever eaten cute little tako on a stick with the little tentacles still there, it’s a little confusing) along with kimchee and beef. We cooked them ourselves, which was fun because the waiting just made it all the more delicious. You eat the finished okonomi yaki with a sort of bbq sauce on top, mixed with mayonnaise. It sounds rather odd, but really it didn’t taste all that different from things I’ve had before. Except a lot better than most things I’ve had before.

While we were cooking, Shimo-san, Joe, Papa-san, and Mama-san were speaking in very fast Japanese, so I really don’t remember much of what we talked about. At some point, Natsumi got up and left the table, which didn’t really seem odd at first. After a long while of even faster Japanese, we eventually hear loud crying coming from upstairs. Mama-san goes up to see what’s wrong, and we talk for a while longer. Eventually Papa-san goes upstairs too, leaving Shimo-san, Joe, and myself to all simultaneously wonder what is wrong.

Eventually Papa-san comes down and explains no one is hurt and that, for reasons I will not discuss thoroughly here, Natsumi cut off just about all of her hair. Shimo-san and Joe leave, and Papa-san, Mama-san, and I have a talk about what happened, and Natsumi eventually apologizes, because she felt like she ruined the evening. Didn’t really bother me, though. It’s not like I understood any of what was going on anyway.