Monjayaki with Chef~

A few nights ago I had the pleasure of meeting and dining with one of my Japanese Twitter friends, Tmkwon The Chef. Like many Japanese, he doesn't put his real name on the internetz or even show his entire face on profile photos. But I don't have Photoshop on my Vaio so I had to get creative in Paint. Sorry, Chef!

We met up in Tsukishima and ate the local specialty, monjayaki. It's kind of like okonomiyaki - vegetables and meat in a batter cooked on a griddle - though it has the consistency of melted cheese. It isn't much to look at, but it was actually quite good. Chef lived up to his Twitter handle and made both of our monjayaki; he is obviously a pro:

Double-fisting spatula skillz~

When you make monjayaki you grill the veggies and meat first, and then create a crazy ingredient fortress and pour the batter in the middle. When the batter starts to get sticky, you mix it all up and nom nom nom.

Special Monjayaki - all kinds of veggies, seafood, and meat.

Garlic Monjayaki - delicious, but smelly.

This is the first time I ventured off to meet someone I knew only from social networking. I told Chef he was taller than I'd expected him to be, and he told me I was shorter and louder than he imagined me to be. I'll admit to both of those charges.

We got along great and basically turned all of our Twitter exchanges into real-life, face-to-face conversations. We talked about music, politics, culture, language, life in general. He apologized for not being good-looking, which is so Japanese of him and completely unnecessary! I bet if he posted on an English language exchange community on Mixi he'd have his pick of cute girls.

I would've dragged him to purikura but we weren't near a game center! He also paid for the bill while I was in the restroom, sneaky guy. I'll get you one day, Chef.