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There are two main types of okonomiyaki, but people in Hiroshima don\u2019t like one of the names the rest of the country has for theirs<\/strong>.<\/span><\/p>\n <\/span><\/p>\n Okonomiyaki<\/strong> isn\u2019t just one of Japan\u2019s most delicious foods, it\u2019s also one of its most linguistically complex. The \u2013yaki<\/em> suffix can be used for all sorts of different types of cooking, but in this case it\u2019s referring to flat-grilling. And the okonomi<\/em> part? That translates to \u201cwhat you like,\u201d and it\u2019s there because while okonomiyaki is a sort of round, savory crepe, aside from cabbage the fillings are pretty much whatever you want to put in there. All sorts of meat, seafood, and vegetables, as well as things like mochi, mentaiko (spicy cod roe), and cheese, are all fair game if they\u2019re what you like.<\/p>\n But the other linguistic quirk about okonomiyaki is that different parts of Japan make it in different ways, and different parts of the country call those styles different things<\/strong>. Basically, the two centers of okonomiyaki power are Hiroshima<\/strong> and Osaka<\/strong>, with the latter also representing Japan\u2019s central Kansai<\/strong> region as a whole.<\/p>\n In Hiroshima, okonomiyaki is cooked in layers<\/strong>. You have the crepe on the bottom, shredded cabbage and bean sprouts on top of that, then the fillings, and as a topping a fried egg. Yakisoba noodles are also a common okonomiyaki ingredient in Hiroshima, but it\u2019s the layered structure, not the noodles, that\u2019s the defining point.<\/p>\n \u25bc Hiroshima okonomiyaki<\/p>\n Meanwhile, over in Osaka\/Kansai, the first step in making okonomiyaki is to put all of the ingredients, including the crepe batter, into a bowl and mix them together<\/strong>. It\u2019s also common to add in grated yamaimo, a type of yam, to help the different ingredients stick together. Then you pour the bowl\u2019s contents onto a flat grill, hot plate, or frying pan and cook them all together at once.<\/p>\n \u25bc Osaka okonomiyaki<\/p>\n While the contents are often largely the same, the different cooking styles make for very different textures, and their different ingredient ratios (okonomiyaki in Hiroshima tends to use a greater quantity of vegetables) make for two distinct flavors too. While you\u2019re not likely to find too many people who love one and hate the other, okonomiyaki makes for a rather different eating experience depending on which type you\u2019re eating, and this is where we get back to the linguistics<\/strong>.<\/p>\n Osaka is Japan\u2019s third most populous city, and when you factor in the other major metropolitan centers in Kansai, such as Kobe and Kyoto, there are a lot more people living in the Osaka okonomiyaki sphere than the Hiroshima one. Osaka-style okonomiyaki is also easier to make at home, since, as mentioned above, you can cook it in a frying pan. Since the Hiroshima version calls for cooking the layers separately, but at the same time, it usually requires a larger counter-sized teppan flat grill, which is fine if you\u2019re running a restaurant, but too big for most home kitchens. Because of that, the Osaka-style okonomiyaki is also the more prevalent version in Tokyo, east Japan, and northern Japan, even if okonomiyaki restaurants aren\u2019t as common in those regions as they are in Hiroshima or Kansai.<\/p>\n So when they hear the word \u201cokonomiyaki,\u201d many people in central, eastern, and northern Japan will first think of the Kansai style<\/strong>. That means that they often feel like they need to use a different word to specify the kind of okonomiyaki made in Hiroshima and west Japan, and one of the words that came into use is \u201cHiroshimayaki.\u201d<\/strong> To the people who use it, it probably seems like an easy solution. It\u2019s the style of (okonomi)yaki made in Hiroshima, right?<\/p>\n Here\u2019s the thing, though: People in Hiroshima don\u2019t like the word \u201cHiroshimayaki.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n Our Japanese-language reporter P.K. Sanjun<\/strong> became aware of this through a series of awkward interactions with friends he\u2019s made who grew up in the Hiroshima area. Every time he\u2019s slipped up and said \u201cHiroshimayaki\u201d when talking with them, they make it a point to correct him. It\u2019s happened enough that P.K. decided to ask them, directly, if they get upset or irritated when people say \u201cHiroshimayaki,\u201d and here\u2019s what they had to say.<\/strong><\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s not irritating, but it\u2019s confusing.\u201d<\/em> P.K.\u2019s friend\u2019s comment about \u201cHiroshimayaki\u201d being an immediate giveaway that the person isn\u2019t from Hiroshima is spot-on, by the way. Personally, I\u2019m a borderline fanatical supporter of the Hiroshima version of okonomiyaki, and pretty much every time I\u2019ve ordered it in a restaurant that calls it \u201cHiroshimayaki,\u201d it\u2019s been really poorly made.<\/p>\n Still, for someone like P.K., whose first mental image of okonomiyaki is the Kansai version, it feels unintuitive to say just \u201cokonomiyaki\u201d when he means the Hiroshima version. So next he asked the same four people how they feel about the term \u201cHiroshima-fu okonomiyaki\u201d<\/strong> (fu<\/em> being a suffix that means \u201cstyle,\u201d though an unskilled translator might mistake it for something else<\/a>). This time, their answers were:<\/p>\n \u201cI can allow it. It distinguishes it from Kansai-fu okonomiyaki, so it avoids any confusion.