And just like that (tries to snap fingers but fails because I never learnt how to snap my fingers so claps hands clumsily instead) we're up to date. Daily for the world, or the... charitably estimating... less than ten people who read this blog.

We're not accepting bets against me keeping it up, the odds are too bad.

One of the many, many things I ate with Andy last week was Okonomiyaki. In case you don't know, it's often called Japanese pancake, which... I guess it is, but it's pretty unique and bears only a passing resemblance to American or European pancakes. You basically make a kind of batter with lot of vegetables and some kind of main meat or shell fish mixed in then fry it like a pancake and when it's finished cover it with fish sauce, mayonaise, fish flakes and dried nori (seaweed) powder. It's from Osaka, where they make everything like this (fried to hell and covered in fish sauce, mayonaise and fish flakes) but I've never been there and the best Okonomiyaki I've ever had is at Andy's regular haunt, Ichi-ban Boshi in Fukuoka. But at Ichi-ban Boshi they cook it for you, whereas at Fugetsu, the big Sapporo chain, you cook it yourself. So I took Andy to do that for the first time.


See that? 'Scuse my French Ma'am, but that's a motherfucking hexagonal okonomiyaki that I'm crafting there. My okonomiyaki skills are strong at the moment - next time I'm going to construct a 23 dimensional one, and this all leads up to my eventual dream of opening an okonomiyaki joint in Birmingham (apparently there's only one in all of Europe, in London).

It's all part of the plan.