The spirit of Osaka, Japan’s food capital, is often describe with the term “kuidaore” – to eat oneself into total ruin. For this glutton, it wasn’t enough to just gorge on all the great local eats. I wanted to find out how to make them. Here are some cool things I learned from this cooking class:

1. Okonomiyaki can be turned into hashimaki, a portable festival snack, with a pair of chopsticks. (Is there no voodoo Asians can’t do with chopsticks?!)
2. For nearly every traditional ingredient that typically requires hours or days of prep, there is a shortcut version available at the supermarket for the busy home cook, and it usually tastes much closer to the from-scratch version than Campbell’s soup does its authentic counterpart. Japanese food scientists are apparently also voodoo practitioners.
3. Fresh udon is made by stomping the dough with your feet!
4. Normally it takes 4 to 5 hours for the gluten to fully relax, but if you’re short on time, you can stash your udon dough in a warm place…like in your bra.

If you’re in Osaka and are looking to get a more involved food experience than dining on the many local specialties, give Eat Osaka’s  cooking class a try. Go a bit early and check out their neighbour, Tower Knives, if you’d like to shop for the kind of traditionally crafted, steel-based weaponry you’d be using in the class.