\u201d<\/em> The point about \u201cHiroshima-fu okonomiyaki\u201d being fair because people in Hiroshima say \u201cKansai-fu okonomiyaki\u201d or \u201cOsaka-fu okonomiyaki\u201d brings up an interesting point. While people outside Hiroshima sometimes call Hiroshima-style okonomiyaki \u201cHiroshimayaki,\u201d no one, including people in Hiroshima, call Kansai\/Osaka-style okonomiyaki \u201cKansaiyaki\u201d or \u201cOsakayaki.\u201d It\u2019s possible that part of the reason some people in Hiroshima bristle at the word \u201cHiroshimayaki\u201d is because it sounds like it\u2019s reducing all of Hiroshima\u2019s food culture down to just one dish, or that it carries a subtle but condescending connotation that the thing they make in Hiroshima isn\u2019t actually okonomiyaki.<\/p>\n And much like how the separate strata are the defining feature of Hiroshima-style okonomiyaki, there\u2019s another layer at play too for some people, as one of P.K.\u2019s friends added a bit of historical context. Hiroshima-style okonomiyaki became the city\u2019s representative dish following the end of World War II. Having been hit by an atomic bomb in the closing days of the war, the city was devastated, and while okonomiyaki might translate to \u201cgrill what you like,\u201d in those early years of reconstruction the reality of the dish was closer to \u201cgrill what you\u2019ve got.\u201d<\/strong> At first, that meant whatever meager amounts of shredded cabbage and bean sprouts the people of Hiroshima could scrape together, but as time went on and things got better both agriculturally and economically, gradually more and more fortifying, hearty ingredients could be added to Hiroshima-style okonomiyaki.<\/p>\n \u201cOkonomiyaki, in some ways, is a symbol of Hiroshima\u2019s recovery,\u201d<\/strong> one of P.K. friends told him. \u201cIt got better and better as the years went on, just like the city itself did. For that reason a lot of people in the Hiroshima area take pride in their okonomiyaki. We grew up hearing it called \u2018okonomiyaki,\u2019 so we don\u2019t want other people to take that out of the name they call it by.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n So to conclude, you\u2019re probably not going to cause outright offense to people from Hiroshima if you say the word \u201cHiroshimayaki,\u201d and it\u2019s probably not going to require you to make a public apology (unless you\u2019re a prominent politician anyway<\/a>). People from Hiroshima definitely will notice your choice of words, though, and they\u2019re not going to be particularly happy about it, so if you want to make a linguistic tip of your hat to the local food culture, at least remembering the term \u201cHiroshima-fu okonomiyaki\u201d is the nice thing to do.<\/p>\n And hey, it\u2019s still less complicated than the Japanese dessert that has six different names<\/a>.<\/p>\n Photos \u00a9SoraNews24<\/em> There are two main types of okonomiyaki, but people in Hiroshima don\u2019t like one of the names the rest of the country has for theirs. Okonomiyaki isn\u2019t just one of…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3625","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-rss"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/catbradley.io\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3625","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/catbradley.io\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/catbradley.io\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/catbradley.io\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/catbradley.io\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3625"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/catbradley.io\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3625\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/catbradley.io\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3625"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/catbradley.io\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3625"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/catbradley.io\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3625"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"https:\/\/soranews24.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/3\/2025\/12\/ok-2.jpg?w=640\")
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\n\u201cI wouldn\u2019t say it irritates me. But it\u2019s a clear sign that the person who\u2019s talking isn\u2019t from Hiroshima.\u201d<\/em>
\n\u201cYep, ticks me off. It\u2019s called okonomiyaki.\u201d<\/em>
\n\u201cIrritating. How irritating? So much that I wanna pour a bottle of Otafuku sauce [Hiroshima\u2019s favorite brand of okonomiyaki sauce] on whoever said it. And it\u2019s even more irritating if someone from Osaka says it.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/soranews24.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/3\/2025\/12\/ok-5.jpg?w=640\")
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\n\u201cSure, it\u2019s fine. I call the other kind Kansai-fu okonomiyaki, so it\u2019s fair.\u201d<\/em>
\n\u201cDude, we already went over this. It\u2019s called \u2018okonomiyaki.\u2019\u201d<\/em>
\n\u201cI\u2019m OK with it, as long as they don\u2019t shorten it down to just \u2018Hiroshima-fu.\u2019 It still feels like a deviation from the normal usage, but as long as they keep \u2018okonomiyaki\u2019 in there, it\u2019s fine.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/soranews24.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/3\/2025\/12\/ok-6.jpg?w=580\")
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\n\u25cf Want to hear about SoraNews24\u2019s latest articles as soon as they\u2019re published? Follow us on Facebook<\/a> and Twitter<\/a>!<\/em><\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"