Yesterday we were out late so I didn’t have time to blog also we had to get up early to catch our train back to Tokyo.
So, yesterday… due to rain from the first day we jumbled up our schedule a bit in Osaka and we decided to drop the experience of the ramen museum, where you can try lots of different ramen over the years apparently, for making fake food. What is fake food you may wonder? Well, in Japan outside of store fronts, as you’ve seen in some posts before, are usually displays of fake food showing what meals and food items are available at the restaurant. It’s like a 3D menu and the food is incredibly realistic. We searched the night before to find if there was a place to make fake food in Osaka and we found one, but much to our dismay it was by reservation only. We decided however to just go there and ask if we could get squeezed in.
Design Pocket (fake food):
We got up early, had breakfast and then headed to the fake food store, which was called “Design Pocket”. It was the perfect opportunity to try out some new japanese we had just learned in our class before heading to Japan too, so I apologized for not having made reservations, but if we could join in the next class that’d be great. As it turned out, they had space and said the next class started at 1:00 pm, which it was a little after 11:00 am, so we decided to walk around the shops in the area until then.
The area surrounding Design Pocket was a long street that had a roof, but was otherwise open to the air. All of the shops seemed to cater to starting one’s own restaurant: selling cooking utensils, ovens, grills, storefront signs and whatever else you could think of. Before our class we got drinks from a nearby vending machine and I tried a canned chocolate milk. It just wasn’t right coming out of a can.
When it was time for our class, we returned to the shop and we chose the food items we wanted to make. We each chose two different types of sushi and for each of us one would be a magnet and the other a keychain. Sara chose mackerel and ebi (shrimp), while I chose tamago (egg) and hamachi.
To make the pieces we were first given the base body of each sushi piece, it is then put in a hot oven and you then bend it over a mold of fake rice. This way you simulate gravity pulling the sushi over the rice. While holding the sushi piece to the rice you dip it in cold water for a minute or so to allow it to cool into place. Next we then painted the sushi pieces appropriately, glued them onto their rice bases and finally put a glossy sheen over the sushi only. Here are our sushi:
The experience was a lot of fun and there are so many different types of food items you can make. One was a bowl of spaghetti with a levitating fork with noodles hanging from it as if being lifted by someone ready to eat.
Moreover, our teacher knew only a little bit of english so the whole course was in japanese and we got a good couple of hours chatting with her about lots of different topics in japanese and a little bit in english as she was studying english too. She asked where we were from, where in Japan we were visiting, why we were studying japanese and so forth. She told us a lot about herself too and how she was really interested in getting to visit the US one day to see how different it is from Japan. She was amazed that american restaurants don’t use the fake food like japanese restaurants do. The conversation at times was definitely a good challenge, but a really fun experience.
After we made our sushi, we thanked our teacher for all the help and for giving us a chance to really try out a japanese conversation, we then headed to eat lunch quick. Sara had three different cuts of fish and I had eel over rice served with a broth. It was similar to hitsumabushi from Nagoya. We also ordered grilled rice cakes that were delicious with a crunchy outside:
We got on a nearby train and headed to Osaka Castle.
Osaka Castle:
On our way to the castle, as we exited the subway station, we came to these buildings, which lie just adjacent to the park at Osaka Castle:
Walking a bit more beyond the buildings above brought us to the park the castle was in. Here’s the outer moat surrounding the castle grounds:
Once beyond this moat we were greeted by a common defensive military structure of the time, an outer gate followed by a 90 degree turn and then the inner gate. All of which are used to slow an enemy’s advance and to force a bottleneck during invasion. In this picture you can see the inner moat just before the first gate:
This moat did not have water, but the back half of this inner moat did have water. Later on in our visit we saw a large model mockup of the castle and it appeared the inner moat was intentionally half filled with water.
Inside the inner walls then, a large courtyard opens up and the castle itself lies in the center. In the courtyard was a silver, dome object about 8 feet in diameter, if my memory serves me and it was a time capsule. The capsule every 100 years is opened and the next tier is revealed and the objects stored inside, whereby the final tier is only to be opened 5000 years in the future. When looking around, to think what it would be like 5000 years from now, I mentioned to Sara, all the time/memories that will be lost to time by all the park’s visitors in that interim period from the first closing of the capsule to its opening in 5000 years… an interesting thought, the time capsule.
We continued walking on and we reached the stairs into the castle, we purchased our tickets and then went straight to the top, up eight stories. The castle was due to close in about 40 minutes by the time we got there. At the top you could see all around the castle, here you can see the view and more of the moat:
The view may look weird and that is because its a panaramic shot and the center was the corner of the tower I was standing at when I took this. That is to say, looking left of center was looking off one face of the castle and looking right of center was looking off another face.
On the other floors of the castle were displays of its history as well as old poems and documents from various times during the castle’s use.
As we exited, here’s what the castle view looked like:
The castle was built in 1583 and ruled by the Toyotomi clan. It was eventually sacked by the Tokugawa Shogunate and razed to the ground and eventually rebuilt in 1620. It has a very long history ranging from 1583 until 1868.
Dotonbori:
After we walked around the grounds more, we headed to Dotonbori. It is a famous street(s) with many different street vendors and restaurants, but is notorious for its okonomiyaki and takoyaki.
When we first caught a glimpse of the street we could only see the lights illuminating the area as bright as day. The backside of the main street rests against this channel:
Below, is a picture of the signs on the right side in the picture above:
The main street lies just behind these signs and it looks more like this:
We made our first stop at the shop on the left underneath the giant crab. They were serving grilled crab legs and they were incredible, sweet and savory and perfectly tender with the added grilled taste:
Here are some more pictures of the signs in the area:
We found a restaurant serving okonomiyaki, which Osaka is well known for, and up to this point we hadn’t tried it before. We were waiting to have it in Osaka. There are many kinds of okonomiyaki, but they, as far as I know, share in common a batter mixed with cabbage, usually a sweet sauce on top and some other filling, which could be meet, vegetables, etc. We had ours with octopus and it was really, really good. I would say I prefer takoyaki more, but okonomiyaki is really good too. I look forward to trying different kinds in the future.
Here’s a picture of it:
While we were waiting for it to be cooked we kept saying, “OK we have to get a picture before we eat it.” However, it looked so good we accidentally cut into it before we got the picture so thats why the spatula is in it. The picture is deceptive a bit too, the whole thing was the size of a small dinner plate and was plenty for 2 people especially since we had a portion of soba before, which you can see the remnants of on the left of the picture. They didn’t survived long enough for the picture either.
After the meal we walked around the streets for a good while before heading back to the the hotel.
Day 13:
Today was mostly uneventful, we had gotten up early to head to Osaka Station to get our Shinkansen tickets back to Tokyo. When we ordered our tickets, the clerk asked if the next train from Shin-Osaka Station was alright and we said sure, this gave us about 20 minutes to get there, which was doable. Then our train line to Shin-Osaka had a report for significant delays, however another line was running there so we made it in time and with time to spare. It was 3 hours back to Tokyo.
We checked into our hotel and then headed to Shinjuku to shop at a Uniqlo, which is much like an H&M. We both got some stuff to wear from there. We then spent the rest of the night walking around Akihabara and I bought some mangas.
Tomorrow is our last full day in Japan for this trip and we will be going out to Harajuku and then doing some things in Akihabara followed by a nice dinner for our one-year anniversary.
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