Tokyo Tofu Japan

Getting to Osaka around 2pm, we decided that we would get off at Nanba station, instead of Osaka station, where we had originally planned to go. I wanted to wander around some of the shops there (its the entertainment/shopping district of Osaka), because some of the other students here at JCMU have been able to but shirts and other clothes with Japanese writing and kanji on it, something that I have so far not been able to find anywhere else. Unfortunately, I didn’t have any luck this time either. We did manage, however, to become completely lost in the maze of alley ways, and eventually wound up in the restaurant supply area of Nanba. There were shops selling every size and kind of knife, plate, chair, countertop, noren, signs, cookware, appliances, and even plastic food. I was tempted to buy some of the plastic food (in Japan, 90% of restaurants display examples of the food that they display outside of their shops, and they are generally incredibly realistic and ahem…tasty looking..), but I think I’ll wait until I can go to the plastic food district in Tokyo. After finally finding our way out of the alleyways, we had to ask for directions to get to Dotonbori, which I had read about being a rather ‘hip’ place to be in Osaka. Mostly I wanted to go there to take a picture of some famous neon signs. After much walking and searching, passing by love hotels and other unsavory locations, we finally found what I was searching for. Unfortunately, the boardwalk directly in front of the famous signs was closed for construction, so my pictures weren’t as great as I’d hoped they’d turn out.

By this time it was about 5pm, and we decided to head back to the subway station so that we could head to the Hard Rock Cafe in Osaka. All the walking around that we had done, we discovered that we were actually only a block away from the subway station that we had originally exited from. Getting back on the subway (still the privately owned Kintetsu line), we went two stops to Honmachi, where the Hard Rock Cafe was right outside exit #9. It was pretty early still, so when we got in, we were pretty much the only ones there. Since Monday was Halloween, the whole place was decorated and all of the servers had really cute costumes on (if its one thing Japanese people love to do, its dress up in costumes). The prices at the Hard Rock’s across Japan are, in a word, insane. 1700yen for a cheeseburger, 2200yen for fajitas, and you can get a steak for the low price of 3200yen. My favorite food, the spring rolls, clocks in at 1400yen for 4 rolls. Oh yeah, and then there’s a glass of coke for 420yen (~$4). Luckily, it is unlimited refills, so I made sure to get my money out of that one. Ended up with a pulled pork sandwich, which, wasn’t all that great. Oh course I also visited the merchandise shop, picking up a pin (their selection was lousy, unfortunately), as well as a very cool zip up hooded sweatshirt with an embroidered dragon down one of the sleeves with Osaka written on it.

After leaving the Hard Rock, we walked back to the subway station and went a couple stops to Kintetsu Umeda station. From here, it was only a walk up some stairs to get to JR Osaka station. But, before heading back to Kyoto and Hikone, we wanted to go to the Umeda Sky Building, a massive and strange looking 40-story building with an observation tower, called the Floating Garden Observatory, on the top of it. To get to the observatory, you have to go up 35 floors in a glass elevator, and then go up an escalator through glass tubes. When we got up to the top, we found the ‘garden’ to be the circular roof of the two buildings (the only part that connects them), with great views of the entire city. Took a lot of pictures, but unfortunately most of them didn’t come out very well since it was dark at that point. The moment that we left the observation deck and went back inside of the building, it started to rain, so as we were leaving the building we were preparing for the worst. It had taken us at least 20 minutes to walk from the station to the Sky Building, but by the time we got down to the first floor and put our ponchos on, the rain had already stopped. That and we discovered to our surprise (and dismay) that directly in front of the building there was an underground tunnel leading directly from the Sky Building back to JR Osaka station. Ah well.

Getting back to the station, we purchased out tickets to go back to Kyoto (we had already purchased our Kyoto to Hikone tickets), and then stopped by this little shop selling fresh Belgian waffles. In Kyoto station, the Biwako line (which goes from Hikone to Kyoto) exits directly in front of a shop selling waffles, and every time we walk by, the smell of the freshly made waffles just about has us drooling. So, since we had passed another of this waffle chain on our way to go to the Sky Building, we decided to buy some for the train ride back. There was a long line so we figured that had to be delicious. Unfortunately when we got them they weren’t hot (darn), but they did smell good and were very tasty. Sadly we weren’t able to enjoy them on the train until about an hour later because it was packed and we were tired of standing and so grabbed some seats that were away from each other. By the time we got back on the Biwako line though, we were able to review our pictures and happily eat our waffles, and tried to ignore the fact that there was still a 20 minute bike ride in the cold back to JCMU.

Dotonburi: