Japanese with anime voice: episode47
Hello, I’m Sachi.
7 May is こなもん (Konamon) Day. こなもん (Konamon) is a corruption of the word 粉もの (konamono), which means food made from flour. It mainly refers to takoyaki, okonomiyaki, udon, soba and bread. What’s interesting about this is that this day was established by the Japan こなもん (Konamon) Association, which seems to have been founded by a group of こなもん (Konamon) product lovers. こなもん (Konamon) lovers love こなもん (Konamon) so much that they even established an association.
I like こなもん (Konamon) too. But I often have たこパ (takopa), but never with okonomiyaki. たこパ (takopa) is an shortened version of takoyaki party, though. What do you call an okonomiyaki party? I’ve never heard of an okonomiyaki party in the first place. If I were to say it, would it be Okonomipa, Okonopa or Okopa? If it was in these terms, I have no idea what you are talking about.
You can cook several takoyaki at once, but you can only cook two okonomiyaki at most on a household griddle. If you want to make very tiny okonomiyaki, you might be able to cook three or so. I don’t know why, but takoyaki parties are much more common in Japanese households than okonomiyaki parties.
たこ (tako:octopus) is not the only ingredient to use when having takopa at home. Did you know that? I often put ポークビッツ (porkbits) and cheese. ポークビッツ (porkbits) are tiny, thin sausages. I don’t know if this is something unique to Japan or if it came from somewhere else. It is called takoyaki because it is cooked with たこ (tako:octopus), but when you do it at home, you can make takoyaki with whatever ingredients you like.
When we make takoyaki at our house, my partner set quotas for the amount of takoyaki each of us has to eat. For example, if we can make 100 takoyaki, each of us has to eat 50. It’s the same with gyoza. If you make 100 gyoza, each person has to eat 50. My partner is the kind of person who needs to make a lot of food, no matter what it is. Whether it’s udon, soba or pasta, he always boils six batches of noodles, even though it’s for two people. I tell him I don’t eat that many noodles, but he says you always finish them. It’s not that I eat it all, it’s just that he cooks so much that I have to eat it. When I try to boil three or at most four batches of noodles, he wants more noodles. Even four batches of noodles is double the normal amount.
He always says he has to save money, but he tries to eat a lot of takoyaki and gyoza, especially when it comes to noodles. When I tell him that he doesn’t have to try to eat so much at one time, he says that if we don’t have enough, we can buy some more. I don’t know whether he wants to save money or not.
Well, I’ve been with him for such a long time that my sense of how much I eat is becoming increasingly strange.
There is a ramen restaurant that my partner and I often go to. The amount of noodles there is usually 300g. Well, it is a bit much. Many women seem to ask for the amount of noodles to be reduced to 150g or 200g. Incidentally, the amount of noodles can be increased for an additional charge. My partner always orders 500g of noodles. 500g! That’s crazy, isn’t it? Really. I eat it with 300g of noodles. The ramen at that Ramen restaurant contains two thick slices of chashu pork. It’s quite hard to finish it. However, we always both finish our respective ramen quantity, 500g and 300g.
One day when I was hungover, three of us, including my partner, went to that noodle shop. I was a bit sick on the way there, so I lay down in the car. When we ordered our ramen, I asked for my usual quantity of 300g. Then one of my relatives said to me, ‘You must be sick with a hangover.’ I replied that I was, but that I didn’t want to eat the same amount of ramen today as I always eat 300g because I would feel like a loser. Then he said, no, ‘I don’t understand, even your thinking is crazy.’ Yes, I really think so too. As I have adapted to my partner, my sense of how much I eat has become more and more incorrect. The amount of food I eat is no longer what the average girl eats. When I ate some of onigiri my mom made for me after ate lunch, she was surprised at how much I ate. But, well, eating means living. That’s how hard I want to live. So does that mean he does too…
