Osaka

Days 7, 8 and 9

Okay, Settle down and have a tea to hand, maybe even a posh biscuit if you feel like treating yourself (you know, the ones in selection boxes that come wrapped in their own foil) because this blog post might be a bit longer than normal (we are working on finding a way to keep the length of these down, but Osaka just has too much going on to write about).

We arrived into Osaka on our fancy fast train the Shinkansen. As soon as we got into the main station it was time to get the wifi on the go and work out our route to the hostel. We navigated the busy subway to our hostel to realise it was closed as check-in times were at later in the day. Thankfully, enough bumbling around at the doorway like lost tourists garnered us sympathy with the main reception clerk, who kindly opened to door to let us drop our bags off. 

Not wanting to sit around we left to get to Kuromon Market. This market is a MUST visit to anyone passing through Osaka. Osaka I well known for its appreciation and dedication to great food and in particular, street food. Inside were stalls selling: Tuna, Eel, Whiskys, Kobe Beef, Salmon, Octopus and more! We munched on some tasty treats and bought oursleves a bottle of plum wine for our evening.

Next on our list was looking at a shrine of a giant lion. Why? No idea but it seemed like something interesting to see. Hidden amongst the many tall buildings of Osaka this shrine has managed to keep its ground from the 5 storey minimum surrounding madness. Part of me likes to think the lion scares away the development companies.

We then began to make our way back to the nearest station of Namba. What a travesty (gettit? Clever self referencing pun) this place is. I’m sure as a local its great but as a tourist this place is nothing short of a nightmare to navigate. The best way I could describe it for people at home is imagine Westfield shopping centre was actually placed inside Stratford station, where getting an escalator up from H&M suddenly brings you to a gateline for train services. Then, 1 floor down and a few minutes walk in another direction is a complete other station. A chaotic combination of shops and platforms led to this being an unexpected labrynth. At the end of the first day we settled down to plum wine and 22 jump street, which ended with us running over the road to buy more plum wine…

Day two in Osaka and we headed out to Osaka Castle. Despite getting loads of sleep in some incredibly comfortable hostel beds, we woke up desperate for coffee. We ended up planning our route to the castle to incorporate a Starbucks. In Japan they seem to like their coffee strong so after one cup each, we were good to go for about 3 days. 

The castle was absolutely stunning. The route up to it includes several viewpoints of both the castle walls and the castle itself. We slowly meandered into the castle-grounds and were greeted by Osaka castle in its full glory. We know we shouldn’t judge but after seeing several people’s Instagram poses, we had a good laugh and decided to try them out for ourselves. 

Who did it better?

• 

• 

Once inside the castle we opted for the lazy route of catching the lift, at least we thought it was lazy but it still deposited us a full 3 floors down from the top. The top floor had some of the best views of Osaka available throughout the city and each floor below depicted different aspects of the castle’s history. This included the life of the guys that built it; Toyotomi Hideyoshi. You also learn about the history of the era and the great warlords that were active at the time, and the construction of the castle itself. 

Now, we’ve touched on it above, but for those that don’t know, Osaka is ALL about FOOD. There is literally a famous phrase that goes:

Kyoto: 着倒れの街　(ki-daore no machi),
Osaka: 食い倒れの街　(kui-daore no machi)

This means something along the lines of; in Kyoto they are poor because they spend too much money on kimono, in Osaka, it’s because they spend too much money on food. So as we were leaving Osaka castle, we couldn’t help but be drawn to the first stall we saw selling takoyaki. Tako, in Japanese, means octopus. And Yaki means grilled. So essentially takoyaki are little balls of batter with a teeny piece of octopus inside. This little morsel of a snack spurred us on to finding more culinary delights later.

After pegging it across town to make it to our next planned destination, the Osaka Free Walking Tour. We arrived just as they had all set off so we were able to join the back of what we correctly assumed was the tour group (we weren’t entirely convinced that we weren’t just awkwardly following a big group of touristy looking friends) we followed our guide around the canal district of Osaka, back through the food market and onto the nerd district, as so lovingly dubbed by our tour guide. We finished up in a shopping arcade that had been built in the 1950s and that hadn’t changed at all since, it was a really surreal look into Japan’s past and we were able to draw some very strong similarities between this arcade and some beach-side promenades from back home.  Incidentally the tour was fantastic and we would highly recommend it to anyone visiting Osaka.

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

Our one last plan of the day was to head to the Pokémon Cafe. This is usually booked up months in advance but Martin managed to get us a spot based on a last minute cancellation. Once again we got lost en route and ended up taking the same train 3 times, arriving about 3 minutes before they gave our table up after sprinting up 9 flights of escalators that definitely say “no walking or running on the escalators” quite clearly when you are not too stressed to pay attention. In our defence, this Pokémon Cafe is pretty new and so doesn’t actually exist on Google maps yet, so when you try t search it’s location, it sends you to the Pokémon Centre across town. Nevertheless we made it and we took our seats genuinely full of wonder and awe at the sheer amount of effort that had gone into making the place a magical experience for kids and adults alike. You order everything on an iPad to be delivered straight to your table, the placemats, iPads, menus, chairs, wallpaper, decorations and music were all Pokémon themed (with a heavy Pikachu bias). Even the meals were expertly prepared to look like Pokémon and their habitats.

