Since I end up staying at Shinsaibashi during my stay in Osaka, I have a very close access to the Dotombori shoutengai (shopping street) which has variety of shops and restaurants. My first impression of Osaka is that it’s a very busy city similar to Tokyo but the people seem far more laidback. The Shinsaibashi and Dotombori areas themselves are pure assault on your visual sense. You can see large neon signs and various ornaments adorning the shops that line up alongside the street. What makes the Dotombori special is that it has a little canal complete with colorful Ferris Wheel which circles around a tall building nearby. Obviously it looks pretty at night.

One thing that I can’t stand about Osaka, however, is the heat. Of course with this month still being summer, it’s expected that the weather will be hot. However, the heat in this city is inhuman in comparison to the heat in Tokyo. Actually, I find that the further West you go in Japan, the hotter the weather ended up being. I was soaked by sweat during a visit to Miyajima Island, which was 5 minutes away from Hiroshima. The bad thing about the heat is it makes you feel unmotivated to do any sightseeing. It’s hard to be excited about it when the weather is humid and makes you sweat every step of the way. So if you want to go to Osaka, make sure it’s not during summer.

Osaka is pretty famous for its foods. Takoyaki and Okonomiyaki are said to be originated from this area. The same thing can also be said for Warabi-mochi. I actually took some photos of the foods that I purchased while I’m here but I’ll save that for another post since this one is already filled with a lot of pictures of the city. The Dotomburi area seems popular with the young people. Despite the fact that the heat makes everyone sweat like there’s no tomorrow, it doesn’t seem to damp their enthusiasm to hang out and eat Takoyaki in the area. Ah, word of warning, if you do go to Dotombori, do not enter the Dotombori Gokuraku building. I think it’s a rip-off.

To begin with, you actually have to pay 315 Yen just to enter the building. Once inside, you’ll find out that all that the building have is just a collection of restaurants. The only difference is that the setting is a re-creation of Osaka during Showa period. If you’re really that desperate to see this kind of period re-creation, I’d suggest that you go to the Floating Observatory basement level. They have similar period re-creation but you don’t have to pay for just entering the area (unless you go to the observatory tower). Besides, Dotomburi itself is a street lined with lots of restaurants. If you go here, you should see this giant Takoyaki that a shop sells. Hmm, maybe I should buy that tomorrow.

How to go to Shinsaibashi: from Shin-Osaka station, take the Midosuji subway line stopping at Shinsaibashi station. Use exit number 6 to go straight to the Shinsaibashi’s shopping street.

This time around I plan to go to other parts of Japan that I didn’t manage to go to in the first place. This include Hiroshima and Miyajima island. The reason I couldn’t go before was because Hiroshima is such a far away place from Tokyo. Let’s say I leave around 10am in the morning using Shinkansen, I’d be arriving there around 4-5pm, which is kind of moot. Because of that, I decided to spend one week in Osaka so I can go to Hiroshima and lower parts of Japan more easily. This means I will be able to go to Kyoto, Nagoya, and Kobe without spending too much time inside the train.

I just arrived in Osaka yesterday and I’m still a bit tired so I’ll blog about Osaka tomorrow. For now, I’ll just show some of the foods that I’ve had while I was in Tokyo for 2 days (to watch Evangelion) and what I had in Osaka yesterday. I had this really nice Inari sushi bowl which was really nice. This is pretty much rice topped with your favorite seafood dish. I order the tuna, crab, and ginger set which includes a miso soup. If you go to Japan, I really recommend this. Unfortunately I forget the name of the shop but I don’t think it’s important since there are many shops which sell this kind of dish.

If you go to Shinjuku station, there’s this stall which sells Hirota ice cream. This is ice cream encased inside a Choux pie. They’re pretty cheap (100 Yen) and comes in variety of taste from Green tea to Sesame seed. They’re pretty good too for a 100 Yen ice cream. Word of warning though, if you buy it to take home, make sure you properly guesstimate the length of time it’ll take for you to reach your fridge. The reason for this is because the sales assistant will put in some ice inside the bag to ensure that the ice cream inside the Choux pie does not melt. I had one melt on me because I didn’t eat it fast.

I also had some all-you-can-eat Sushi. That was pretty bad although there are occasions where I got some good stuff like the Mackerel sushi shown above and the Wagyu Beef. In general, however, I’d like to avoid all-you-can-eat anything unless it’s all-you-can-eat Beef. Once I arrived in Osaka yesterday, I decided to purchase some Takoyaki. There are many Takoyaki sellers here and apparently the taste of the Takoyaki differs from one seller to another. The one that I had was pretty good (8 giant balls for 482 Yen). To wash the taste, I had a Green Tea and Kuromitsu ice.