How Not to Eat at a Japanese Restaurant...

My dear husband (Joe) and I decided that it was time to go for another nice meal out. Although I am becoming quite the little chef (and, no, DON'T YOU DARE call me a good little housewife... But then don't call me a bad one either... LOL)I needed a night off from cooking. I checked the sparse reviews of restaurants in Okinawa and found one that got rave reviews. Happily it was just across the way from us so off we went to discover new yumminess. The stairs leading up to the place were lined with plants and lanterns, romantic and inviting. The restaurant had just opened and we were the first ones there. The inside was small with wooden floors and only 6 normal tables (if you can call a table with a flat tepenyaki style grill in the center of it normal) and 2 low tables (the kind where you must first take your shoes off then sit cross legged or kneel at the table)also with tepanyaki grills (think Benihana for midgets). The waitress brought us hand written menus in English. The only problem was that though they do a fair job of it (as compared to how we would do trying to write their language in their characters, which trust me would be a nightmare for them to decipher)there were many words spelled completely wrong and phrases put together that made no sense. Lemon was Remon (though that is how they say it...) and Strong was Stong and phrases like "original syle most you will find popular" were sprinkled liberally throughout. Joe was a bit put off by the whole thing. "I can't understand what's on the menu and don't see anything I want and I don't feel like cooking my own meal!" he said exhaling with frustration, closing his menu and looking up at me with a furrowed brow. I convinced him that this would be a fun new, and perhaps a little bit of a crazy experience... And if we didn't like it we could always have some sushi somewhere else afterwards. He relented and we finally chose a couple things off the menu and the waitress scurried over (she was standing nearby and peering around the corner furtively to see if we were ready the whole time we were perusing the menus) and started to take our order. She told us in broken English that we needed to choose two of the dishes from the next page to go in our order. We told her (gesturing, with our own style of sign language that we seem to be using a lot these days when speaking to locals) that we'd need another minute to figure that part out. We randomly picked a couple things and she appeared magically at the table to finish taking our order and then turned up the grill. A bit later she came over with several bowls and plates full of various meats and egg and veggies and noodles and 2 small spatulas and 2 large spatulas. She set one bowl filled with different ingredients in front of each of us and 2 spatulas in front of each of us. She also set a bowl of oil on the edge of the table and then left. We grabbed the oil and started slathering it on the grill. We each mixed up our bowl of raw stuff and poured them on the grill. Not sure how to proceed we went about creating and cooking our meal as best we could. The waitress appeared back and quickly began removing all the empty dishes and bowls from table and gave us each a plate. She kind of gave us a funny look - but everyone here does that... We're Americans so I guess we stand out. While we were busy making the first part (sort of unremarkable egg foo young tasting stuff with noodles on the side), she brought over a plate of thinly sliced beef and onions in sauce. Once we finished eating the first lump of food, we immediately grabbed the plate of beef and dumped it on the grill. The beef was delicious! When we were all finished with that she brought over two fabulous salads with Japanese dressing. As we were sitting there eating our salads two more tables of people came in. I suddenly noticed that the waitress was mixing and preparing all the food and then cooking it on the grill at each table for the customers. No wonder she looked at us like we were crazy! We completely misunderstood what we were (or in this case weren't) supposed to do!!! Once Joe looked over and saw that she was cooking for everyone we both started laughing hysterically. What we did was the equivalent of going to Benihana, standing behind the grill and slicing, dicing and cooking your own food. While trying to stop laughing he remarked how much better (and how completely different) what she made looked. Instead of being lumps of globby food she made two pancake sort of things and put the noodles and meat between them. As we left (and yes, I was still laughing and shaking my head at our little faux pas) she gave us a smile that indicated she knew that we suddenly "got it" and that she thought it was pretty amusing as well. Oh well, I guess we'll have to go back and try that again - this time we'll let her do the cooking...