Takoyaki party!

Since it's been almost a week since my last post, and since the trickle of comments has dried up on that one, I've decided to post some more pictures of my trip. One day, Mie's older sister, who has two kids, invited us over to make takoyaki. Before that, we passed the time playing sugoroku, which is a generic name for a type of boardgame that generally just involves rolling a die or spinning a spinner, etc. to decide how many pieces to move. So, like Candy Land, except without the candy theme. This particular game was all about ojisan gyaggu, old puns and jokes that older men tend to say. An ojisan is an uncle, but it's also the term for any older guy who isn't old enough to be an ojiisan, a grandpa. So, you would play like normal, and on certain squares, had to say one of these gags, which are very corny and dumb, so of course I love them. The little girl in the picture is Misato, Mie's cute-as-a-button niece, whom we often call Mi-chan. Her younger brother was with his dad, so it was just the three of us and Mie's sister (not in the picture), Kaori. I don't remember who won, actually.


Here's us making the takoyaki. Tako means octopus, and yaki comes from yaku, which means to fry or burn or bake or whatever. The character is 焼く, if you are interested. The character for octopus is 鮹　or 蛸, but neither is used very much. Anyway, as you can probably guess, takoyaki is cooked octopus. Specifically, it is little balls of dough with octopus (sometimes other things like shrimp, too) that are cooked in this special maker thing that looks like a hot plate. It has little half-sphere indentations, and you fill those up most of the way with batter, and then add the stuff that goes inside. You have to turn the balls to make them cook evenly and get a nice shape to them, which requires a bit of skill.

Misato is quite the little cook, so hers were probably the best. Apparently, I don't turn them fast enough, so mine get cooked more thoroughly, but I think it's better that way. We divided the hot-plate into territories for which we were each responsible for one, except Misato, who was in charge of her mother's territory, too. Despite that, she still had time to intervene in mine because from her and Mie's point of view I ran my territory rather like a third-world country. Regardless, they were delicious!

Misato and her mom gave us these matching hats for Christmas, which turned out to be pretty convenient because it was easier to find each other on the ski slopes with them on. But, that's a post for another time!