3/11-14 - Osaka

Osaka is famous as a foodie city, and Nathan really wanted to make a stop there. Without a home swap option, we stayed in a little ‘apartment hotel’ for three nights between two other exchanges.

It was an interesting little city break, being right in the center of ‘Den Den Town’ which is full of anime-themed shops and bars, and yes, the girls dressed to match. It sits conveniently between two huge street food districts. 

We can see one, Shinsekai from our room - marked by this tower. After a day on the train we were a bit hungry right away, and went to look for a bite before doing some groceries and settling down to work. Unfortunately our choice of Takoyaki, fried dumplings with octopus, ended up giving Nathan food poisoning. He was sick all evening and dehydrated into the next day.

By dinner time he rallied though, and bravely headed out to the other, even more epic street food epicenter, the Dotunbori. It was just an absolute wild street scene, bright, flashy, and food made for more for Instagram than for quality. Still, we tried lots of fun bites and cobbled together a great meal from 6 or 7 different stalls. Unusually for me my favorites were the sweets - neither of them too sweet. One is dango, a little dumpling glazed in a sweetened soy sauce, the other you could call a sweet potato pie, but in the shape of a little fish. On our final night, we just went to a random restaurant to try the Osaka version of Okinomiyaki pancakes - less elaborate than Hiroshima’s layered version, but same idea. They also had fried-just-about-anything on a stick - we had some fish and some veggies. For dessert, we returned to Dotunbori again for one more sweet that looks better than it is - a skewer of fresh fruit in a hard syrup glaze. Think jolly rancher melted over your strawberry, orange, and grape. 

It’s been known as the “Kitchen of Japan” since the Edo period, but I felt a little guilty focusing only on the Kitchen and not on the Edo. I took a run on our last morning to the Osaka Castle, damaged but not destroyed during WWII and restored as it had been after many other attacks. I was there before it opened so got to see it without a crowd, as well as lots of other historical buildings intermixed with modern ones, along the way. 

Later that morning we went to do the most stressful thing so far - pick up a rental car. Nathan did great despite being illiterate and on the opposite side of the road. We got to make a pretty cool stop in Nara along the way to our next home in the rural Mie Prefecture. I’ll be able to share more about those stops after getting back to WiFi in the city.

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