Everyone knows that the Japanese eat sushi, and tempura, and miso soup. But what about okonomiyaki? I lived in Japan for two years and it still took me a couple of months to discover this most tasty of dishes. The surprise is that I've never met a foreigner who doesn't love it, but somehow that hasn't translated into okonomiyaki restaurants around the world.

So what is okonomiyaki? It's difficult to translate, and those who try go for "cabbage pancake" or "Japanese pizza". Made from cabbage, eggs, special flour and seasonings and usually either pork, seafood or noodles, a serve of okonomiyaki is round like a pancake but thicker like a pizza. It's topped with special dark brown okonomiyaki sauce, mayonnaise, katsuoboshi and aonori (seaweed flakes), and is usually eaten with chopsticks after being cut up into small squares. And while it's perhaps more famous in Osaka and Hiroshima, you can find it all over the country, in restaurants especially designed so that the tables have a hot plate on top for you to cook your own and keep it warm while you eat.

My greatest okonomiyaki experience in Japan took place during a special cultural festival. A friend tipped me off that a giant okonomiyaki was going to be made in the grounds of Osaka Castle. This was something I just couldn't miss.

To celebrate a cultural holiday, some enterprising (and slightly crazy) people decided to make the world's largest okonomiyaki. This dish was so massive that a crane was needed to flip it over! When I arrived at the designated spot in Osaka Castle park, I found an army of men dressed in bright blue coats and yellow safety hats working on the cooking mechanics; for those who were getting closer to the food, there were red jackets and white hats that seemed to double as hairnets.

This okonomiyaki was around four meters wide - considerably larger than I'd expected. When it came time to turn it over and cook the other side, they closed the giant frying pan and used a crane to turn it over, amidst the steam and fantastic smell of the nearly cooked dish. The part I loved the most was when it came to putting the sauces and toppings on. Another crane, like those that fireman use, came into play, with two men using huge hoses to spray okonomiyaki sauce and mayonnaise over the whole surface.

At the end of the day, a long queue formed to sample a piece of the okonomiyaki. And I mean a long, long queue. By the time I'd found the end of the queue, I was able to clearly calculate that the meal would probably be pretty cold by the time I reached the front of the line, and besides, how good could a giant okonomiyaki taste? I decided to head to one of my favorite okonomiyaki restaurants instead and indulge in a regular sized one.