14. More friends and Monja-yaki

After Chen's we were set to meet up with some more of Carolyn's Japanese friends, Yasuko and Tomoko. Before we left though, I took a few pics from our room in Tokyo at night, no other city I've seen sprawls out with the same density as Tokyo. It is amazing just to sit there and look at the scale of it all and the blinking red lights on the buildings.

They decided to take us to a Monja-yaki Restuarant, Monja-yaki or Monja for short, originates in Tokyo like Okonomyaki is to Osaka. The main difference is that Monja is a lot more hands on, you have to mince/chop the cabbage, form a well, pour the liquid in which ends up making a bit of a sticky paste at the end that you scrape off with little spatulas.

Yasuko and Tomoko were impressed with my skills on the hotplate even though I had never been to a Monja bar in my life and got a good laugh when I was mocking a Japanese man across from us who couldn't form a watertight well!

Yasuko and Tomoko were both very nice and fun people who were quite interested in what I thought of Japan. Yasuko spoke a bit of English and we talked about all manner of things, she wanted me to try Natto which are slimy, fermented soy beans that are usually eaten at breakfast. When she said that everyone eats it here, I asked her if she had ever eaten Vegemite. The recoil on her face showed she had and she never wanted to try it again, after that she appreciated the fact that I may not want to try Natto.