HIROSHIMA--For those who want to eat their favorite food every day and know they'll never tire of it, Kenichi Hosoi is living the dream. 

Hosoi, 54, a university professor, said he consumes 300 plates of the “okonomiyaki” Japanese pancake, a local specialty, each year. But he doesn’t feel that he is eating the same dish over and over again.

His passion has led him to assume the post of a director with the Oconomiyaki Academy, a Hiroshima-based general incorporated foundation, whose activities include publicizing the allure of okonomiyaki and conducting studies on it.

Hosoi has been appearing, since 2012, in a segment of a local Hiroshima TV program where he makes the rounds of okonomiyaki restaurants.

He has developed themes for the program segment, such as “stamina-building okonomiyaki that allows you to get through the summer,” and a “special feature on white okonomiyaki that is the perfect thing for Christmas.”

“I never run short of topics (for the segment) because restaurant people are working so hard,” said Hosoi, whose love for okonomiyaki is still growing.

Hosoi serves as a professor with the Faculty of Business Administration at the Hiroshima University of Economics. He has long been dishing out the appeal of okonomiyaki on the sidelines of his teaching duties at his workplace in Asa-Minami Ward in the prefectural capital.

Okonomiyaki refers to a dish made of non-sweet batter, cabbage and other ingredients and typically fried on a hot plate.

In December last year, Hosoi was seen at an okonomiyaki restaurant not far from his university, facing his 290th plate of okonomiyaki of the year.

He used no chopsticks to eat the dish with the practiced strokes of a spatula alone.

“This is the Hiroshima way of eating it,” Hosoi said.

He engaged in an apparently endless chatter with the restaurant owner about all things related to okonomiyaki: the ingredients being used, cooking methods, and a new restaurant that had just opened.

‘CRISPYISTS’ VS. ‘FLUFFYISTS’

Hosoi majored in marketing at a Kobe University graduate school before he joined the teaching staff at his university in Hiroshima in 1995.

He first took an interest in okonomiyaki in 2008, when he took a lesson from a professional on cooking okonomiyaki. A worker for a local sauce manufacturer, who took a course for working adults that Hosoi taught, had encouraged the professor to take the cooking lesson.

Hosoi was enthralled by the way each okonomiyaki restaurant pays so much attention to what it serves and how this particular culinary culture followed a unique path of development in Hiroshima.

He said his “blissful moment” comes when he listens to restaurant owners sharing bits and pieces of their professionalism on the other side of a hot plate.

“Some restaurant owners say they boil their noodles several seconds longer or shorter depending on the weather,” the professor said. “I love it when I find out that they are exercising so much care in trying to make their customers happy.”

Okonomiyaki of the Kansai region is typically cooked by “mix frying,” whereby the ingredients are mixed together before being moved onto a hot plate. Hiroshima’s okonomiyaki, by comparison, is characterized by “stack frying,” whereby the ingredients are stacked on a hot plate, one on top of another.

Hosoi said that Hiroshima’s okonomiyaki restaurants are largely divided into two schools by what they serve: “crispyists,” who use deep-fried and crunchy noodles in the pancake, and “fluffyists,” who offer a soft finish by not pushing down on the ingredients. He said he is personally OK with both cooking approaches.

Hosoi added that, even when he has come across an okonomiyaki that doesn’t please his palate, he still wants to think about what made it not appealing to his tastes. 

His annual consumption of okonomiyaki doubled from 100 plates in 2010 to 200 plates in 2016 and went on to exceed 300 plates in 2018.

HOW CITY TURNED INTO OKONOMIYAKI CENTER

Okonomiyaki, when served at a restaurant, hardly ensures a high customer unit price or a high table turnover.

Restaurants that serve the dish have still flourished in Hiroshima. Hosoi grew curious to learn why, and he also took an academic research interest in the matter.

It is believed that okonomiyaki, which is both cheap and filling, played a role in the postwar rebuilding of Hiroshima.

In addition, an entire “ecosystem” of okonomiyaki restaurants has taken shape in the city, where, for example, sauce manufacturers have an arrangement for assisting restaurant management. These are likely the contributing reasons, Hosoi said.

Hosoi hails from Sanjo, Niigata Prefecture, a city renowned for its ironware, and was born into a family of ironware wholesalers. He said he found it an amazing coincidence that okonomiyaki spatulas are produced in his hometown.

Hosoi keeps records, in Excel files and photos, of the dates of his visits to okonomiyaki restaurants and descriptions of the pancakes he has eaten at them. He shares that information on his blog, which he updates almost daily.

The COVID-19 pandemic, however, has taken a major toll on okonomiyaki. Since spring 2020, Hosoi has been conducting a fact-finding study on okonomiyaki restaurants in the city of Hiroshima.

The 120 or so restaurants that responded to Hosoi’s survey said their sales were down 33.5 percent year on year on average in December 2020, when Hiroshima Prefecture was undergoing a third wave of coronavirus infections. A number of okonomiyaki restaurants have closed down during the pandemic.

Hosoi in November organized a marketing study session to formulate possible measures to revitalize okonomiyaki restaurants. The session was attended by students from his lab seminar, who came up with a number of unique proposals.

One focused on a subscription service that would allow subscribers to eat two plates of okonomiyaki at restaurants of their choice for a monthly fee of 980 yen ($8.22).

Another was about introducing a new system that would allow surplus foodstuffs to be reallocated between restaurants to reduce food loss.

“Okonomiyaki has allowed me to get to know so many people,” Hosoi said. “I hope to remain committed to it to help cheer up people to the fullest extent possible.”