Japanese Cooking

I usually savour the delights of Japanese food in restaurants but at home I am criminally unadventurous with what I cook. My diet usually consists of rice, fish and, if I am feeling impulsive, a carrot. I tend to make this meal because when I come home after teaching I'm usually tired and I just want something quick and easy to make. And if it wasn't for the fact that my microwave looks like it’s barely survived a nuclear-holocaust, I would probably live off microwave meals.
After 11 months of this mundane home cooking I could almost hear my taste buds yelling, "Oi, chump! We're bloody bored of fish. Give us something else to chew on, or we'll attack you."
Not wishing to find out what would happen if my taste buds attacked me, I decided on hunting down a Japanese cookbook. There is a book shop near my apartment and I scoured the cooking section of the store. The selection was not a great. There was a sushi cookbook with a mad looking chef on the front cover vilontly wielding a blade above a piece of sushi. Far from appearing like a cookbook, it resembled a cookbook for mass murderers.
Another book showed a jolly rotund woman laughing as she held up two plates of appetizing dishes. This was promising until I noticed a bit of food inside her open mouth. Holding back a retch, I skimmed through the final book which just had the title and pictures of particular dishes, and nothing else. There were no instructions as to how to make it.
Defeated, I left the store and went to the supermarket to buy more fish. As I was eating later that night, I noticed my tongue had a coarse feel to it as if it was turning into sandpaper. This unprecedented feeling led me to believe my taste buds were indeed attacking me. They were true to their word!
This had to stop and something needed to be done. I needed to change the food content in my flat. And help, as so often, came from one of my students.
I was asking Mihoko, my Thursday morning student, about what she did at the weekend. She told me that her daughter was visiting from Tokyo so she had decided to cook a big meal. I asked what this meal was and she told me it was Suki-yaki. I didn't know what Suki-yaki was and asked her to enlighten me. She struggled with the vocabulary of preparing food, so what followed was a lesson based on cooking food. I taught her the vocabulary of things such as cut, slice, chop, boil and simmer, and she would tell me how to cook various Japanese dishes, whilst I took notes. I was fearful that this lesson was being used for my benefit, but Mihoko seemed to be enjoying it because she clearly loved cooking and she gave me the recipes for such exotic sounding meals I later tried to make myself. Dishes like Oyako Donburi - a Japanese 'fast-food' dish with meat eggs and Negi (Japanese onion) mixed with sugar, sake and soy sauce and placed on top of rice. Results in the kitchen when I attempted to make it: scolded pan, minor explosion and my ceiling covered in egg residue.
She told me how to make Cha-han - a Chinese dish where you fry thin slices of ham and onion in a pan, then scramble some eggs separately and put this in with the ham and onions. Then you put in some rice to stir in with the mix. Results in the kitchen: Onion tears falling into the pan, heavy spatula landing with a 'clunk' on my foot, and a ferocious spitting of the frying pan when heated causing me to duck for cover behind my sofa.
Finally, she gave the recipe for Okonamiyake - chop half a cabbage, beat two eggs and put them all into a pan. Then put some flour into the pan (three quarters of a mug) and stir this all together without the heat on. Then in a separate frying pan you fry pork, octopus and shrimp until it is cooked. Then put the flour, egg and cabbage mix into the frying pan to cook on either side, drenching it with soy-sauce. Results in the kitchen: Wondering if I imagined seeing an octopus tentacle move when I was about to chop it into small pieces, the shrimp jumping like pogo enthusiasts when heated, and using too much pork causing my flat to smell like and abattoir.
Maybe I could repay Mihoko the favour by telling her the ingredients of some staple British foods like Steak and Kidney Pie, Black Pudding and greasy full English Breakfasts.
OK, maybe not.