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

We chose a Zapdos float to start, a bright yellow, mango flavoured concoction with the weird bubbles you get in bubble tea at the bottom and a dollop of ice-cream on the top. It was actually quite delicious if slightly unnatural. And for good we decided to share a dish so that we could afford a main and a dessert. We chose a Snorlax themed chicken and rice situation, mostly driven by the fact that is came with both veg AND salad (a very exciting moment for our poor vitamin deprived, salt overloaded bodies) and a Jigglypuff cheesecake (thus undoing any benefits gained from the previous dish). Both were actually very tasty, which we were pleasantly surprised by, due our hugely gimmicky surroundings.

The piece de resistance of the whole experience came just before our dessert arrived. PIKACHU. We were absolutely baffled by the woman walking around the restaurant talking into her microphone in Japanese. We, and the only 2 other non-japanese speakers in the restaurant had no idea what was going on and just kept shrugging at each other whilst everyone seemed to be getting more and more excited. We had no choice but to join in the hype. Suddenly, the music changed; pika, pika, Pikachu, pika, pika, chu. And, shuffling sideways out of the tiny corridor leading from the kitchen, emerged an enormous Pikachu (see: man or woman in Pikachu suit). Pikachu spent the next 15 minutes wandering around the restaurant, dancing, bowing and shaking hands with every single person. You may think that we were too old to get caught up in this display but you would be entirely incorrect. We were as excited as every single other person in the place and we were so eager to shake Pikachu’s hand that the small children sitting on the table opposite us were in genuine danger of being shoved out of the way.

The next day we visited Himeji Castle, which you can read about in a separate blog post. And as it was Friday night, we thought we would sample some of Osaka’s famous nightlife. We started off downtown at a bar called Rock Rock. We heard the music playing from the street and thought we would pop in for a swift highball. Once inside this tiny bar, we quickly became aware of the hundreds of photographs that lined the walls. These were photos of hugely famous rock and pop stars all taken with the bar staff when they popped into the bar for a drink after a gig. Photos included The Rolling Stones, No Doubt, The Prodigy, Marilyn Manson, Evanescence and many, many more. Sadly there were no rock stars in the night we were there but the highballs cheered us up.

Next was Bar Nayuta; a secret cocktail bar which was hard enough to find from the street but even harder once you were inside the building. The entrance was up 5 flights of stairs and through a tiny door disguised as a mirror. Once inside the place looked like a cross between some sort of ancient Roman ruin and someone’s flat. The waited approached and asked us what spirits we liked and what kind of flavours and then disappeared to make us our mystery cocktails. This place apparently doesn’t believe in menus. I have to say, the cocktails he came back with were out of this world, one gin, one rum and both incredibly delicious.

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

Our last stop of the night was a teeny tiny gaming bar called PC and Retro Bar Space Station. This place had pretty much every game you could imagine as well as game themed cocktails. Gin and Sonics in hand, we went off to do the rounds, starting of blah blah blah game stuff, (I’ll let Martin write this bit). After a very long night we walked home, weary and happy and tired and safe in the knowledge that we had to be up and our of the hostel in a mere 4 hours time.

• 

• 

• 

Jesus bloody Nora, this is a long post. I swear we are almost there. Just one more activity and I promise it’s a good one. As you can see, we had an amazing and hectic time in Osaka and we believe that everyone should add it to their itinerary.

So, let’s get this over with;

Sumo wrestling.

This was Martin’s surprise for my birthday. He did all the research prior to setting off to Japan. Sumo wrestling is actually not on as often as you might expect. It’s actually a very serious sport that runs in seasons and we were visiting in the off season. Incredibly, Martin managed to find a “friendly” match that happened to line up with our dates and locations. He tried to buy tickets online but, having been sent a PayPal link and a quote for ¥4500 per bento box he was unsure of the validity of this seller. Instead we decided (me having been informed of the plan the previous evening) to leave super early to try and buy tickets on the door. The doors opened at 8am and the event ran from 11:30 to 15:00 with practice rounds prior to the actual competition. We were at the gates at about 8:30, and we were not the first in line! Apparently it’s a pretty common thing to buy tickets at door (which makes sense as Japan seems to favour cash over card or online payments) and we got tickets no problem, up in the nosebleeds of course as we had no idea what was going on and didn’t fancy forking out for the posh seats (see: padded mats on the floor) on our first rodeo. 

This event was honestly one of our favourite activities of the whole trip. Sumo wrestling is super exciting with the matches lasting anything from 5 seconds up to a minute, there is never a chance to get bored. There is also a whole load of pomp and circumstance surrounding the actual matches that just seems to give a really good insight into traditional Japanese culture, rituals and values. There is so much respect and reverence for these fighters and for the country in general. There was even an English sumo wrestler, who was a pretty big deal by the looks of it, he fought (and won) in one of the 3 title matches. 

• 

• 

• 

• 

So, happy and exhausted, we boarded a train to Nara, which you can read about here