$5 Japanese Party Food for 5 🇯🇵 | Dad Got the Job

"Takoyaki at home in rural Japan — how to make Japan's favorite party food, step by step, for a family of five. Main ingredients: about $5 (¥730). A $69 (¥10,242) weekly grocery run, and the reason we're celebrating: after 18 months out of work, I got the job. I'm Yuki, 38. I left a 16-year career in rehabilitation after burnout, and I've been a jobless dad of three in the Japanese countryside ever since. Last week, the email came: hired. Part-time, three days a week, starting in October. So this week, we celebrate — the Kansai way. It starts at the supermarket: milk, eggs, natto, a strawberry Pocky for the one at school — and one small pack of steamed octopus for $2.50. Octopus used to be everyday food here. Our region's catch fell to about half last year, imports are down too, and the price shows it. I ask you: what used to be cheap where you live, and isn't anymore? Then the yard. Two weeks of rain left poisonous mushrooms (false parasol) on the grass where my kids play, so those go first. The grass gets cut. The Aboshi melon vines come down — that season is over — and the fall eggplants get pruned and tied, because they're still flowering. And I have a question for anyone who's done it: I'm thinking about cutting down the trees around our one raised bed to double the garden by spring. Cut, or keep? At 6:40 p.m., my wife starts prepping and I film every step: a cucumber-ham-bean sprout namul, then the batter — okonomiyaki flour (not takoyaki flour; she likes it fluffy), three eggs, 900 ml of water, a quarter cabbage blended fine. Octopus in one row, mini pork sausages in the other. Oil every hole, pour over the edges, tenkasu, quarter-turn with a pick. I grew up in Kansai, so I've been turning these since I was a kid. Tonight, our eight-year-old turned her first one. Around the table: an octopus-size contest between the older two (the three-year-old lost, loudly, off camera), and a report from our oldest — she didn't get the xylophone part she auditioned for, so she's practicing the recorder instead. To everyone who wrote ""congratulations"" last week, and everyone who joined the membership this month: this party is yours too. The takoyaki, though, is mine. No music — just the sounds of a kitchen in rural Japan. Chapters 0:00 Good news 0:47 Grocery run, family of four 5:40 The $2.50 octopus 7:31 Poisonous mushrooms in the yard 8:43 Cutting the grass 13:10 Goodbye, melon season 17:49 Fall eggplants 20:11 Cut the trees? I need your advice 21:04 Prep: namul & takoyaki batter 27:10 Takoyaki, step by step 32:08 Taste test 34:41 Family party 39:41 Until next time"