Hawaii and Japan, 2014 - Nara, Osaka, and Ikaruga Gallery

Here is the photo gallery from our last set of stops on our Japan 2014 trip: Nara, Osaka and Ikaruga

https://plus.google.com/photos/112762354874316785091/albums/6098056282191569073

Hawaii and Japan, 2014 - 11/3 - Day 18 - Osaka On-Day

Osaka Castle - Bigger on the Outside

We ate breakfast in the apartment, having purchased eggs, ham and bread at a convenience store nearby the night before. We discovered this morning that Sean's iPhone had been damaged in a freak...bathing...condensation...accident and was no longer functioning properly. This is never good news, but particularly frustrating on a long overseas trip. He took the catastrophe fairly well, and we'll get it replaced when we get back to the states. In the meantime, I have the only working source of maps and information.
We took the subway to Osaka castle, one of the other major sights we had in mind for the Osaka leg of our trip. Osaka castle is the most *castle* looking of the castles we've seen so far. When we arrived at the castle grounds,  we discovered that today is a national holiday! Happy Culture day, Japan! Culture day is a national day of celebrating culture, the arts and academic achievement. People have the day off and are encouraged to go to cultural sites. Needless to say, we were not alone at Osaka castle. The grounds were full of locals and there was even a performance depicting the struggle between the Tokogawa and Toyotomi families over the castle starring a famous female performer, who flubbed her lines several times, but was nonetheless entertaining.

After the performance we went up into Osaka castle itself, which, to be honest was a little disappointing. The interior has been turned into a museum, which was *kind of* interesting, but I would have been much more interested in seeing the actual interior of the building, which was more or less annihilated in World War II. There was a nice view of Osaka from the top floor, and if you're in Osaka, it's more or less a given you're going to go to Osaka castle. Just prepare for the lack of interior.

Lunch today was takoyaki at the autumn festival on Osaka castle grounds. Takoyaki apparently originated in Osaka, and these last takoyaki of the trip were probably the best we've had so far.

We spent most of the morning and part of the afternoon getting to and hanging out at Osaka castle. Afterward, returning to the subway station, we ran into a culture day parade, with people on carts carrying fans, shouting orders to other people pulling said carts, while others within the carts played drums and bells. There was a line of these carts, each with varying levels of energy being put into their performances.

We headed to Shinsaibashi, a large shopping district in Osaka, where we wandered, stupefied by the enormity of the shopping area. There were so...many...stores. We walked about 1/4 of the length of the entire main street of Shinsaibashi before deciding to take a break and head back to the apartment before dinner.

Yum yum Okonomiyaki at Fukutaro

Dinner tonight was at an awesome okonomiyaki restaurant called Fukutaro. There was a line out the door, which we've experienced at every restaurant we've been to in Osaka, so I guess we picked well, with the help of Trip Advisor and our hosts. Okonomiyaki, for the uninitiated, are a type of pancake made from burdock root flour, cabbage, and usually pork. Osaka is famous for Okonomiyaki, and this restaurant, called Fukutaro, makes it exceptionally well. We had two types - the traditional version, made with pork, and a beef and onion version. Both were awesome. We also had some plum wine made from distilling plums, instead of infusing sake with plums. It wasn't nearly as sickly sweet as the plum-chu we've been having, and I actually much preferred it.

After dinner we went to Dotonburi, a nightlife area right along the Dontonburi river in Osaka. We checked out a bar called Space Station, run by an American ex-pat, that has classic video games at the bar and a bunch of video game themed drinks. We tried a "Hadouken" shot (which was cloying sweet and lit on fire) and a "Triforce" which tasted like cinnamon and was also pretty brutally sweet. To be honest, the drinks at Space Station were a little too college bar feeling to me. I wish they were a little more sophisticated with their choice of mixes. It's a neat idea for a bar, but I feel like it could be a lot more than it is.

After a few rounds of Street Fighter 2 and some Mario Kart on the Super Famicom, we walked along the river, past all the Love Hotels, night clubs and late night takoyaki joints, and wound up back at the subway station bound for home.

Tomorrow we're headed to one more temple, one of the oldest in the area, before heading back to Tokyo for a few more days.

Hawaii and Japan, 2014 - 11/2 - Day 17 - Osaka Off-day

Pancake Benedicts at Pancake Days

Our first day in Osaka was a bit of a down day. It was raining, we were tired, neither of us wanted to do a whole lot. Osaka, to be honest, doesn't have a lot of particularly memorable sights, so we didn't feel too bad about spending a day doing relatively little. One of Osaka's main attractions is the aquarium, so we made that our top priority for the day. 

First off though, we had it in our heads to have pancakes for breakfast. We found a place rated on Yelp fairly highly for their pancakes, so we went off in search of Pancake Days, which was located in one of the vast multilevel department stores that Japan is crazy about. It turned out that the pancake restaurant was located on the kids floor of the department store, and we felt a little weird walking through it trying to find the restaurant. We had almost decided to give up - the weirdness was getting to us - when we found a map that guided us to the restaurant. Blessedly, there were some adults in the place without kids, so we felt a little more at ease eating there. Pancake Days was still more or less a children's restaurant. All the pancakes had smiley faces on them. I opted for a "pancake benedict" with poached eggs and hollandaise and bacon. It was pretty acceptable, and a nice change of pace from the fish and/or french pastry based breakfasts we were becoming familiar with.

Side note, all the grade-school kids in Japan have these bad-ass leather/vinyl backpacks that I've fallen in love with. I totally wanted one, and the department store we had breakfast in had them, but, and I'm not kidding here, they ran upwards of 600-800 dollars for the leather ones. I assume kids use them for many years, because the costs seem outrageous for them. Anyway, I still want one, but I'm going to need to find a much better deal than that to convince me to buy.

After breakfast, it was aquarium time.

If you squint, you can almost see a seal

The Osaka aquarium is vast, with over 11,000 tons of water and a 750 meter path winds its way up and down through the tanks. The facility specializes in aquatic life from all over the Pacific Rim and has dolphins, sea lions and even a small whale shark in an enormous tank as part of the central exhibit.

We were not the only ones who thought it was a good idea to go to the aquarium on a rainy Sunday. It felt like half of Osaka joined us, and the combination of the enclosed space, the crush of people, and the visual distortion caused by the foot thick acrylic they used in the tanks, was disorienting after about an hour in the enclosure. By the time we were done with the aquarium, we were pretty much done for the day as well. We went back to the apartment and rested before heading out to dinner later on at an extremely popular ramen joint near the apartment.

The ramen joint was called Muteppou, and it had a line out the door - a clear indication in Osaka of a good restaurant. After a half-hour wait we ordered from a ticket machine entirely in Japanese - it's my theory in these places that if you order the most expensive thing on the ticket menu, you'll usually do fine, so I got a 1300 yen ramen, which amounts to about 13 dollars. 

Deliciously Sludgy Ramen at Muteppou.
Needed some Sansho though...

It turned out that major difference between my ramen and Sean's, who got a 750 yen bowl, was more broth, and a boiled egg, which suited me fine. The waiter informed us in English that there were three decisions to make for your ramen in their shop - thickness and type of noodle, thickness of soup. He recommended going standard across the board since it was our first time in the restaurant. The ramen there is of the "sludgy" variety, which is a bit of a gross description, but it just means they thicken the broth, and it lends a creaminess to the base. It was good ramen. Very good. It was made better in both our opinions by a spicy, salty garlic condiment that they had on the table, that we eventually used in quantity.

Full of soup, tired as all hell, we retired to the apartment. The next day was going to be sunny and cooler, and had a few surprises for us...