Okonomi-mura

Down to Hiroshima today with a brief stop at Okayama (picked up an eki stampu, I'm sure there will be more on that some time) to change Shinkansen, Hikari to Sakura for those that may care.

We had a sunset stroll around the Peace Memorial Park with Hiroshima native Nori who had zipped down from Tokyo this morning to see us here. A very reflective place, not without beauty but that just isn't the focus.

Then we hit Okonomi-mura, the okonomiyaki village that comprises a 5 storey building filled with okonomiyaki restaurants. Okonomiyaki (as I understand it) is a dish from western Japan made up in layers including a pancake, shredded cabbage, bean sprouts, bacon, some sort of sprinkles (help please Nori), then your choice of extras (we had squid), all topped with an egg, okonomiyaki sauce and shredded dried nori (dark green seaweed, not him). The thing is, Hiroshima's version adds noodles into the layers and becomes a behemoth in the process. A delicious behemoth. We sampled them at Nori's favourite place, recommended to him as his mother's favourite, who in turn was recommended it as her boss's favourite - a good pedigree then.

They were not wrong.

Oh, and we started today by being woken up at 5.33 to the sound of our phones blaring out sirens. The networks had sent out emergency warnings which we found out override all mute buttons and settings. Then we felt the M5.8 earthquake. Talk about an authentic Japanese experience.