There are three smells that I associate with summer in Japan: the scent of katorisenko — the green, spiral-shaped incense that is used to ward off pesky mosquitoes; the sweet-sticky smell of the colored syrup in seasonal kaki-gori shaved-ice shops; and the odors of yatai outdoor food stalls — especially the smell of the sauce burning on the griddles of the okonomi-yaki and yakisoba vendors.
This week I attended the Church of Perfect Liberty's annual fireworks display in Osaka. Started in 1953, it is now the largest annual display in the world, with more than 120,000 individual fireworks launched into the night sky. The area from the closest train stations all the way down to the many viewing spots is always flanked on both sides by stall after stall hawking the traditional summer matsuri foods. Hot, buttered steamed potatoes, soy-grilled corn on the cob and salted sweetfish tempt passersby. And always there is yakisoba.
Yakisoba are griddle-fried, sauce-flavored noodles generally cooked together with pork, cabbage and other vegetables. "Yaki" comes from yaku, to cook, and is used in Japanese as a generic description for various cooking methods, from roasting and grilling to baking and stir-frying. "Soba" is the word for buckwheat and is often used to describe the noodles made from the ground flour. Chuka-soba, or Chinese-style soba, is the word used to describe wheat-flour noodles — the kind used in ramen and other Chinese-inspired noodle dishes. Thus, the correct word for yakisoba — which is made with ramen-type noodles — is yaki-Chukasoba. But because buckwheat soba noodles are never stir-fried in this way, the name of this dish may be shortened without any confusion to yakisoba.