A double helping of blog today, which is several less than we had on our food tour which was incredible, both for the food bonanza and the crazy sights, more of those later but do watch the videos at the end!

Our guide for our food tour was Yann, a Frenchman who came to Japan for a week and has stayed 15 years so far!

What a great experience. The area we are in is called Dotinbori which is named after the canal it surrounds and it is full of hundreds and hundreds of small restaurants and stalls. These often only seat a few people, usually less that a dozen, but they don’t spend much time there before they move on to the next one.

It’s a bit like tapas but instead of having lots of small dishes in one place, you have many different courses at many different places.

We started with Mochi, which is a dessert consisting of fresh fruit coated in sweet sticky rice. The white strawberries are a Japanese delicacy.

The reason we bought these first was because they are all freshly made, in limited quantities, are very popular and when they are sold, she shuts the shop.

Our first course was at Genroku sushi. There’s lots of revolving sushi restaurants around the world now. The most well known is maybe Yo-sushi! They were actually invented here in Osaka and this place is one of the first, founded in 1950…

Lots of different raw fish to try including sea urchin and whale. You just pull what ever you want from the conveyor belt and eat it, or ask the chef to make you something if it’s not there. When you’re done they count up your plates, each colour is a different price category sushi. You pay and then off to the next restaurant…

Which was Kushi katsu – meaning ‘fried skewer’.

The two below are ‘shoshito’ which tastes like and may actually have been a padron pepper. and a chicken gizzard, just like my granny used to put in her chicken soup (pupic!). Look it up if you don’t know what it is. We ate this at a famous shoshito chain which has an effigy of its founder outside..(he’s the one in the middle!)

It was washed down with ‘Calpis‘, a popular children’s drink made with calcium, which is what the ’cal’ is….and I have no idea about the’pis’ 😱. They traditionally rarely had dairy here. Cows started coming in after the war from America so no calcium except from fish bones, which maybe explains the average Japanese person being smaller than westerners due to less calcium for bone development. They are now getting bigger. (and fatter as American fast food becomes more popular 😩)

Once they got the cows there was no stopping them though and, inventive as ever, they developed high quality (wagyu) beef of which Kobe is the most famous. They massage the cows and give them beer to drink. The beer produces fat to create the extreme marbling, the massaging keeps the muscles (meat) relaxed. No wonder they believe in reincarnation, they all want to come back as a Japanese cow 😀)

That’s what we had next

Next it was Yakitori, chicken on skewers cooked many different ways and ordered an the table…

Then out for macha ice cream

We decided against going in here for puffer fish also known as Fugu the most infamous sushi. It is poisonous and it has to be prepared by licensed chefs. If they get it wrong you die. Think of it as fish roulette!

Then, as we wandered this vibrant, colourful, noisy, crowded area…

we saw some unusual sights…a Japanese lady playing French accordion, rather well it has to be said….

…and, as for this… I really, really don’t know what to say, but it’s a good place to end the night as I write this and nibble my delicious mochi that we bought at the start of the evening. Mmm….

Night night

01:15 – 15th May 2024 – Cross hotel – Osaka